“With these hungry eyes / One look at you and I can't disguise / I've got hungry eyes / I feel the magic between you and I.”
- Eric Carmen
If we didn’t know better, it’d be easy to assume Shane Cameron had travelled back in time, from modern day Fiji to the neon lights of 1987, just to write a perfect song about his true love - a pile of toasted sandwiches.
Team Mako - and Big Shane - are hurting. And hungry.
It’s been almost a week of just rice and daal. Moses Mackay is empty. Gary Freeman is starving. Matty McLean can feel himself fading away. Athena Angelou just wants a chocolate bar.
Even Barbara Kendall is begging in the mud for some cheese and crackers.
On Sunday they were famished, still without a food reward win. By Wednesday, they’re eating the furniture. Literally.
And each time we see Shane, he’s counting the days, hours, minutes since he ate a meal that wasn’t as white as rice. He’s lost the ability to speak in full sentences. Most of the time, he’s lying very still on his camp stretcher waiting for something, anything, to change.
And in the end, it’s a tiny comment from Jodie Rimmer and Team Kahu that cracks him.
Mako were oh-so-close at winning a barrel-rolling, sand bag-throwing Team Face Off Challenge on day six of Celebrity Treasure Island. A win that would have delivered them the world’s greatest toasted sandwich gift basket. Bread. Cheese. Ham. Pineapple. Bill English would be in heaven.
But those rumbling tummies were maybe too distracting for Gary, his aim failing him at the final hurdle. Eric Murray was victorious.
It was the second big food loss for Mako this week.
After proving they were the best at bouncing coconuts off trampolines (you can’t make this stuff up) Kahu won a meaty BBQ reward. And again, it was Eric who proved the key to success, before making the rookie mistake of waving a sausage in the face of his hungry oppositions.
The continuous jibes from Kahu got too much for Shane, who fired up the last of the fuel in his body, to call out the bad sportsmanship. The definition of passionate, hangry drama!
It wasn’t all good news for Kahu. Away from the foodie fights, the yellow team were having leadership - and health - dramas.
A sick Lily McManus was taken away from camp for a day with a mystery bug. The chance to rebalance the teams was dangled in front of Kahu if she didn’t recover in time and captain Sam Wallace was certainly not mad at the prospect - and may have even tried to chop up her bed for fuel.
“[I] love Lily, but let’s catch up after the show. See ya later, buddy,'' he gleefully told the camera. A bit awkward since she did, in fact, recover in time and the teams were not rebalanced.
What was rebalanced though, was Kahu’s captaincy. The women overthrew the men, actually attempting to lose a challenge for the chance to put Shannon Ryan in charge.
I can’t think why they would want to do that.
In completely unrelated content, please find Sam’s personal life thesis below:
“I think I am a fool. I like fools. Fools are my kind of people. I don’t suffer idiots. If I’ve got an idiot on my team - and I will find the idiot on my team - we’ll do our best to get rid of idiots. Suffer a fool, won’t suffer an idiot.”
It turns out no skulduggery was needed; Sam slipped in the final throes of the muddy, water bucket challenge and lost the captaincy all by himself. Remind me, is that a foolish move or an idiotic one?
Either way, Shannon now looks fabulous in that feathery captain’s neck piece (and can handle Sam’s captaincy mansplaining like a bloody champ). And winners Mako are still starving.
But there is one bright spot: Barbara Kendall’s mercy. Or the mercy card Barb won during a Captain’s Challenge, allowing one person to be saved after they have been booted off the island. Game. Changer.
But, in Barb’s World, there are no secrets - including who is worth saving.
Sorry Matty, Athena, Gary and Lana, this one is only for Moses and Shane, those strong, youthful men, and certainly not to be wasted on you weaklings*. (*definitely not weaklings, I personally do not buy into that prehistoric view of what strength is.)
But the “cult of Barbara” is growing.
After she turned down Kahu’s offer of food for simply, possibly, maybe, negotiating a clue swap without even a sideways glance at her team, Mako are not entirely happy with their current set up. There is talk of a revolt in the cult.
But competitive Barb has no time for that chat. She would prefer her teammates shrivel up, the clues yanked from their cold, dead, hungry hands rather than willingly share them and after being confronted by six angry celebs, she talks them off the ledge, pulling them into line.
Barbara Kendall has the negotiating skills of a ninja and should be used for world peace!
One person is still not happy though. Matty McLean would like to talk to the manager.
Like the sweetest, most diplomatic Lady McBeth, Matty whispers into his teammates' ears, trying to get them to realise it’s time for a change at the top.
His ambition and strategy is about to make his eyes pop out of his head but sadly, no one wants to listen to his very sensible game-playing plans. Barb stays… for now.
And it’s Rosie and Lana who are packing their bags, leaving in two very different elimination battles. Rosie lost to Shannon as they were asked to build block towers with their feet, while Lana was sent on her way after a lacklustre game of shuffleboard against Sam.
It’s the last straw for Saint Shannon, who makes Shane the happiest man in the world with a special (hopefully edible) delivery at the elimination fire pit.
Will it pave a path of goodwill? I’ve never met a sandwich that powerful, but maybe hungry Mako will see it differently.
Bridget Jones is a TVNZ publicist and former entertainment reporter.
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