I have long been an admirer of Danny Baker, admittedly he has (by his own admission) done some pretty low-rent television shows over the years yet he retains his credibility. He is one of the best radio presenters this country has, yet he is woefully underused by the medium, having been booted off his afternoon show on BBC London and reduced to the Saturday morning shift on Five Live. I say 'reduced', it is a weekly masterclass in how to do radio. On the subject of masterclass, he also re-wrote the rules on how to behave on your last day at work in a legendary broadcast in 2012.
As a storyteller he is up there with Kenneth Williams or Peter Ustinov and would have been a wonderful asset to the old LWT An Audience With... format, you can hear his voice in your head when reading his two volumes of memoir and can picture him not changing his delivery whether on stage or down the pub. A running theme in his anecdotal outpourings is money, or rather lack of it. As soon as he carries out a job of work, be it a documentary or a voice over, he apparently spends the money on making sure he and his family enjoy themselves. This is on the surface a perfect philosophy; make it, spend it, make some more. What could possibly go wrong? There aren't many people who have this confidence in the ability to throw caution to the wind with regards the bills landing on the doormat when there's a party to be held.
When Danny Baker was diagnosed with cancer in 2010 he borrowed a large sum of money from Chris Evans to tide him over, which he mentioned on Desert Island Discs with the postscript that he had paid it back. He's probably made a dent in the bunce he received for his two books and the adaptation Cradle to Grave and three hours of radio isn't going to keep the wolf from the door. I suppose that the promise of a good payday was the incentive for lowering himself (as much as the presenter of Pets Win Prizes can lower himself) by agreeing to appear as a contestant on I'm A Celebrity. I didn't even know that this was still going and while I won't be swayed by Baker enough to start watching, I am sure there will be the odd clip circulated on social media to see how he is getting on. I'm sure he will be popular with the fellow contestants but I can't see a mainstream ITV audience even knowing who he is.
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