I’M A CELEBRITY … GET ME OUT OF HERE! ★★★½
Series return, from Sunday 7.30pm, Ten

He says the closest he’s ever got to camping is prancing around to Kylie Minogue songs. So why did Richard Reid sign up to I’m a Celebrity … Get Me Out of Here? “I want to lose weight, of course!” says the Hollywood gossip guru, long-time fixture on Nine’s Today and now a regular on Ten’s Studio 10.

Well, that’s one reason. There are more, of course. After turning 50 a couple of years ago, Reid – like a lot of people who turn 50 – had that sudden realisation that his life was half over and he’d better make the most of what was left of it. “You only get one chance,” he says. “So I better get on with it, and do everything I want to do.”

Yes, sure. But does anyone actually want to spend weeks in the heat, filth and humidity with a bunch of strangers, isolated from the rest of the world, being forced to eat bugs?

Weirdly, Reid says it was his experience on Celebrity Apprentice – also not an unalloyed pleasure – that motivated him to agree to yet more reality TV.

“I can’t say that I had the best time of my life on Celebrity Apprentice. But it was an experience like no other I’d ever had before,” Reid says. “And that’s why I cherish it. So when I was approached to do I’m a Celeb, you know out of all the people in the world, less than 1 millionth of a per cent would be able to say ‘I was on I’m a Celebrity …‘ and I’d be one of them, and that is amazing. There’s not a lot of things in this world that I can say are my first time anymore. But there’s going to be a lot of firsts on this trip, I’m telling you.”

When we speak, Reid’s less than two weeks away from heading to South Africa and so far his preparation has been mixed. He’s decided on a strategy for dealing with the less attractive aspects of his personality that will inevitably come to light – primarily that he gets pretty cranky when he’s hungry, tired or stressed. Basically, his constant emotional state once he’s in the jungle.

On the downside: “I found a spider in my kitchen this morning and I screamed like a teenage girl.” He’s also not the most practical person in the world. “Can I start a fire? No. I failed miserably at Boy Scouts. Starting a fire is not my forte. But I am a peacekeeper. That can be a skill. Negotiating and peacekeeping.”

It can indeed. Emotions tend to run high in the jungle, and for a lot of viewers the real value of I’m a Celeb is less the gross-out moments than the conversations around the campfire. Like all the celebs, Reid is undertaking the ordeal in support of a charity – in his case, Beyond Blue. It seems an unusual choice for someone so relentlessly upbeat but Reid’s mother was diagnosed bipolar and spent years in and out of hospital. Reid himself was bullied as a child and as an adult has struggled with anxiety and depression. And as someone who lives between Sydney and LA he’s been struck by the cultural differences in attitudes toward mental illness – and the crucial role Beyond Blue plays in turning things around.