I’m A Celebrity star Lady Colin Campbell: Top toff or switch-off?

EVERY year there’s one I’m A Celeb campmate who gets people talking more than any other.

And this year’s jungle ‘marmite’ character is author and socialite Lady Colin Campbell.

But do you think she’s a jungle joke or can’t you get enough of her cutting comebacks?

Our writers have their say…Bill Gibb: Arise Lady C, my queen of the jungleIF you listen carefully you can still hear the gleeful chortles coming from Down Under.

That’s the producers of I’m A Celebrity realising they’ve discovered telly gold.

They probably felt they were panning in the right area during Sunday night’s launch show. By the time Lady Colin Campbell had Tony Hadley feeling he’d gone 10 rounds with Chris Eubank after a ding-dong, they could sense a rich seam. As the end credits rolled they must have been high-fiving like they’d hit the motherload.

“I predicted this would happen,” the eccentric but indestructible Lady C announced, as she was told the public had voted her for the next bushtucker trial. “I was being roped in to be sport for the oiks!”

Genius. As a self-confessed oik I doff my cap in suitably servile fashion and with a tug of the forelock too of course to her Ladyship.

She is clearly a gloriously unique woman, if a little batty. However, we’d be fools to dismiss her as lily-livered.

She may have stunned Ant and Dec with a point blank refusal to do the Panic Pit challenge. But I’d bet my last dingo dollar there won’t be many more she’ll refuse.

Born into a generation who believes less is more, Lady C may appear posh and coiffed but one indignant flick of her silvery locks tells you all you need to know about her core of steel.

She was happy to gracefully tuck into crickets, eyeballs and other nasties using cutlery, never oikish fingers showing great perseverance to help win 10 meals for her junglemates.

She also tells it like it is, without flourish, however much her fellow campers may squirm. She may have the steely gaze of a mad mongoose if crossed but she’s also shown humility and humour by the bucketload.

Why’s she there? Who cares? (OK, it’s to pay for the leaking roof of one’s castle) But let’s just hope she doesn’t take an upper class strop and walk out.

We oiks have a lot more toff-baiting sport to enjoy.

Lady C in the jungle (ITV / REX)Ali Kirker: Enough with the oik-baiting!IT’S no surprise that I’m A Celeb bosses booked Lady Colin Campbell.

She is what we politely call “a character”. That’s the type of person you avoid at parties, or who you hear saying: “I’m mad, me.”

The ranty-raving, tantrum-throwing, foot-stamping, trial-refusing, oik-baiting la-di-da has certainly got us talking.

When she poshly ate all manner of bugs and animal body parts in the first trial, she was a hoot. Crickets? “Rather good,” she pronounced. Male turkeys’, em, bits? “Delicious, actually,” she insisted, chowing down with all the gusto of someone scoffing a Cadbury’s Double Decker.

But when she was nominated for yet another trial, I, along with half the country, cringed at her proclamation: “I was roped in to be sport for the oiks.”

OK, she’s got a point, but still.

By the time she didn’t wash a huge pile of dirty dishes for a challenge; had some aggro with the equally-bonkers Chris Eubank and then refused to take part in the Panic Pit Bushtucker Trial, it all started to wear a little thin. Her controlling, uppity behaviour would be enough to send most people longing for a dunny lock-in to get away from the daft Sheila!

The problem is it’s all a bit too knowing. She’s clearly a smart cookie, is our Lady C. Life has thrown her a lot of challenges, including being brought up as a boy and having extensive surgery when she was 21.

So I’m willing to bet the whole of Ant and Dec’s presenting fee that she’s clocked that by acting up and throwing strops, she knows she’s going to get guaranteed air time.

Call it the reality TV curse. Or call it the reality strategy a game-plan to win or at least get everyone talking and advance her career.

It makes you wonder why we’re wasting our time watching.

So will I continue to tune in?

You bet!