I'm a Celebrity 2007

[faceless]

Jungle Marc beat me up
By Louise Ford And Grant Hodgson Louise.Ford@Sundaymirror.Co.Uk 25/11/2007

Marc Bannerman's devastated girlfriend last night revealed that she has dumped the jungle rat for good - and told how he viciously beat her up during their tempestuous two year relationship. Sarah Matravers said she was left bruised and battered after Marc tore into her during a drink-fuelled fight. The beautiful actress told Marc it was all over on Thursday night when he was voted out of the jungle camp in I'm A Celebrity... Get Me Out Of Here, where he had humiliated Sarah by falling head-over-heels for singer Cerys Matthews.

Recalling their shocking fight, Sarah, 33, told the Sunday Mirror: "I was very, very scared. I remember thinking, 'he's a bloke, he shouldn't be doing this to me'. I had bruises where he slapped me and bruises and scuffs on my body." Sarah said she was so terrified during the assault by the former EastEnders actor that she plunged her arm through a window pane, believing it was the only way to stop him beating her.

"I put my arm through the window in pure desperation. It was all I could think of doing," she said. "Yes, I've got a scar on my arm from it, but it worked. It stopped. Who knows where it could have gone - we could have unintentionally inflicted really very serious harm on each other." Choking back tears, she added: "I have no idea how long the fight lasted for. There was a bruise on my back and I had 10 stitches to my arm so it was pretty nasty." Sarah decided to speak out about her terrifying ordeal - which happened at their home last February - after watching the ITV1 show in disbelief while her 34-year-old lover spent 11 days flirting with former Catatonia singer Cerys, 36.

She told him their twoyear relationship was over in an emotional two-hour phone call on Thursday night after he was booted off the show by public vote. Wiping away tears, she said: "I was shouting at him, 'Are you in love with Cerys? Yes or no, yes or no?' He couldn't seem to answer. He just said, 'I don't know' and 'Sorry' over and over again. He didn't really make anything clearer to me, I'm absolutely devastated. He tried to defend himself saying he didn't do anything 'overly physical' with Cerys. But to see him saying he was in love with her on TV, that's heartbreaking. "I told him it was over. I said if he can't make a decision, then I'll make a decision for him. That's it. He didn't say much."

There was more pain for Sarah yesterday when an emotional love note from Marc to Cerys was read out in the jungle camp. Sarah said last night: "I don't care what happens with them now. He's dumped, it's all over and if he thinks he can come back grovelling he can think again. It honestly feels like my partner has died ... and people don't come back from the dead."

Marc became the first contestant voted off the show after repeatedly kissing and cuddling Cerys in the jungle camp. He said he knew he'd be in trouble with Sarah - then made matters worse by saying on camera after the show: "I'm in love with two women."

Ironically, it was his own jealousy that sparked the drunken row in February last year. Sarah said they began bickering after a drunken party for the end of filming at ITV spin-off drama Footballers Wives: Extra Time, in which they played a married couple. Marc claimed Sarah had flirted with men at the party and the argument spiralled out of control when they got back to his flat in North London. She says the 6ft actor started slapping her, with a series of blows to her face.

"We'd both drunk a lot and we'd had arguments before. At that stage I was walking out on him and getting back almost every week. Marc thought there was something going on with me and another actor - it got blown out of proportion - and by the time we got home we were in a drink-filled haze. He slapped me in the face and I was punching him. At one point we were wrestling on the floor. I was going at him, punching his stomach, but he was really going at me."

Desperate to stop it, and in a moment of madness, Sarah plunged her right arm through the glass panel, causing a deep gash. Marc called an ambulance and she was taken to hospital where she gave a statement to police who later arrested Marc and charged him with assaulting his girlfriend.

Sarah recalled: "I went to hospital alone, I was completely numb. At the hospital I had 10 stitches and a friend came to help me. Then the police took as a statement and before I knew it Marc was arrested. To be honest, I didn't really know what was happening."

Days later Sarah dropped the charges, telling police she was too drunk to remember how she got her bruises. She said: "As horrible as it was, I didn't want him to get a conviction, I wanted to protect Marc because I didn't feel that either of us were bad people. I didn't speak to him for a week and stayed with my mum. I didn't want to see him - I was very, very traumatised and went to see a counsellor to deal with it. Marc was beside himself, utterly mortified. The following week, I went to see him in London and we slowly worked through it again."

