There are a few moments in New Zealand’s television history that live on in infamy.
Think Thingee’s eye popping out on The Son of a Gunn Show, or nurse Carrie Burton’s iconic “you’re not in Guatemala now, Dr. Ropata” line.
Television legend Mary Lambie manically screaming “f*** you, you f***ing f***er” down the barrel of the camera on Celebrity Treasure Island after being thrown under the bus by her team mate has joined the upper echelons of TV moments.
"I knew my terrible ‘f***ery’ language would make the cut. Me, at 59 years of age, delivering a full tirade down the camera," she laughs during our phone conversation.
The former host of Good Morning became the fourth person to leave the game in the latest episode in a knife-in-the-back moment from team captain Jordan Vandermade.
The game is certainly heating up, with alliances being made on both sides of the coin. In fact, this week we’ve seen members from one team cross enemy lines to make a cross-party alliance, with team mates Eli Matthewson, Courtney Dawson and Jazz Thornton recruiting opponents Matt Gibb, James Mustapic and Laura Daniel to join forces.
Look, as someone who’s played the game twice now, maintaining a six-person alliance this early in the game, when half the members of your alliance aren’t even in the same camp as you, is incredibly bold, but also risky - there’s so much room for error.
It’s a part of the game eliminated contestant Mary Lambie never wrapped her head around.
“I’m so old school and I’m so one dimensional, that I went in wanting an adventure, the opportunity to meet new people, and so there so many bits that I was interested in,” she admits.
“I was not remotely interested in playing 'the game' in terms of secrecy and alliances and backstabbing, and all of that stuff. I was simply not interested in that. It’s just not my jam.”
So watching back the series, and seeing how quickly the game has been played, makes her pleased, in a way, that she left when she did “so that I didn’t find myself in those toxic weeds”.
“I think the dynamic changed after I left,” she tells me, “and a few people were seen as their true selves, and I just wouldn’t have wanted to get into that.”
That became all too apparent tonight with promises being both made and broken.
In a previous episode, team captain and Lotto presenter Jordan Vandermade was given an advantage - a mercy card, the chance to save a player from your team if they lost an elimination battle.
“I gave my word to my team that I would use the mercy card in an elimination if they didn’t go through, and I think I’ll stick by that tonight,” Jordan told producers.
“Whoever goes up tonight, I will use it. I’m a man of my word.”
Remember those words, dear readers - “I’m a man of my word.”
As it transpires, Mary is put up in the elimination battle against powerhouse Matilda Green from the opposing team. The battle sees the two women have to transport block letters over obstacles to a pole, where they need to assemble the blocks to spell out a word - victorious.
Matilda has shown herself already in this game to be incredibly strong, so it’s easy to assume Mary will have her work cut out for her in the challenge - but she moves over the obstacles with ease, and is well ahead of Matilda when it comes time to spell out the word.
Unfortunately for Mary, this is her downfall.
“I could see that word immediately, and I do actually know how to spell ‘victorious’,” she recounts.
“I was so panicked, but I was also so elated that I knew what the word was. And there was just so much noise around me, and I just cannot believe that I mucked it up.”
Yes, Mary Lambie threw her lead away with a misspelt word, and Matilda was declared the winner.
Ah, but remember the prophecy from earlier from Mary’s leader?
“Whoever goes up tonight, I will use it. I’m a man of my word.”
That word was comforting to Mary, too.
“I thought ‘Mary, you stuffed it up, you were bad. But don’t worry - Jordan said you’d be saved’. And so I had that little moment of thinking ‘bit embarrassing, but I’ll live to see another day’.”
That day never came, though - when Mary went to say her goodbyes to her team, still adamant her captain was going to announce any minute now that the mercy card would be used to save her, Jordan leant in and whispered the immortal words, “I appreciate your understanding, Mary. I won’t be playing it.”
Word Schmord.
“Matty, I’ll let you in on a secret,” Mary tells me.
“I couldn’t actually hear him. If I had heard him, I think it would’ve played out quite differently. You just don’t treat people like that. If you say you’re going to do something, you do it.”
Mary Lambie found out the hard way that in this game, some people will lie.
“When it was over, and I was walking into the wilderness, I thought ‘I cannot believe that he shafted me like this’. I still can’t believe it. What a terrible thing to do to someone!”
It’s something that, even months on, the presenter has a hard time wrapping her head around.
“He kept saying to us ‘We are a team. You are all going to be saved.’ I think it was cowardly. If he considered me a weak link in the team, which I’m sure I was, he should’ve taken me aside and said to everyone ‘look, I’ve got this Mercy Card, but Mary I’m not going to use it on you’. At least then I would’ve gone in [to the elimination battle] knowing.”
“But to to say ‘I’m going to save everyone’, and then changing his mind, I think was actually really cowardly.”
She is, though, philosophical about the Circle of Life on a show like Celebrity Treasure Island.
“I think karma is a great equaliser,” she laughs.
“He played it really stupidly. Because undoubtedly, from the moment I left, the rest of the team would’ve been thinking ‘well we can’t trust Jordan. He just threw Mary under the bus, so what the hell is he going to do to me?’ So it was a really stupid thing to do so early on.”
But despite all that transpired, Mary Lambie says she would do it again - in a heartbeat.
“I loved reconnecting with some of those people that I’ve known since as far back as those Good Morning days. I loved being in that part of the country. I love the outdoors - I could set up shop, albeit with a comfier mattress - but I could be outside all the time. And I love an adventure.”
And the adventure’s only really just begun.
Matty McLean is a former winner of Celebrity Treasure Island, and will be interviewing the eliminated contestants for 1news.co.nz
You can watch the current season Monday-Wednesday at 7.30pm on TVNZ2 or catch up on TVNZ+
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