Having appeared on ‘I’m a Celebrity…’ five years ago, I am riveted to the current series. I am still surprised how many people think they are being routinely hoodwinked by the programme makers.

Let me assure you that that what you see is not as bad as it looks actually. It is much worse. Let us nail a few canards.

We do not get to sneak out to the local chippy when the programme is off air. We do not get thrown the odd peanut. We are truly isolated.

There are only a few people we saw in that clearing in the rainforest including Ant and Dec for precisely the length of time you see them on screen. They don’t hang around for any chit chat.

Three times a day a sound man will come into the camp and silently change the batteries on your mikes.

Any attempt to engage them in conversation is met with the same reaction as Kiosk Keith so animatedly (not) delivers at his shack. There are also a couple of assistant producers who come to lead the victims to their next session of humiliation; their conversation is perfunctory and to the point.

Any attempt to find out news from outside is met with a stony silence. They are all wired up themselves and I suspect any chink in their defensive armour would be met with swift retribution, possibly dismissal.

There is a crew at the execution sites we are led to, but they studiously avoid your gaze and guard their possessions in case you try to mug them. I did once manage to steal a bottle of water. That is the level of desperation you reach.

Basically it is for real. But what you don’t see in a ninety minute programme is the sheer tedium of having nothing to do but gather wood, boil water, hand wash your clothes in a far from sparkling stream and try to make beans and rice edible.

In 2012 when I was there we lived exclusively on beans and rice for the first week as you, the great British public, insisted on voting lovely Helen Flanagan to do trials which regularly defeated her.

The upside is that I met some people I would never otherwise have met and when I left I was convinced we would all stay in contact forever. We didn’t of course, any more than ex-prisoners do when released, I suspect.