My Liz Jones fantasy...

Okay, so I had the next few posts all planned out (in my head) for the blog – taking you a bit further on my extraordinarily deep and meaningful journey into the further reaches of spirituality; meandering through labyrinths; breathing, meditating, fasting, thinking beautiful pure thoughts and so on.  But then…

I popped into town. To pick up some dog food.  And washing powder. And muesli, because seriously the sugary Alpen just makes your teeth whistle, no?  And I went into a shop and was burrowing in the muesli basket when someone came up to me and said.

‘I don’t suppose you read Liz Jones in the Mail, do you?’ 

Liz in her Exmoor hell-hole. 

And I said. ‘No, not usually.’ Because, frankly, I’m only really interested if she starts telling lies about Exmoor again and, praise be, she seems to have shut up on that one since her editors or someone advised her to stop ripping the countryside to shreds and instead start this malarkey about her alleged romance with the alleged ‘rock star’ (The One Nobody Has Ever Seen, No Not Even Her Immediate Neighbours). 

‘Oh God, you won’t believe it…’ said the woman. 

‘Trust me, I will,’ I responded. Because, let’s be honest, where Liz Jones is concerned, nothing is beyond belief.  ‘But go on…’

‘She was going to be in I’m a Celebrity, Get me Out of Here…’

‘Whaaaa….?????’  The bag of muesli fell to the floor.  Images flashed before my eyes in quick succession: of Liz Jones trying to vacuum the jungle; of Liz Jones plucking at her T-shirt and lamenting that it wasn’t Prada; of Liz Jones asking if the witchety-grubs were organic. Except, hang about, she’s ‘vegan’ isn’t she?  Apart from the wine and the egg on chips of course. And let’s conveniently forget about the leather shoes and handbags and all. 

That tongue needs a good scrape...

‘Can you imagine it?’ said the woman, her eyes half-shut in blissful reverie. ‘Can you just imagine her nose-down in insects?’ She looked rapt. I could see her point. We stood, in the middle of the shop, wordlessly, breathing, meditating even, on this one pure image. In the moment, in the Now. A heartbeat from nirvana.   

‘Oh yes…’ I breathed. ‘Oh yessss!’

A man walked in and quickly walked out again, possibly wondering if we were indulging in touchless orgasm (a neat skill that I may, or may not share with you further down the line). The SP howled balefully from outside. The moment was gone.  We shook our heads and looked at one another.

‘And?’ I said. ‘Was she?’    

She shook her head sadly. ‘Nah. She turned it down.’

Liz Jones. Allegedly.

Oh the disappointment.  But really, of course she did!  You have to wonder though. I checked the article and she said: ‘Not only would I not eat an insect. I would not put one under stress either – not for any amount of cash.’ And then she went on about Jains (you know, the ones who practise Jainism) and how they avoid harming anything and described them as 'my kind of people. Higher Beings.' No, really. She did. Liz Jones is a self-styled Higher Being. Anyone else and I'd have said they were being ironic... 

Anyhow, the Higher Being business aside, it's all very noble and, coming from someone who allegedly fed her stable rats on organic muesli (probably the same brand I had just sent skittering over the floor) you could just about buy it. And, let’s be very honest here, I wouldn’t eat bugs out of choice. But then if someone said to me, ‘Come on I’m a Celebrity..’ (which, of course, they wouldn’t cos I’m not a ‘celebrity’ thank feck)  it would take all of ten seconds for me to say, ‘Badger off, mate.’  

But it took her five months to realise that ingesting bugs was part of the package?  

Oh come on!  More likely the producers simply didn’t pick her out of the shortlisted three for ‘her slot’ because...well…do you really need me to list the reasons?

But really. Damnit. Just damnit.  Cos see, I don’t watch these circus freak shows that pass as TV entertainment nowadays.  But, in this case, I’d have made an exception. J