BACK to Tuesday night in the jungle, and Carol Vorderman whispers to Scarlett Moffatt that she fancies comedian Joel Dommett.

So the Gogglebox star legs it to the bush telegraph and exclaims: “It’s getting exciting in the jungle now!”

About time too. We’ve had nearly three weeks of almost nothing happening and only the most minor of ructions (Larry Lamb mildly peeved with Homes Under The Hammer’s Martin Roberts).

So I will take “exciting” gladly, especially as romance always creates a great reality show.

But, alas, no. A false dawn.

Carol was merely playing out her secret mission, set by Kiosk Keith, to spread the rumour among camp.

And that’s when I had an epiphany.

The letters from home. The task where they had to line-up in the correct order. The secret missions.

It all makes sense — the bushtucker trials and Ant & Dec’s brilliance are nothing but devices to distract us from realising I’m a Celeb has become little more than outdoors Celebrity Big Brother.

Of course, there’s a fundamental difference between CBB and this current series.

Ola Jordan put it best in her exit interview: “Everyone is really nice, a nice bunch of people together, we all really get on really nice.”

Nice, nice, nice. Only “nice” is not a TV show. It’s a human resources team-building day.

Not that the success of I’m A Celeb hinges on conflict. It doesn’t.

The best jungle series are the ones with the greatest characters.

Aside from Scarlett’s musings and Emmerdale actor Adam Thomas’s bushtucker trial Haka impressions when faced with spiders (“Wah! Fooargh! Farrgh. Ohh a-sah! Argh! Argh! Daw-DAH! WAH-BAH!”) none of them can hold a candle to Lady C or David Van Day.

That’s what this series is missing most of all.

Apart from Danny Baker and Scarlett, everyone felt like a second-choice booking.

Unfortunately the producers only exacerbated the situation.

The only time you hear the show’s title being yelled is by Ant & Dec after the ad breaks — no one has quit mid-trial.

And yet, faced with full bellies all round, ITV still ploughed ahead with the scheduled night-time tasks and rewarded them with even more food on completing them.

You can trace many of the problems back to day one when the celebrities, against recent tradition, weren’t split into two warring factions.

If they had been, they would have been instantly tribal to their half of camp.

The trouble is, they actually are tribal, but their tribe is the entire group.

Martin alone tried rocking the boat, only to be ignored then assimilated, like The Borg from Star Trek: The Next Generation, creating an entertainment vacuum.

We even ended up having to watch the same trials twice, back to back, by two halves of the group.

Nevertheless, Ant & Dec have been trying desperately to convince us everyone getting along equals a great series.

But Dec himself was closer to the truth on Monday after campmates won maximum meals, yet again, in the Hot Scare Balloon trial: “They’re having too nice a time.”

Waaaay too nice a time. Nice, nice, nice.