Prosecutors decided to go ahead with the case without Sarah - but later dropped the case. Marc denied the assault at the time. Now Sarah says: "It was the first time he had hurt me like that. I always knew he had a temper and there was the odd push and a shove between us. We would say horrible things to each other, slam doors and throw things. But after that horrible day, we vowed to stop drinking and rowing and to build a life together. And it never happened again."

Sarah's mum Patricia Page said: "When I saw her she was like a little old lady beaten to a pulp. She was thoroughly bruised and battered... for a mother, it was a horrific sight. She was broken emotionally and physically. It was totally unforgivable and we haven't welcomed him into our home. Now everyone has seen him show his true colours. I've been watching I'm A Celebrity in absolute horror. We never expected Sarah to take Marc back after the beating, and now we pray she draws a line completely."

Sarah says she and Marc had just finished re-decorating their three-bedroom family home and were trying for a family before he left for Australia. He told me he was going out to the jungle for our babies. He went out there for our future and I've had to watch that slip away from me. I'm A Celebrity has ruined my life."

Sarah had flown out to Australia last week, hoping Marc's closeness to Cerys was just harmless fun. But as she watched his love for the blonde singer blossom on the TV in her hotel room, friends became so worried about her state of mind they put her on a flight back home. She said: "It was utter torture. All I ate was half a sandwich and a tiny bowl of spaghetti. I didn't leave the hotel once. The worst part was seeing them sitting looking into each other's eyes, putting their hands over their mouth and wanting to kiss. And when he was talking to John (Burton Race) about what he had with Cerys, Marc looked elated, like a love-struck teenager. I sobbed my heart out. I started drinking again... my whole life was unravelling."

Marc was voted out as Sarah was on her way home and had left her a voicemail, saying: "I'm really sorry, mate." Sarah said: "I couldn't believe he called me 'mate'. He's never called me that. That said a lot." Marc flew into Heathrow at 5pm yesterday and said: "I just want to see my mum."

Later he called Sarah to say he was staying with a friend. Incredibly, in the background was Cerys's voice. He was playing her hit single Road Rage, which goes: "It's all over the front page, you give me road rage."

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[faceless]

YANKS.. BUT NO FRANKS
Kevin O'Sullivan
25/11/2007

Oh man... what a week! While jungle rat Marc Bannerman dramatically broke his girlfriend's heart, loathsome Lynne Franks slithered into the record books as the worst human being in the history of the world. Where's old Jimmy Savile when you need him? Dear Jim, can you fix it for me never to set eyes on Franks-enstein ever again? A bulging ball of seething selfobsession, this nauseating New Age Pensioner waged a hatefilled war against everything and everybody.

"What am I doing here?" sobbed Mrs Depresso after yet another row with cookie boy John Burton Race - just one of her vast array of sworn enemies. Good question. Thank Christ she's gone! Boasting of how she let soccer sexist Rodney Marsh beat her in the Bush Battle (liar!), Fatso Franks was a joysucking plank of dead wood who cast a little ray of thunder wherever she went.

Ying yang yong... ommmm. Don't you just love lardbucket Lynne's teenage-style suburban spiritualism? No, me neither. Oh man (again)... give me fantastic Janice Dickinson any day! The crazy superannuated supermodel may well be the funniest I'm A Celeb contestant ever. Why are Americans always the best?

Back to the action. And, my God Mr Bannerman - what have you done? When this remarkably insensitive Albert Square reject came stumbling out of the jungle it was the gripping moment reality TV got real. The genuine distress of bozo - Bannerman's lover Sarah Matravers did not make for comfortable viewing. Is it healthy for us to be captivated by the humiliation of an anguished young woman? No. But sod it!

Live from Down Under, the epic Marc-gate scandal beamed an astonishingly compelling emotional drama straight into more than seven million British living rooms. Only during his achingly awkward eviction interview with a subdued Ant and Dec did this idiotic man begin to understand the gravity of his crimes. "Sh*t," he cried, as Dec revealed that sobbing Sarah had flown home after 48 traumatic hours in Australia confirmed her cheating boyfriend's treachery. "I'm in big trouble aren't I?" Of course you are - you prat.

