A few words from Rob Mansfield

So the latest line-up for I’m A Celeb has been announced and it has that familiar feel about it. The ‘feel’ being - oh, god what a load of rubbish.

Lots of random young ’stars’ who most people have never heard of - Nicola McLean, anyone? Boring popstars/soapstars who are desperate to revive their career now they’re no longer a part of what made them famous - Simon Webbe from Blue and ex-EastEnder Joe Swash.

In fact, the most interesting people are the older contestants who might get a little more irritated and annoyed by everyone else: Esther Rantzen, Robert Kilroy Silk, Martina Navratilova and George Takei will surely dominate the action.

The thing is, though, if you think back to previous years, many of the contestants fit into a specific bracket:
- Weird American (David Gest, Angie Dickinson, Huggy Bear - Martina in 2008)
- Outspoken older woman (Christine Hamilton, Lynne Franks, Jan Leeming, Janet Street Porter - Esther in 2008)
- Slightly older attractive woman (Sheree Murphy, Cerys Matthews, Natalie Appleton - Dani Behr in 2008)
- Ex soap star (Elaine Lordan, Malandra Burrows, Dean Gaffney, Chris Bisson - Joe in 2008)
- The one that no-one remembers but they needed to make up the numbers (Diane Modahl, Nigel Benn, Faith Brown, Kimberley Davies - Carly this year)

I don’t really want to commit to watching it, but something tells me I’ll be hooked in 2 weeks time. Roll on Ant & Dec…

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You’re a brave TV studio calling a new show ‘Life’.

Obviously if the series works, the critics can be awfully banal and write a headline much like the one I’m using for this post.

However, if it falls flat on its arse, then you get quips like ‘Life Sucks’.

Fortunately, Life is actually pretty good. Now showing in the UK on ITV3, it’s quickly become one of my favourite new shows to watch and Brit actor Damian Lewis is very watchable.

I can’t help noticing similarities between his character and another notable redhead cop, Horatio Kane - aka David Caruso - on CSI: Miami.

The other similarity, for me, is with Michael Dibdin’s Italian detective Aurelio Zen - the surname giving away the common denominator.

The weird thing is, though, that the more we watched Life the other night, the less red Lewis’ hair seemed to be. What happened to his crowning glory? Surely the producers didn’t turn round and demand he toned the colour down.

By the end of Episode 1, he was almost dark brown - and a long way from his strawberry blonde roots. I mean, it’s not as if the studio bosses could act surprised by his hair colour, could they?

Anyway, that is a minor distraction - the rest of it was highly enjoyable.

Here’s a clip from the opening of Life - where he still looks quite ginger. But I can assure you, it’s not always the case!

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We’ve all read about Iceland going into meltdown, but This news story from last Sunday’s Observer amused me no end.

An Icelandic company called Arev is going down the tubes. Nothing particularly surprising about that during this time of recession, but what’s amusing is that Arev and its sister company Kcaj are named after Coronation Street veterans Jack and Vera (Duckworth).

To make it even more hilarious, a new company that was set up after the buy-out of Aspinal, the leather-goods brand, is called Yerrt - which just happens to be an anagram of Terry, the Duckworth’s wayward son.

Of course, there is a history of people using part of their name or initials to come up with the name of their company.

Famously Alan Sugar named Amstrad after standing Alan Michael Sugar TRADing.

Tesco is named after the two founding partners, TE Stockwell and Jack COhen.

Trebor Mints is, of course, the reversal of the first name of founder Robert Robertson.

However, Arev takes the biscuit. The Icelandics named their company after two people who they liked in a TV series originally shown in another country. A little nutso, dontcha think?

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