All’s well that ends well!
Unless you’ve been living under a rock or, you know, have a life, you’ll be aware that Georgia Toffolo (??) beat off fierce competition from Jamie Lomas (???) to be crowned ‘Queen of the Jungle’ on I Need Exposure, Get Me on Prime Time.
Toff is an awfully awfully nice young woman who is very cheery and smiles a lot, even whilst being surrounded by snakes and rats, but enough about her fellow contestants! No? Fair enough. She’s as posh as her name suggests, although vitally not a dickhead, and so of course she stood out.
That said, her jolly hockey-sticks charm was overshadowed somewhat by accusations of bullying within the camp. Jamie, Dennis Wise and Amir Khan were heavily criticised by viewers, who felt the trio were picking Iain, for being a bit different and not quite fitting into their alpha-male gang.
Iain actually did very well with the public, getting to the final show and coming third, and so was paraded in front of the rest of the contestants on ITV2’s Far Less Exposure, Just After Prime Time. Everything was ever so luvvy and showbiz, with much exaggerated chumminess and forced smiling.
But Amir Khan wasn’t going to let this moment pass without making a show of himself one last time. The Bolton light-welterweight was keen to make clear that he was no bully, and did this by way of intimidating Iain into agreeing with him. Unfortunately for Khan, this is pretty much the dictionary definition of bullying.
Reality telly veteran Scarlett Moffatt cheerily asked Jamie a question about staying friends with his new jungle pals post-show, but was quickly interrupted by Amir. “Definitely”, he chimed in, before completely changing the subject and confronting his definitely not bully-ee Mr Lee. “And Iain. We’re not bullies, we’re not bullies, mate.”
Iain, who’d only seen civilisation for a matter of minutes and had still to fully comprehend how the situation was perceived by outsiders, was incredulous and replied: “I’ve never used that word. No.” Khan ended the very awkward exchange with the absolutely not sinister sounding: “Anyway, we’ll talk about that later.”
Now we appreciate that the nature of these shows is that the viewers are spoon fed a very specific narrative by the producers to maximise hype and controversy. So heavily edited footage can be used to make situations seem a far bigger deal than they actually are. Hence why contestants are often surprised by outside opinions.
But Amir might want to work on his PR and interpersonal skills a tad. Intimidating someone you’re accused of bullying into agreeing with you on live TV is probably not the best way to go.