Back in the camp, his bit-on-the-side Cerys Matthews worried about being painted as the scarlet woman. She knew Marc was spoken for - but didn't exactly fight him off. Fumbling for the right lies, Bannerman staged a last-minute rearguard action and insisted he never meant to hurt anyone. Tell that to poor abandoned Sarah, whose moving, beautifully-worded piece to camera was delivered with stoic dignity. As she spoke of suffering extreme pain "while the man I love disrespected me and our two-and-a-half-year relationship in front of the nation for a woman he has known for a week" the phone lines were still open.And Bannerman was hurtling towards well-deserved oblivion.

Other news - dizzy Dickinson is still the star of the show. Queen of the jungle Biggins continues his 24/7 laughathon on a round-the-clock basis. Nice-but-dim Gemma Atkinson had firmly established she IS just a pretty face. And there's never a dull moment at the evictions as the increasingly cantankerous campers drop like those fornicating flies. Who knows what tomorrow might bring?

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I'm not sure where this idiot gets the idea that 'americans are the best' from at all. If the whole show was full of loud mouth surgically-enhanced ratbags like Janice I think he might have a different attitude!

[faceless]

It was all ab fab - and then she hit the jungle
By William Langley
25/11/2007

It has been a tough week in the jungle, and the strains showed in the craving for food, the longing for sleep, and Lynne Franks's need for a PR consultant. Never in the seven-year history of I'm a Celebrity… Get Me Out of Here! has one competitor annoyed, baffled and distracted so many viewers.

Everything had looked so promising when Ms Franks, 59, arrived in the camp, vowing to scatter it with "the wisdom of the older woman". Here, among a dispiriting collection of nobodies, was a woman of real standing; one who had built Britain's most innovative public relations business, rubbed shoulders with everybody who matters, and, in a sense, changed the nature of fame.

Her motives appeared to be of the highest order, too. "I am taking part because I want to know whether we can live in co-operation, men and women in a small community," she declared. Now we have the answer. They can't. At least not with Lynne around. The only scattering being done last week was by her campmates whenever they caught sight of her.
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The complaints had poured in. "Idle", "bonkers", "embarrassing", "a megalomaniac". Millions struggled to make sense of her cod-mystical "conversations with the universe", and looked on aghast as Lynne squeezed her substantial form into a thong for late night karmic dancing sessions. All of which raised the question of how a woman so skilled in the art of communication could communicate herself so badly. When she was resoundingly voted out on Friday night, the jungle seemed suddenly a less perilous place.

"Everybody in the business has been agog, and trying to work out what she was up to," says Claire Murphy, deputy editor of PR Week magazine. "In real life, Lynne's such a savvy woman it's hard to believe that she'd have done any of this if it wasn't deliberate, and carefully thought out. There's got to be a good reason for it. People were very excited when they heard she was going on the show, but it may be that she's been playing - perhaps overplaying - to her image."

The image is a necessarily complex one, fashioned over almost four eventful decades of what Ms Franks herself has called "hope, hype and hysteria". The daughter of a north London Jewish butcher, she left school at 16, landed a secretarial job at Petticoat, a weekly magazine for teenaged girls (where she met, and was powerfully influenced by, Janet Street Porter), and founded her own company, Lynne Franks PR, when she was 21, with the then barely-known designer Katharine Hamnett as her first client.

In those days, before the dark art of spinning insinuated itself into everyday life, PR was a quiet, almost respectable profession sandwiched somewhere between advertising and journalism. Lynne approached it in a way that had never been done before - creating constant buzz and exposure for her clients — and through the high-energy promotion of events such as London Fashion Week, turned herself into a "brand" in her own right. "If you want to launch a new cake," she would say, "give it away free to a children's hospital." By the 1980s even the Labour Party, wallowing in decline, turned to her for help.

Not that she was anyone's idea of a conventional boss. The writer and TV presenter Lowri Turner, who once worked for her, remembers Buddhist chanting sessions, yoga in the office, and macrobiotic lunches of brown rice and vegetables. "Lynne was one of the first people to get into feng shui," says Lowri. "When the company moved to west London, Lynne decided that the energy from a nearby canal was very negative, so she had a woman flown in at great expense from the Far East to sort it out."

