JAN MOIR: Day 1 on I'm A Celeb... my disgust is already boiling over

On the drinks menu tonight, a cocktail of raw bull’s penis blended with a gelatinous slithering of fish eyes and garnished with a slice of vomit fruit. Would modom like a sick bag with that? Modom most certainly would. And a blindfold plus a pair of earplugs wouldn’t got amiss, either.

Yes, I’m A Celebrity… Get Me Out Of Here! (ITV1) has kicked off its new series with the usual stomach-churning menu of indigestible drinks, fumigatable nonentities and pungent people you have vaguely heard of beginning their battle for supremacy in the Australian jungle to become reality show royalty.

And as Coleen Rooney made her debut, Declan Donnelly couldn’t help but have a dig at Rebekah Vardy.

Minutes into the programme Dec joked: ‘It will be nice for her to face a trial that doesn’t involve Rebekah Vardy’, a reference to Coleen’s highly public clash with fellow WAG Rebekah that ended up with them both in court.

Straight off the bat, McFly star Danny Jones seemed to prove why he is already the 2-1 bookies’ favourite to win. As his fellow contestants winced at chugging back this liquid festival of testicle, Danny was the first celebrity to choke down his drink and stick out his tongue to indicate full ingestion of his stein of bovine brine.

My disgust levels were already boiling over like a dingo in a bubbling billabong, but there was worse to come. There is always worse to come on this show. After the usual high-octane palaver with helicopters and parachutes, victorious Danny was allowed first pick of contestants to be his running mate in a race to become the leader of the camp.

He selected former boxing champion Barry McGuigan as his partner – and that seemed a smart choice. Barry’s a fighter after all, right? Yet the dream team ended up losing and facing the first trial of the series.

In the Mausoleum Of Misery, the men had to battle against the greasy attentions of 15 snakes apiece. Poor Danny even needed an emergency intervention from one of the show’s reptile handlers when one of the snakes managed to worm – there is no other word for it – its way into his shorts.

So far, so utterly nightmarish. Yet the omens seem to suggest that we are in for a classic series this year. For a start, there is a pretty good cast, including Strictly dancer Oti Mabuse, controversial N-Dubz singer Tulisa Contostavlos, Coronation Street star Alan Halsall and swivel-hipped DJ Melvin Odoom.

In addition, there is Radio 1 DJ Dean McCullough (‘I’m shaking,’ he cried weedily in the first five minutes, which was promising) and podcaster GK Barry who is also billed as a ‘content creator’ – aren’t we all, darling?

Obviously, I am rooting for my friend Jane Moore, 62, the tough and smart journalist who is also one of the key presenters on Loose Women (ITV). She is flying the glamour flag for over-60s women and newspaper Glendas everywhere. Come on, Jane, you marvellous creature! When I get to your age, I hope I’m every bit as plucky and radiant.

Of course, all eyes are on Coleen – seen early on furiously bailing out her canoe with a mug – who is reportedly being paid £1.5mllion for her I’m A Celeb stint and sees this as the first step in a golden television career. I don’t doubt it for one second. Around the campfire on the first night, Coleen wasted no time in spilling the hot tea on her first date with Wayne. They went to the cinema, apparently. ‘But we had a kiss around the church first,’ she added. Dear God! I am hoping she means a religious building and is not using an obscure northern phrase for a lower body part.

Of course, Coleen is not the first WAG on IAC. One of my all-time favourites was Carly Zucker back in 2008, a personal trainer who was then engaged to multimillionaire England and Chelsea footballer Joe Cole.

At the time, the entire country was in the grip of an austerity crisis, but that didn’t stop Carly moaning about living in a big house and being rich. ‘It takes all day to clean it,’ she whined. ‘And having money can be a burden, that’s why I get stressed.’ How I wish someone had pointed out that it was Joe’s money, not hers.

Other IAC highlights down the years include Tony Blackburn bonding with a log in the first series back in 2002, Gillian McKeith pretending to faint in 2010 and Lady Colin Campbell (2015) gobbling down the emu anuses (‘Yum scrum!’) and complaining that no one was taking her seriously. ‘I was roped in to be sport for the oiks,’ she complained afterwards.

Who could forget TOWIE alum Joey Essex revealing that he didn’t know how to tell the time back in 2013, or distinguished newsman Michael Buerk being pelted with cockroaches and forced into a cockatoo outfit the following year?

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Buerk was also appalled at the lack of knowledge displayed in camp by some of his fellow contestants. ‘There were three people in there who didn’t know what a pineapple was,’ he gasped, when voted out after 19 days.

Sometimes it is a terrible trial to even watch this show, heaven knows what it must be like actually living it – but, of course, the participants bring it all upon themselves in a personal quest for glory and an invariably doomed bid to let the public see ‘the real me’.

Despite their best efforts, the true stars of the show are witty, hilarious hosts Ant McPartlin and Dec, who somehow make this grand, ramshackle, vomitous fiesta of critters, slime and creepy crawlies somehow work.

In a world where other reality shows such as Big Brother, The X Factor and even Strictly Come Dancing are losing popularity and lustre, IAC storms on with huge primetime audiences, year after year.

Heaven knows why. As an entertainment, it is vacuous, invidious and intensely manipulative. The show’s evil producers use the kind of disorientation techniques once favoured by the Gestapo and the Soviet’s NKVD. Isolation and confusion prevail!

Yet audiences lap it up. For reasons perhaps best not examined, the allure of this annual sly and ritual humiliation of stars and celebs does not fade.

Perhaps the public understand that the humiliation of celebrity nonentities is a public service in itself. Something to think about, as you watch Coleen chirping on about kissing her Wayne or a snake slithering into Danny Jones shorts.