I'm a Celebrity returns – and Stanley Johnson makes it a must-watch

With the 14th seasons of BBC1’s Strictly Come Dancing and ITV’s The X Factor showing the risk of reality TV shows becoming repetitive, the 17th run of I’m a Celebrity … Get Me Out of Here!, launched by ITV on Sunday night, felt impressively interesting.

This freshness is helped by a rush of publicity resulting from bad and good luck. The misfortune was the addiction rehab to which co-host Anthony McPartlin had to submit this summer. The good chance was the more happily newsworthy coup of including among the jungle-mates Stanley Johnson, at the precise time that his son, roreign secretary Boris, may hold the futures of the British government and the European Union in his slippery hands.

Somewhere between the two was the booking of the former Scottish Labour leader Kezia Dugdale, a clever decision by the programme, but less wise for the politician. She has faced calls to resign as a Scottish parliament member for putting ahead of her constituents the consumption of marsupial gonads for peak-time entertainment.

Dugdale didn’t appear in the 90-minute opening episode, although she may yet turn up (in previous series, supplementary contestants have entered the jungle on days three or five). The other two media-magnets, though, were both on display.

McPartlin – appearing tanned, trim and relaxed – took his place again as half of Ant & Dec, the only outward sign of his ordeals being that this series began transmission a fortnight later than the previous sixteen.

Declan Donnelly celebrated the double act’s survival with two scripted gags. He started by introducing his co-host as the “lovely Holly Willoughby”, before cod-apologising that the standby script had accidentally been put on the Autocue, although viewers will wonder if the joke exposed what ITV’s contingency plan had been if Ant didn’t recover in time. Later, Dec, complaining that he had been working hard all summer on preparations for the show, complained that his screen partner hadn’t been around. What had he been doing? “Just stuff. Dead busy,” Ant said shiftily, before a mock-panicked instruction to technicians to run a video tape.

Between the alternatives of ignoring the presenter’s private problems completely or a US-style monologue of tearful gratitude to all who had got him through, this jokey approach was probably the best solution, and the easy-cheesy rapport between the duo seemed intact.

Stanley Johnson’s debut night also delivered everything the producers could have hoped for, confirming him as the most promising presence in the 2017 camp. The foreign secretary’s dad began with some low-level objectification of his young female campmates, greeting singer Vanessa White: “Oh my lord, what do we have here …? Wow, wow, wow!” When Georgia “Toff” Toffolo from Made in Chelsea told Stanley she was a “reality TV star”, he asked, “What is reality TV?”, which felt like requesting the definition of religion in a cathedral. Stanley also claimed never to have heard of Ant & Dec.

A suspicion that he was exaggerating his cluelessness in the hope of disguising his ambition under barking charm felt reminiscent of another public figure. Certainly, anyone who watches Stanley on IACGMOOH! immediately followed by Boris on News at Ten is going to have a very peculiar viewing experience because, even by the standards of familial resemblance, the two men are spookily similar.

Both wear a flapping blond thatch and speak in booming Wodehousian tones. Stanley, like his son, has a casual approach to foreign cultures – “Don’t [Australians] say something like, ‘Good on ya, copper!’”, asks Stanley, proposing a toast – and a tendency towards pre-feminist compliments to what you keep fearing he is going to call the “fairer sex”. “As long as women are happy, men are happy!”, Stanley drawls, during a debate over who will get to eat the meals won in the first trials.

Given that almost anything could happen in British politics in the next three weeks – as the budget is delivered and Brexit talks reach a key point – there is a possibility that Stanley may be incommunicado in the Australian rainforest when his son is either sacked from the cabinet or, if the world has gone mad enough, becomes prime minister.

Perhaps, though, Stanley’s celebrity stint will prove detrimental to Boris’s ambitions, as it reveals the extent to which the son’s shtick is nicked from his dad. With every image from the jungle, the foreign secretary more resembles a Dorian Gray whose secret is that the portrait in the attic is identical.

Stanley’s connections make him the one to watch, although, irritatingly, he was absent from much of the first programme, having perhaps been lucky enough to fail the medical for the central segment in which six contestants walked a plank protruding from the roof of a 102m-high (334ft) cylindrical tower block on the Gold Coast.

The other most intriguing early competitor is the comedian Shappi Khorsandi, although ITV might look at how amusingly entertaining it is to push out of a helicopter, even when attached to a parachutist, someone who is so terrified that she screams a message to her children: “Cassius and Vivie, I love you so much!”

Another concern is the prevalence among the contestants of the motivational expression “You’ve got this!”, which featured dozens of times on the first night. But, having got Stanley and Shappi, and with 2.4 million viewers voting during Sunday’s live show (choosing boxer Amir Khan and Toff to be the first to chew jungle genitalia in the first bushtucker trial), I’m a Celebrity looks far ahead of Strictly and The X Factor in the reality TV endurance trials.