The Fall's Mark E Smith has revealed that he turned down the chance to appear on 'I'm A Celebrity'.
Leading The Fall through countless line up changes and numerous artistic shifts, Mark E Smith is one of the definitive post-punk frontmen. Lyrically obtuse, his barbed wit and furious anger are the stuff of legend.
Frequently battling his own group onstage, Mark E Smith once tried to stub out a burning cigarette on the face of a journalist. Always unpredictable, it seems that ITV once viewed the singer as perfect reality TV fodder.
In a recent interview with The Quietus the frontman explained that the makers of 'I'm A Celebrity... Get Me Out Of Here' approached him to appear on the show.
"I was asked years ago when Johnny Lydon was on it" he explained. "I was doing this daft pilot show which was something to do with James Brown (Loaded publisher). The set up was that there were six people in these dentists chairs and each one had a TV remote controller".
"You just had to press random buttons and TV from abroad would come on... y'know, like soap operas from Africa and shit like that. We were supposed to comment on them. And the other five were fine. They seemed to know the names of African soap operas. It was a bit phoney. I just couldn't work the fucking TV controller. So I just had a picture of a butterfly on my screen".
"But anyway, halfway through filming the bloke from the Jungle comes in and says, 'Johnny Lydon's just left The Jungle do you want to replace him' but I said no. I don't know what the point of that story is but there you go."
Recently departing Domino Records after a one album deal, The Fall are currently working on new material. Continuing, Mark E Smith hinted at yet another stylistic shift from the post-punk icons.
"No, they're a lot heavier actually. We do this song and it's... it's like a Greek heavy metal group. We've rearranged the song and put totally different lyrics on it. It sounds really good. It's like... well, I can't describe it really."
Read the entire interview HERE.