Rhune
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Britain Falls for 'Celebrity' Reality Show
« on: Sep 6th, 2002, 3:04pm » |
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Britain Falls for 'Celebrity' Reality Show Fri, Sep 6, 2002 11:58 AM PDT LOS ANGELES (Zap2it.com) - American audiences tuned in for two editions of "Celebrity Boxing," and they'll soon be able to see "Celebrity Boot Camp." Now, the supposedly higher-minded Brits have flipped for a similar show. It's called "I'm a Celebrity -- Get Me Out of Here," and it's drawing an audience of nearly 7 million viewers for each show on the U.K.'s ITV network. As with the American shows, the term "celebrity" is applied somewhat loosely on "Get Me Out of Here." The players have included psychic Uri Geller, former boxing champ Nigel Benn and Tara Palmer-Tomkinson, who is described as "Britain's leading It girl." They sit around in the jungle of Australia, occasionally performing "Fear Factor"-esque gross-out stunts to win food for the group, but mostly talking and bickering, the AP reports. Viewers vote them off via a phone poll. There's no grand prize, with most money collected from the phone voting going to charity. The fact that the players aren't huge stars is pretty much beside the point, says Will Smith (not that one), one of the show's producers. "Let's be honest: you're not going to get A-list celebrities to spend two weeks in the middle of the Australian jungle," Smith says. "The success of the format doesn't depend on whether people are A-list, B-list or whatever, but that you have a group of characters that people recognize and have an opinion about."
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