I reem therefore I am

One of the first signs of Christmas is that I'm A Celebrity Get Me Out Of Here (or IACGMOOH as the kids all know it) is back. Perhaps, in the distant future, the other aspects of Christmas will fade away, and the true meaning of Christmas will involve being fed marsupial genitals in the jungle. After all, Christmas has pagan origins and might easily go back there. Eventually, one supposes, the lucky winner will become a human sacrifice.

Joey Essex is on this year's programme. He should do well – he has a rubbery resilient quality that ought to insulate him from all the torture. To put it another way, he's thick – but not simple. In the first show, which is all I've seen, he expresses his determination not to 'confrontate' anyone unless it is absolutely necessary. It would have been easier to say 'confront', but Joey Essex (real name: Alan Bedfordshire) feels the need to coin a more elaborate new word which conceivably has a meaning quite distinct from the original verb. This meaning remains submerged in the depths of Joey's rubbery brain – most likely, it will never be fully uncovered, so hard it is to penetrate this area. But that doesn't mean it isn't there.

I've said it before, Joey is a natural philosopher. Rather than be bound by pre-existing knowledge about how the world works, he is determined to reinvent human experience from the ground up, over and over again. Just like Heidegger. Or a small child. Finding himself on a moving boat with three other celebrities he shrewdly concludes that they must be 'going somewhere'. Instead of striking us as banal (it is worth pointing out here that great philosophical pronouncements are often confused with statements of the obvious) this comment achieves a level of  'idiocy' that forces us to look at the phrase 'going somewhere' (and also its obverse, 'going nowhere') afresh, and completely reconsider it as it relates not only to this situation but also to such concepts as – to take one example – Joey Essex's 'career'.

In its primitive aspect, the jungle is the perfect place for Essex to continue his philosophical quest to experience life as if for the first time. I doubt that we will ever see the fruits of his research in written form – Joey is not that kind of philosopher – and neither is 'learning' really part of his repertoire. He instinctively understands that 'knowing' separates us irrevocably from our surroundings - in order to truly experience life we must forget everything we ever knew. Joey has something of a head start here, and I wish him well in his endeavour. Sadly, I will not be following him on his journey, not wishing to condone the exploitation of cockroaches.