Another former employee recalls: "One night we all had to go to a Native American rebirth session - 30 adults running round the room making Red Indian war whoops. My mum thought I was in a cult and wanted me out of there. Absolutely hilarious!"

Absolutely! The word has attached itself to Lynne ever since she claimed to be the inspiration for the character of Edina Monsoon, the champagne-swilling New Age PR guru, played by Jennifer Saunders in the TV comedy series Absolutely Fabulous. The two women, once friends, have never agreed on Edina's true provenance, although Ms Saunders recently admitted that when she met Lynne for the first time: "I turned up, and she said, 'I've been chanting for a parking space for you, darling'."

The good times ended abruptly in 1992, when Lynne's 20-year marriage to fashion designer Paul Howie, which produced two children, Joshua, now 31, and Jessica, 29, broke up following his affair with Chrissie Walsh, a London swimwear designer. Lynne later told a newspaper: "Early on in our marriage, Paul started having affairs with women in our social circle. I was oblivious because I was working to the point of burnout. Only when he went off with his friend's girlfriend did I learn the extent of his betrayal."

In the disillusionment that followed, she sold her business - for a reported £6 million - renounced Buddhism, abandoned London, and took herself off to the US, where she embarked on a lengthy voyage of spiritual and sexual awakening. "I knew it was a matter of life or death for me to get out," she wrote in her biography, "before I burnt on some kind of PR funeral pyre."

She was single and wealthy and it was time to indulge in some serious flakiness. Lynne had herself massaged naked on a stone slab in California, laid urine circles around herself on a hillside to keep wild beasts away, and sat meditating beneath a cactus in a desert. Declaring that she had been sexually liberated, she embarked on affairs with a New Age poet, a Rastafarian steel drummer and a fire-eater. Even her old friend Janet Street Porter concluded: "Lynne has lost her way."

It was hardly surprising. Her guide, for most of this time, was Tom Blakeslee, a thrice-divorced Californian self-help writer and pop-psychologist whose favoured technique of "attitude jogging" involves deliberately doing things that we would not normally consider it sensible to do.

Such as… appearing on a reality TV show? Before her eviction, the bookmakers were offering odds of 40-1 against Lynne winning the competition - longer even than on the motor-mouthed ex-supermodel Janice Dickinson - and even those who admire her professional achievements can understand why. The exhortations to meditation, loop-de-loo sermonising and exhausting Mother Earthiness - all offered up without any obvious sense of humour or self-deprecation - would test the patience of any audience.

She remained unperturbed. "When I was asked to take part I thought about it deeply, and I thought it was an amazing challenge for me on a personal level - to come up to my 60th birthday and do something like this, and be able to put into practice the things that I teach. I'm just a normal woman really."

Why else would she have done it? There have been suggestions that Lynne needed the money after 15 years away from the top of her profession. Some suspect she was using the show to publicise Seed, her pet project for empowering businesswomen, of which she says: "It is now time for the feminine principles of co-operation, nurturing and compassion to become embedded into a society that must turn away from greed, war and corruption towards community and a peaceful, sustainable future for all."

Or it may simply be that the jungle was the last place where Lynne could be herself.

Absolutely, if not fabulously.

[pirtybirdy]

I've finally caught up and watched all of these episodes over the 4 day holiday weekend, and ............I still cannot stand Janice and I want to ring her neck. I can understand people being annoyed with Lynne Franks with her hippy zen crap, but I think I can far tolerate that than to hear Janice's shrill voice. I just know I'd be banged up for assault and tossed off the show within days. All and all, I sure love the bickering, 'cause that's what keeps me entertained and watchin'....LOL!! Thanks for capping this Face.

[pirtybirdy]

Hidden: 

I just watched tonight's episode(sunday), and I haven't laughed so hard in a long time when watching that rat sitting on Biggins while looking for a cozy place to bed for the night! LOL!! He even had placed his hand on it at one point....LOL!! I thought for sure the rat would move and the jig would be up! That was quite entertaining! LOL!!

