And so it begins...Nadine Dorries to be buried with beasties

Well, there's a surprise. Errant Conservative MP Nadine Dorries was voted by the great British public - including what seemed to be fairly sizable proportion of political types on Twitter. Tonight, for our entertainment, she will be buried for 10 minutes with a not very delightful abundance of antipodean beasties - you know, rats, maggots, cockroaches, spiders. Occasionally they put water in as well which must be really terrifying.

I wrote yesterday that these programmes can bring out some fairly unpleasant impulses in us. Taking pleasure in someone being very distressed isn't an attractive character trait. We're not there yet with Nadine, who seems to be coping quite well.

At the moment, the contestants have been split into two teams, so Nadine will be competing for food rations with Helen Flanagan, who played Rosie Webster on Coronation Street. She has been voted for presumably because she cried and screamed her way through negotiating her way across a very dodgy, high stepping stone bridge across a ravine. I couldn't have done it, and the fact is that she got there in the end. I suspect she may be learning that she's made of stronger stuff than she thinks. We have learned that her portrayal of the self obsessed Rosie involved no acting whatsoever.

Viewers may need to get smarter on strategy, though. Surely if you want Nadine to do the trials, you also need to make sure she gets beaten. If I had to make a prediction about tonight's trial, it would be that Helen will lose. She got through yesterday with some fantastic support from her team-mates. She won't have them with her today. When people are voting tonight, they may want to think about who from the other team can beat Nadine. Charlie Brooks looks pretty feisty and competitive, and they have a boxing champ there in David Haye. 

I actually want Nadine to win tonight. Not for glory for her, but so that Colin Baker can eat. I want him to stay well. He's a bit portly and not very fit, and seemed to be feeling it on last night's show. I've seen Colin at Doctor Who conventions in the past and he's witty and very entertaining. I could listen to him all day so I want him to stay healthy and sparkle. Nadine's team haven't had anything other than rice and beans to eat in 2 days. The other lot had a night in luxury in a beach house and then got all the food last night. Fair's fair. 

But tonight, if you are going to waste your money on voting on this, think about the bigger picture, that's all I'm saying.

Elsewhere on the programme, I am amazed at how much I liked Hugo. I did not have high expectations of a man I expected to be a posh git waste of space. He also criticised Nadine for being away from her constituents. I'm not discounting the possibility that that was inspired by a producer with a wooden spoon, though. 

Ashley Foster showed some good leadership skills and positive attitude in the first task which they lost, really, because the other lot were quicker on their feet than Colin. 

Brian Conley also showed himself to be funny and useful. Both he and Linda Robson were really good at keeping Helen safe as she crossed the ravine.

This series has potential. As long as we can avoid actual damaging cruelty, and it stays the right side of the line, it could be an enjoyable three weeks with some interesting characters. I want to see Nadine try to promote her pro-life views and get told off by one of the others. Or for someone to take her to task for abandoning her constituents in true Rhona Cameron style.

I'm feeling a bit sorry for Nadine Dorries.......

.....which I know is not going to be popular view, but I suspect the next week is going to showcase some not very attractive facets of the mob mentality that sometimes arises around these reality tv shows. Almost 10 years ago, Channel 4 had to get in extra security when Adele left Big Brother. Why? Because people thought that she had been a bit two faced and there was such over-the-top hatred towards her, fuelled by the tabloid press.Then they same papers fuelled hatred towards Jade Goody by depicting her as a pig, starting off the rollercoaster that saw them make her, break her and finally raise her to virtual sainthood before her premature death from Cancer in 2009.

I do watch I'm a Celebrity. It can be quite compelling. It actually changed my opinion of Liberal Democrat Brian Paddick. His series was a classic, though, with George Takei, Martina Navratilova and Esther Rantzen providing much amusement and quality banter. Brian was not in my good books because he'd criticised his 2008 London mayoral campaign team, led by my friend Andrew Reeves, in the press. He later learned his lesson, recognised that he had been a bit of a diva and went on to fight a very good campaign in the same role this year. However, in 2008, I have to admit, not to my credit, that a huge motivation for tuning in  was to see him get covered in beasties and eat unmentionables.

Now, there comes a point, though, if a person is showing real distress, that enjoying their discomfort goes from being not very nice to inappropriate or even unacceptable. In the first week, viewers can choose who does the bush tucker trials, where a celebrity goes through an extremely unpleasant experience, usually involving bugs and beasties, to earn meals for everyone else. The viewers inevitably choose the people who are most scared. Last year it was Sinitta, or occasionally Antony Cotton. It's been Jordan and Gillian McKeith in the past. If someone has had to have oxygen because they are so scared, then it would never occur to me to pick up the phone  to put them through it again. There comes a time when, however much they're being paid, however self inflicted it all is, putting them through actual suffering is not nice.

I think we can guess who'll be voted to do all the trials this week. Nadine Dorries, the controversial Tory MP who's abandoned her constituents so she can lecture us all about abortion from around the camp fire, has, in my view, no redeeming features. The one bad consequence of the Liberal Democrats voting against the boundary changes is that her constituency will remain in existence. She has therefore had a pretty major reward for her bad behaviour in voting against Lords reform.

In my view, Nadine should not have agreed to take part in this programme. For an MP to be out of the country and uncontactable for 3 weeks purely to take part in a tv show is not on. There are obviously times when MPs have to take  extended spells out of Westminster. They're human beings and subject to the same crises in terms of illness or caring for sick relatives that we all go through and we'd take time off for. People have sympathy with that. They are less likely to understand an indulgent ego trip, done without consulting anyone, which will benefit nobody but Nadine. I'm sure she sees a future for herself as a Christine Hamilton type, rehabilitated by reality tv almost to national treasure status. Well, that worked so well for Lembit when he did it after losing his seat in 2010. And as Chief Whip Alistair Carmichael pointed out in his inimitable style this week:

If Nadine struggles in the jungle, I won't be wasting too much of my energy feeling sorry for her, but I don't think it is to anyone's credit if they take pleasure in actual suffering of another human being, no matter how self indulgent, self inflicted or insignificant in the scheme of things it is.

I am maybe being a bit soft here - but then I can't imagine  that, had I lived in an earlier time, that I'd have had much truck with throwing things at people who'd been  put in the stocks. These reality shows can sometimes be the modern day equivalent.