WHAT a shame that Matthew Pinsent’s retirement came too late to allow him to take part in this year’s I’m a Celebrity . . . Get Me Out of Here! — a rare instance, perhaps, of the four-times Olympic gold medal- winner missing his stroke. He’d clean up down there in the rain forest. We’re talking candy from a baby — or, at any rate, cockroaches from Ant and Dec. When you’re used to the kind of punishingly physical, day-in, day-out regime that oarsmen sign up for, two weeks in a remote jungle clearing infested with bugs, gnats and Joe Pasquale is going to seem like a walk in the park.

Last week, the show’s famously blunt rubric required Sophie Anderton, the model and one-time squeeze of Mark Bosnich, to eat a kangaroo’s testicles — a feat of masticatory endurance for which she was greeted as a returning hero in the camp. One imagines Britain’s coxless four watching at home and honking with derision. Eating a kangaroo’s testicles is — at least metaphorically speaking — what boat crews do for a living. And I’ll tell you something else: they wouldn’t need the producers to remove them from the kangaroo for them. Talk about pampered, Anderton.

Had he thought to announce his retirement only three weeks ago, Pinsent could have been on to that show quicker than a mosquito into Janet Street- Porter’s sleeping bag. He could have re-established sport’s claim to the “King of the Jungle” title, which has shockingly fallen into abeyance since the glory of Phil Tufnell’s victory in 2002. It would have been good for sport, good for him and definitely good for the camp, which is critically short of an authoritative, can-do, alpha male figure since the eviction of Vic Reeves. Alas, the rower left it until Tuesday. “I ’ve been on Parkinson, I’ve done Desert Island Discs,” Pinsent said during his farewell press conference, broadcast with due solemnity on the 24-hour news channels. “Rowing has been the fulfilment of everything I’ve possibly imagined, and more. What’s the end result I would be going for if I carried on?”

A fair point. But I fear that Pinsent may be slightly behind the times in his assessment of what constitutes the pinnacle of achievement in this area. True, for a long time, an appearance on Parkinson was as good as it got, celebrity-wise; it bestowed an imprimatur, confirmed a status. But that was before the show became mostly a cross-promotional boosting device for television performers. Now it’s about as cool as elevator shoes. Even Ant and Dec have been on Parkinson.

Nowadays, the one that matters, surely, is I’m A Celebrity. It’s the show that says “I’ve arrived”. Yes, it may also say “I arrived so long ago that everyone has forgotten that I am here”. It may even say “I arrived so imperceptibly that nobody noticed me come in”. But it’s an arrival, whichever way you look at it.

After that in the pecking order comes Celebrity Big Brother; and then The Farm, assuming that it goes to a second series. And that’s just to name the big three. Has Pinsent done Ready, Steady, Cook? I don’t think so. The good news is that those avenues remain open to him, even without the rowing. Indeed, without the rowing, he’ll be able to devote himself to them properly. There is still a dream to chase, then. It’s just a different dream, that’s all.

Meanwhile, in the Bushtucker Trial we call football, Harry Redknapp, the former manager of Portsmouth, and Milan Mandaric, the club’s chairman, were busy calling an extraordinary press conference of their own. And Sky Sports News, never knowingly understated, was busy billing it as a “head-to-head”.

Last week, Harry decided to evict himself from the Portsmouth manager’s office, only to find his chairman going to the Bush Telegraph and seeming to hint at financial impropriety in Harry’s transfer dealings. Hence Tuesday’s air-clearing challenge, in which Mandaric had to bob for gold stars in a massive bowl of humble pie. Frankly, he looked as if he’d rather have been chewing a kangaroo’s testicles. In a prepared statement that seemed, at times, to be trying to translate itself back into Croat, he commended Harry on having done “a meharvalars jarb”.

However, he said, “it is a time, my friends, to draw a line over the soap opera”. Feel free to draw your line under it, if you prefer. The key thing seemed to be that Harry was guilty of no improper dealing, having left that kind of thing to the chief executive. “I just hope I was clear and loud,” Mandaric said, rounding off.

A vindicated Harry reconfirmed that his decision to leave his meharvalars jarb was his own by “a million per cent” — a new all-time percentage best, utterly shattering the previous record, held by Ian Botham, who once gave 150 per cent against West Indies.

Sky’s studio analysis of the body language was hugely entertaining and may even have been convincing, had we been able to see any bodies. Alas, they were tightly concealed behind a forest of microphones and bottles of mineral water. Message received, though, clear and loud. And next week on “Posthumous Press Calls”: Freddy Shepherd, of Newcastle United, admits that he was beastly to Sir Bobby Robson.

GILES SMITH RETURNS ON SATURDAY