[faceless]

haha yeah, that was excellent - I really burst out laughing when he finally clicked

[maycm]

Me too - very funny indeed. I thought he was going to give the bloody thing a cuddle.

[maycm]

So - the final three, and two out of the the three were easily predicted, and the last one was a tossup between the bottom two.

I reckon its going to be a close run thing between the two main contenders.

Looking forward to tomorrow.

[faceless]

I actually felt a bit sorry for Cerys as she clearly thought that Marc would be there to meet her. The big coward didn't have the balls to turn up...

I think it has to be Biggins for the win. I was round at my pal's last night and she swears blind that loads of women love Janice - I told her I thought most women had better taste! haha

[maycm]

Well - its over.

Hidden: 

I'm pleased that Biggins won, though I thought Janice stood a great chance - she was a good sport all the way through. On the whole enormous fun.

...and a final HUGE THANK YOU to the Face, for sheer dedication to the cause in capping this night after night and once more being the fastest uploader on the net. Cheers buddy.

[faceless]

glad you enjoyed it - I did too.

[faceless]

[faceless]

Um a celub... git me owt
Kevin O'Sullivan
02/12/2007

I'm thrilled to anownse the amaising new Janice Dickinson/Jason "J" Brown spel chek system has bean sucsesfly instawled into my computar - and it's fyring on orll sillinders. I am also delighted that Gemma Atkinson's marvellous Maths Made Easy Kit has helped me to understand that 47 minus 20 isn't necessarily 27. As genius Gemma showed us - it can be 17. All you need is to be scarily thick.

"I wasn't any good at maths at school," said the gormless glamour girl, unnecessarily. Actually, it was quite a revelation that she even went to school. "Huh, eh, ee, ggg, huh, tuh," stuttered Ms Superbrain while taking about three painful minutes to pluckily tackle the complex intricacy of the word HEIGHT. "I can do it if I make the noises," she announced triumphantly. Gemma dear - you're twenty bloody three!

But enough of the losers. And well done Biggins! After fearlessly feasting on a lovely last supper of kangaroo's genitals, queen of the jungle Chris romped to a very well-deserved victory. Chomping on the manhood of a marsupial, the campest camper in the camp chuckled: "I've had worse things in my mouth." Somehow, I don't doubt it.

For three hysterical weeks this loveable old Panto Dame laughed and laughed - and, after years of laughing AT him, millions of viewers laughed with him. Only when they announced he had won did Biggins burst into tears. "Oh the things one did!" he cried, relief written all over his thinning face.

But Biggins was pushed all the way by his mesmerisingly mad rival Janice, whose dazzling final display of bravery with a few thousand writhing cockroaches ensured she will be remembered as one of the all-time I'm A Celebrity greats. She can't spell for sh*t either.

At the ripe old age of 53, Einstein Dickinson gamely took on the word "pretentious". And, for a while, it was going brilliantly well. "P-R-E-T-E-N..." she began. Go on Janice - only a few letters to go. "...C-H-I-S-C-H." So close!

But, oh man - this crazy American's extraordinary antics helped turn this into TV's best ever reality treat. Cuddling up to little Dec, fantastic Janice compared him favourably to one of her long list of special male friends. "He's taller than Mick Jagger," squawked the superannuated supermodel. So Mick's 4ft 8?

Meanwhile, although love rat Marc Bannerman didn't return to Australia to greet his beloved what's-her-name, I can exclusively reveal he did write his jungle sweetheart Cerys Matthews another of his beautifully composed love notes. "Dear Thingy, You think I'm going to be waiting for you? Keep dreaming Welsh bird. You are doing incredible. There are many problems in London and I've got so much to sort out I can't be arsed with you any more. So I won't be there - even if it is your wish. Yours as never, Marc."

Back to the action and why was third-placed Jason "J" Nobody still there at the end? "I've got a good command of the English language," boasted the boy band relic. "It's one of my favourite things on the planet." He then delivered a moronic masterclass in how not to spell. J's illiterate. Or, as he put it, "iliterate".

[Kezza]

Face -- just wanted to give you a huge THANK YOU for providing this series for us -- it was most enjoyable!! You ROCK!!!!

[Lostinthestates]