The Towie star goes it alone on ITVBe – but the whole thing’s weirdly lacking in authenticity
What is Gemma Collins doing this week? A good question. In order: crying, buying a house, crying, shouting, making men do small menial tasks for her, calling her psychic, deciding not to buy a house on her psychic’s advice, eating a burger as a religious experience, getting a wax, and throwing James Argent’s underwear beneath the path of an executive car. She is, if nothing else, active.
Gemma Collins performed a mind trick on us all a couple of years ago, and none of us have quite caught up to it yet. The early part of her career revealed a self-aware jester: Towie’s pastiche of a bombastic blonde; the three-day I’m a Celebrity … stint in which she cried out clots of mascara in an escaping helicopter; bruising her body green from a height of 10 metres on ITV’s Splash!; falling face-to-the-ice alongside partner Matt Evers on Dancing on Ice.