A common thread running through my life is a general annoyance at Noel Edmonds’s existence. His dismal Mr Blobby theme park tainted my 14th birthday. Deal or No Deal existed to reinforce everyone’s worst superstitious impulses. And then – to add insult to injury – I had to review one episode of his short-lived 2017 Channel 4 gameshow Cheap Cheap Cheap, which felt like an eternity of being punched in the face by sentient vomit. If only Noel Edmonds went away, I thought, I could finally be happy.
But now here’s the thing. Edmonds has actually threatened to go away. If he wins this year’s I’m A Celebrity, Get Me Out Of Here, he says, that’s it. We’ll never see him again. “That’s a deal I’m prepared to do with the British public. If they vote me king of the jungle, I will never appear on television again,” he told the Mirror this week, only slightly ruining it by adding: “I may be Marmite, but there’s a hell of a lot of people that seem to like Noel’s version of Marmite.”
I’ll be honest; the potential absence of Edmonds has spooked me. If you watched Wednesday night’s I’m a Celebrity, you will understand why. The show was already meandering along at the usual pace, with the typical mix of dietary outrages and bullying accusations, but Noel’s introduction on to the programme has kicked the whole affair into ridiculously high gear.
There he was, arms folded, legs apart, chin defiant. Dressed like a Roman emperor, intoning “Are you not entertained?” in the manner of someone who has never seen Gladiator and doesn’t fully understand his own reference. The man hasn’t even entered the camp yet, but he has already hit a career-high of silliness. It’s like he has started to cave in under the weight of his own persona. If he keeps this up, we might see him transition into a brand new stage of his career. Whisper it, but this might just mark the Shatnering of Noel Edmonds.
For years, everything that Edmonds has done has been fuelled by a locomotive engine of pure self-importance. Remember when he took time out from Noel’s House Party to angrily address a “so-called” television critic? Remember when he dressed up as an old lady as part of his bizarre bid to literally buy the BBC? Remember Noel’s HQ, the Sky series that started as light issues-based entertainment but quickly curdled into a furious Network-style vehicle for Edmonds to rant directly into a camera?
Or remember Positivity Radio, the website where Noel uploaded a load of gull noises and laughter and claimed it was, “One of the most exciting business tools of all time”? Remember when he took it down and briefly replaced it with a round-the-clock radio station dedicating to disparaging the reputation of Lloyds Bank? The website is still there, by the way, but now it seems to be an advert for an upcoming book that promises to explain Noel’s “enhanced state of wellbeing”. There is a taster of it, in the form of a presumably rhetorical question that reads: “Do you trust your tap water?” You don’t do this sort of thing unless you are a power-crazed egomaniac.
But maybe, just maybe, this I’m A Celebrity appearance marks the point where Noel’s self-importance transmogrifies into self-awareness. Maybe this is when he will realise that he can achieve more by poking fun at himself. Maybe, instead of being aggressively defensive of his eccentricities, he will start to embrace them. Maybe he will see out his remaining years as an ironically beloved caricature rather than the full-blown cuckoo-bird egomaniac of old. If that happens – and this is a big admission for me – I would hate to see him leave television. The man is just too weird not to have around. Now someone hurry up and and give him a plate of kangaroo eyes to eat.