Should these get a foothold in such an ecologically sensitive area, the outcome could be disastrous.” “My main worry, once again, is the use of non-native and potentially harmful species such as cockroach and locust. “But I’ll be dismayed if they continue to use live animals for entertainment,” he said. He is pleased that the show has upped the profile of north Wales.

The television presenter and naturalist Iolo Williams will be watching the show not for fun but to keep an eye on the animals. The town’s Pen-y-Bont Inn is stocking up on mealworms, grasshoppers and crickets to grind up and add into I’m a Celebrity … cocktails. People drop in for packets of dried insects such as honey roast crickets, to re-enact their own “bush tucker trials” as they watch the show. “I think it has brought energy to the town,” sai thed artist Pam Peters, who has created a splendid artisan fused glass rendering of Gwrych Castle for her shop window display.Īn old bank building has been turned into an I’m a Celebrity … gift shop selling souvenirs, from tea towels and fridge magnets to handmade soaps. At a time of lockdowns and firebreaks, fans lapped up the trials and tribulations that celebrities endured in and around the cold, damp surroundings of Gwrych Castle. The reality show, in which celebrities take part in gruelling challenges and are tormented by close encounters with creepy-crawlies, arrived in the town last year when Covid put its usual milieu, the Australian jungle, out of bounds. It’s been good for people’s mental health at a time when we need it and it’s even meant housing prices have increased.

“It’s been brilliant for Abergele – I reckon visitor numbers were up by 50% in the summer. “There’s always one or two critics,” said Tracey Brennan, who runs a gift shop and fruit and veg store in the town as she scraped off the offensive sign “But the vast majority of people love the show and what it is doing for the town. The Rhyl Toppers, a group of yarn bombers (street artists using colourful displays of knitted or crocheted yarn rather than paint), has lovingly crafted a woolly vision of the show’s hosts, Ant and Dec, as knights in shining armour to crown the postbox.īut, rather less artfully, someone has stuck a scrawly, sweary note on to the box suggesting the ITV show is “utter crap” and urging McPartlin and Donnelly to “go home”. The postbox just off the high street tells the tale of the contrasting reactions the arrival of the I’m a Celebrity … jamboree is provoking in the north Wales market town of Abergele.

The visitor returns horror game