He’s the same! He’s the same! Noel Edmonds is the same! Even if he wasn’t quite your cup of tea back in the day, I promise you’ll be happy to see him. Fixed points in a universe changing unstoppably for the worse have that effect on you.
Edmonds bestrode the world of 80s and 90s light entertainment like a Tiggerish colossus, presenting everything from Top of the Pops to Multi-Coloured Swap Shop to Telly Addicts – oh, how well I remember watching the latter as a woman proposed to her boyfriend and how beautifully Noel covered the deafening silence where the horrified man’s acceptance was supposed to go – to Noel’s House Party (let us hope Mr Blobby is ageing as well as his mentor), and more, including his last big hit Deal Or No Deal. He became a bit of a laughing stock when he tried to share with the world his discovery, via his reflexologist, of cosmic ordering (an iteration of positive thinking woowoo) but never – I think at this point uniquely among his peers – coming a vilely scandalous cropper at any stage.
He was last seen on our screens being voted off 2018’s I’m a Celebrity … Get Me Out of Here. After that, he used some of the money restored to him after he won a huge case against bankers who had deliberately bankrupted his company group to buy an 800-acre estate in New Zealand and relocate there with his wife (“my earth angel”) Liz. Noel Edmonds’ Kiwi Adventure marks his return to television and chronicles their life running what he hopes will become a popular retreat, complete with vineyard, watering hole the Bugger Inn, spectacularly good views and spectacularly bad puns.
“I am rocking!” he says, and is eager to share with us the secrets of his youthful mien; “tranquil power” workouts in the gym, crystal healing (vibrations at 5-8Hz, obviously, or it doesn’t work), structural water (post-electromagnetised, in case you are not au fait), twice weekly stints in a hyperbaric chamber, and a big statue in the garden that watches over him. “All we are is body energy systems,” he … is “explains” the word? “They touch everything around us. Which is how you move into the bigger matrix, the universal energy system.” You know what? I loved Noel’s House Party. And nothing has ever made me cry happier tears than Noel’s Christmas Presents, perfectly-pitched every year on the side of “warm glow” rather than “mawkish sentiment”. He’s earned this.
He remains unassailably himself – emotional, childlike, open (the curiosity/credulousness that lets you embrace cosmic ordering is also what allows you to connect with people and find something interesting about them all), confident and professional. The last isn’t an add-on but a part of what made him great. As he puts it at one point, he worked hard and took it seriously. He has an old-school respect for his audience and isn’t about to let them down. To watch him now is to be reminded how much contempt there is threaded through our entertainment, our culture now and what we have been reconditioned to accept as the norm. He also remains unafraid of the long march towards a terrible joke, as attested by the scene in which he lowers himself into a cold plunge bath. “It should have been three degrees! Because when will I see them – Mr Happy and the twins! – again?”
If you were anything other than a wholly committed hater of the man before, you will follow him just as willingly as you did decades ago, this time through bad Kiwi weather instead of ill-fated proposals, money troubles instead of swaps, and chaos caused by tabloids instead of Mr Blobby (though we are promised a visit from the latter).
When the estate reopens for the season, a local customer is asked for his opinion on the new landlord. “Seems like a good bugger,” he replies. So he does, so he does.
Noel Edmonds’ Kiwi Adventure airs on ITV1 on 20 June and ITVX.