Some of them may have done it because they weren't really famous anyway. On first reading, the publicity description of "top-secret celebrities" seemed nonsensical. But they actually managed to pull it off. They found a set of celebrities you could bump into on the street and never recognise. For those nearly-famous people, Celebrities Go Wild carried the hope that being seen to have . . . as the superb RTE press release put it . . . the "stamina and iron will" to do "taxing tasks" while surviving "hissy fits and freakouts" might turn them into household names. Sorry, lads. Slowly plucking a chicken on camera is not the way to lasting fame.

Some of them may have done it for the craic. Let's face it, the "taxing tasks" were activities many tourists pay to do: ride bikes, go bungee-jumping and swinging between two outcroppings of land wearing more safety harnesses than the average baby trussed into a car seat. Throw in a bit of mud and the prospect of being loved by a chosen charity and it must have looked like a fun midterm break.

Some of them . . . like model Katy French who got bounced once she'd fulfilled her purpose by being seen in a wet swimsuit . . . already personify how TV has erased the distinction between fame and infamy. Just as Edmund Hillery climbed Everest because it was there, the photo-op famous get involved in reality TV shows simply because they're there. If you're (nearly) famous for being famous, slowmotion chicken plucking is as good a way as any to stay (nearly) famous.

And then there's the reinvention thing.

The possibility of a career boost through introducing yourself to a whole new audience. Other than pure altruism, that has to be the only reason Tony Kenny, who performed in the White House when Bill Clinton was president, would goodhumouredly submit himself to chickenplucking and a cappella singing in the dark, surrounded by people he's never heard of.

Whatever cunning plan motivated the participants was rendered null and void by two factors. The first is health and safety. The second is niceness. Apply health and safety regulations to a programme like this and you get danger that isn't danger and that sure as hell isn't entertaining, either. Apply niceness (which the participants had in abundance) and you eliminate temper tantrums, mutual recriminations, hissy fits and screamfests. The end result is televised occupational therapy for the terminally pleasant with mud and feathers thrown in.

Not only was there no shame in being eliminated, but the audience was kind of glad for the escapees. Who . . . themselves . . . seemed pretty cheery about expulsion:

when one of the presenters asked former Eurovision singer Mickey Joe Harte if being dismissed was tough, he didn't quite say he was delirah to be going home to a chicken that came pre-plucked, but he didn't seem to be going through much of a grieving process. He probably figured he had gained a little of what the marketing people call TOMA (Top Of the Mind Association). Ergo a few more gigs.

Plus the money for the charity. Not to mention getting out early. For him, it was win-win. For the presenter, who must have hoped for a bitter and twisted outburst, it was lose-lose.

Throughout the programme, like a minor-key theme in background music, was the presence of Michelle de Bruin.

Now, her personal motivation and how it relates to her career planning is a serious mind-boggler.

Here, after all, is a woman who has already reinvented herself. She retreated from her own fame, achieved anonymity in a small country, studied law, did well and produced what has been described as an authoritative book on some abstruse legal issue. And then apparently did a U-turn back to high-profile media territory.

How a future in the legal profession would be helped by deliberately understated involvement in a programme carrying constant references to her earlier fame is difficult to imagine. If she wants to present television programmes (as opposed to earn a living practicing law), then the quiet self-effacement of her performance is even more puzzling.

She was unassuming and obliging.

Which, fed into the prevailing niceness, meant nobody around the campfire was ever going to say, 'Alright, Michelle, now we've bonded over bungee jumps and lethargic chicken-plucking, how about you tell us the truth about that drug test with the sherry glass full of whiskey?'

The nearest we got to self-revelation was a wistful shot of her on her own in the dark. Churchill's description of "a riddle wrapped in mystery inside an enigma" applies.

To Michelle. And to her purpose in joining the programme.