They force contestants to undertake Bushtucker Trials in the jungle such as eating kangaroo anus or retrieving meal stars surrounded by snakes, spiders and creepy-crawlies.
But I’m A Celebrity hosts Ant and Dec are resorting to a very different sort of trial off screen.
I can reveal that the television presenters have launched a major High Court action apparently aimed at recovering missing artworks.
Court papers show that Anthony McPartlin and Declan Donnelly want to trace ‘assets’ linked to their personal and joint art collections.
The legal move seeks to obtain court-ordered disclosure of documents and information from a top art dealer trading Banksy works.
Documents show the pair have filed a Part 8 claim in the Business and Property Courts. It names Andrew Lilley and Lilley Fine Art Ltd as defendants.
Rather than a conventional damages claim, the presenters are seeking an order under the court’s Norwich Pharmacal and Bankers Trust jurisdictions, specialist remedies which can force a party to disclose information and documents in order to identify alleged wrongdoers or trace assets.
The claim adds that the presenters believe they are ‘entitled to legal remedy’.
Anthony McPartlin and Declan Donnelly have launched a major High Court action over artwork
Setting out the basis for the Norwich Pharmacal application, the form states there is ‘a good arguable case that there has been wrongdoing’ and that ‘the applicants need the order to take action against the wrongdoers’.
It says the defendants are alleged to have been ‘mixed up in the wrongdoing’ and that they are ‘likely to have relevant documents and/or information’.
The claim also states that granting an order is ‘necessary and proportionate’.
The presenters say there are ‘good grounds to conclude that the money or assets in respect of which information is sought belongs to the claimants’, and that there’s ‘a real prospect that the information sought will lead to the location or preservation of the assets in question’.
The claim continues: ‘The claimants seek an order that is, so far as possible, directed at uncovering the particular assets which are to be traced.’
McPartlin and Donnelly have previously been linked to the contemporary art market as Banksy collectors, with reports suggesting the pair bought work by the elusive street artist after attending an exhibition in 2009, with one report putting the spend at around £1million.
The dealer named in the claim, Andrew Lilley, has also been described as a specialist in sourcing rare pieces, including Banksy and Andy Warhol, with his firm promoting itself online as an ‘Original Banksy Art Dealer’.
Why Ricky finds fans tricky
He’s won seven Baftas, is thought to be worth £130million, and collected his fifth Golden Globe Award this week.
And yet comedian Ricky Gervais still feels far from all-powerful. ‘When someone asks me for my autograph, I’m nervous,’ admits the creator of hit TV shows including The Office and After Life.
‘I think, ‘I’m going to say the wrong thing here. I’m going to ruin the photo that they’re going to put on eBay for £200. I must spell my name right.’ That’s when I’m nervous. People don’t realise the anxiety you get when something is for ever.’
Chris and Camilla keep Strictly vibe alive
Robshaw, 39, accompanied by his wife, Camilla Kerslake, says his dancing days aren’t over yet
Chris Robshaw, who was the first name on an England rugby team sheet for many years, is having to cope with rejection from the Strictly Come Dancing Live tour.
Waltzing round the country for 30 dates, the tour begins in Birmingham next week.
‘I wasn’t selected unfortunately,’ the former England captain tells me at the OVO by Cirque Du Soleil premiere, at the Royal Albert Hall. ‘I was too far down the pecking order, which is a shame, as it would have been great fun. So it’s back to the rugby world and maybe I’ll dance in the corporate rooms with a glass of champagne.’
Robshaw, 39, who was accompanied by his wife, classical singer Camilla Kerslake, says his dancing days aren’t over just yet. He’s been keeping his Strictly moves alive at home with their one-year-old son, Hunter. ‘We dance with our little boy because he also likes dancing. Pretty much all the music I danced to on the show he loves, so we always have it on.’
Having wrongly claimed that she had a PhD – which still appears in her Who’s Who entry – Dame Ann Limb has been getting other aspects of her professional life in order.
The dame, 72, who, as I revealed yesterday, has left the Athenaeum Club, is no longer a trustee of the King’s charity.
She resigned as chairman last month – shortly before it emerged that her PhD was fiction. But that ‘PhD’ wasn’t why she left the King’s Foundation. ‘It was because Keir Starmer had nominated her for a peerage,’ I’m told.
Injured Abbey nails a £450,000 payday
Abbey Clancy was rushed to hospital and put on a drip after breaking a nail in a freak accident
Abbey Clancy, who was rushed to hospital and put on a drip after breaking a nail in a freak accident during a New Year’s holiday in Dubai, has received some cheering news back home.
The model and podcaster (left), who’s married to former England footballer Peter Crouch, made a cool £450,000 last year, increasing her personal fortune to more than £1.4million. Her business, Abigail Marie Clancy Ltd, has just filed accounts which show that her brand just keeps growing and growing as she hit 40 earlier this month.
The business, which channels her modelling, sponsorship and podcast earnings, saw assets rocket to £1.67million and only a whopping £235,000 owed to the taxman dragged it down slightly.
Baby Spice’s bad run-in with Jacko…
What would you have done if you had bumped into king of pop Michael Jackson? Run away, if you’re ‘Baby Spice’ Emma Bunton.
‘We were in a hotel in Germany and he was in the same hotel,’ recalls TV presenter Louie Spence, who was a dancer on the Spice Girls’ world tour. ‘He was sort of approaching, he had a mask on, she didn’t like the look of it and so we run. We run away from Michael Jackson because he was masked up.’
Both of Westminster’s Speakers have jetted off to Delhi for a junket of Commonwealth Speakers. The House of Commons’ Sir Lindsay ‘Long Haul’ Hoyle is an old hand at such shindigs.
For Lord Speaker Lord McFall, this jaunt is arguably beyond the call of duty. He is stepping down next month. The former Labour MP and Dumbarton schoolmaster plainly felt it would be unreasonable to expect his successor, Lord Forsyth, to face such arduous freeloading.
