I see your permanently squinting face, always filming with your face to the sun, so close to the camera you could lick vital nutrients off the lens if you needed to. I see you hacking through jungles, abseiling down cliffs, huddled into a ball around hastily-assembled campfires. This is your world, isn’t it, Bear Grylls? You’ll grill poisonous caterpillars and squeeze them into your throat before getting a case of diarrhoea so severe that you leave your underpants looking like Jackson Pollock sneezed with a mouthful of gravy. What’s more you’ll do it with a big, literally shit-eating grin, for the savageries of the wilderness are but toys for your playground. There’s no challenge great enough, no disgusting technique you won’t try. You’ll wring the water from an elephant turd into your mouth like it’s a delicious dishcloth. You’ll snap a toucan’s beak off to use it as a cup for your own piss. You’ll spend a week alone with Gareth Southgate and not die of boredom.

You’ve done it all, Bear Grylls. You’ve survived the Catskills Mountains, the Panama jungle, the Nevada desert. You’ve contemplated glaciers with Barack Obama and sniffed a rabbit corpse with Zac Efron. Worst of all, you endured a week alone in Wales with Mel B. Through it all, you’ve never lost sight of the greater good, doing what needs to be done to put Roxanne Pallett on a deserted island far away from people for as long as humanly possible. You’re a true explorer, Bear Grylls, testing your body and your wits against the harshest of situations.

Your next challenge will be the greatest of them all, won’t it?

I see you, Bear Grylls, your hand on the tiller of the tiny motorboat. I see the sunlight sparkling off the waves, your passenger contemplating the impossibly blue sky above. I see her dancing, an awkward little jig all to herself, her long limbs windmilling around her like a three-toed sloth buzzed off its tits at Woodstock. You don’t much rate her chances, but she insisted she knows all about hostile environments and she’s got a message to deliver.

I see the island looming in the distance, the tightly packed trees hiding its centre. I see the waves crashing against the shore, a single tiny figure on the beach standing up in alarm and fleeing to the tree line before vanishing into the undergrowth. I see you scan the coast, Bear Grylls, the hairs on the back of your neck standing up. Even you haven’t come here, wary as you are of the fearsome reputation of the locals. Yet still she insisted, didn’t she? Some messages just have to be heard, regardless of how unwelcome they may be or how impossible they may prove to deliver.

I see her step off the boat, dancing her way into the trees, her head bobbing up and down like a little grey cork on the ill-fitting ocean of her carefully pressed dress suit. I see the prints of her patterned heels in the sand, like the tracks of some great unwanted heron.

I see the sun wheel slowly across the sky, Bear Grylls, and I see you nervously check your watch. I see your arms folded across your chest, your fingers tapping. I hear your watch ticking away the hours, the ocean murmuring around you.

I see the forest erupt, Bear Grylls, the sky darkened by a fleeing cacophony of tropical birds. I see you leap to your feet, your face filled with panic as you rip frantically at the engine cord. I hear the motor guttering into life as the forest bursts into a deep roar of braying and honking, hundreds of voices jeering their dissent, the occasional “hear hear” drowned in the flood. This is what you feared, isn’t it? No-one’s been even slightly in touch with the Parliamentarians for months, her least of all. On top of that she’s arrived with a fantasy, a message so piss-weak it has no hope of getting through.

I see her stagger out on to the beach, Bear Grylls, dozens of poison pens sticking out of her back. I see her reach for you, her eyes glazed, her gait uneasy. I see the eyes in the darkness behind her, the shocks of blond hair, the horn-rimmed glasses above bared teeth and licked lips.

I hear the engine roar as the boat cuts through the surf, Bear Grylls, pens splashing into the sea around you as you flee. On the beach, I see the diminishing figure fall to her knees, still waving her meaningless letter above her head.

You should never have come here, Bear Grylls. It’s not for you.

I see you, Bear Grylls. I fucking see you.

I See You

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