There are only so many ways to cover a human body in rats, only so many excuses to fill nauseous faces with live insects. I faced the first truly horrific challenge on the show, when I had to bolt down a live witchetty grub... and there are not many worse trials that Ant and Dec could inflict. How do they make that more exciting? Serve up two witchetty grubs? Or ten? It’s clear that the show’s lawyers won’t tolerate the kind of language John Lydon used, or allow Jordan’s dubious sexual boasts to be aired. And it turns out that even the most exhibitionist celebs are reluctant to commit sex acts on camera.

So, how can television find new ways to shock us? The answer is to make the human dramas ever more intense, to ramp up the tension and the ratings by stripping contestants down to their emotional cores.

Since my own jungle ordeal I have been working on a novel about Reality TV. The central concept is plausible and shocking. My nightmare is this: bored with offering million-dollar prizes and recording contracts, one day soon the makers of Reality TV will offer the ultimate prize... a human baby. My story imagines five childless couples, each of them desperate to adopt, and makes them fight out their obsession on live TV for three weeks while the public votes to decide which couple will take the baby home.

There’s one fantasy that I pray will never become a reality.