But my favourite ever moment from the jungle was when Gillian McKeith pretended to faint and pulled her T-shirt down. She was a funny one, mind, always saying no to doing a simple trial like sticking your feet in mealworms – yet she smelt people’s shite for a living! How can you say ‘I’m a celebrity, get me out of here’ when you sniff people’s faeces as your job? You would think nothing would have fazed her. (To be honest, that show she did never made sense to me. It doesn’t take Sherlock Holmes to work out that if you take a dump in a Tupperware box and get someone to sniff it, they’re gonna say it stinks. Of course it bloody does, it’s crap in a box!)
So imagine my delight when Daisy, Micky and Richard at ITV first approached me to ask me to go for a meeting about possibly being a camp mate on I’m a Celebrity. I could not believe it. But my initial reaction was: ‘Well, first of all it’s called I’m a Celebrity, and I’m not a celebrity. I know you’ve had what some people would class as D-listers on before, but I’m not even a Z-lister. Come to think of it, I am not even in the bloody alphabet. You can get someone better than me, honestly.’ I was not selling myself at all.
But the producers were just chatting about what I would bring to the jungle. I was like, ‘Well, I cannot really clean and I cannot cook. I hate camping. I probably would cry at every challenge. I don’t really like adventurous food; the craziest, most alternative thing I’ve ever eaten is quinoa. The only thing I could bring and offer to the table is morale. I can try and keep morale up, I can always offer some daft jokes and I can talk about rubbish all day long, but other than that I don’t really know what I can offer.’
They said they would be in touch and a couple of months later I got the call from Micky and Daisy. (It’s that secretive that each celebrity gets given a code name. My code name was ‘Little’.)
‘Hi Little, how are you?’
‘I’m really good, you two. How are you both?’
‘Amazing, thanks. We are just calling to say we would love you to join the I’m a Celebrity gang and be one of the camp mates this year!’
‘Oh my God, this is crazy. I’m actually going to be on the show? In real life? In actual real life?’
‘That’s right. What do you think?’
‘Of course, it’s a huge yes. I can’t wait to be a camp mate. Ahh, I can’t wait to get my hat and my red gilet with my name and number on the back!’
I was so excited and knew I had to take this amazing dream opportunity but I was equally as nervous. I had never been away from all my loved ones for that long before. I also knew what a wimp I am and in the back of my mind I was thinking, oh God, what happens if there’s a challenge I can’t do? I don’t want to let all my friends and family down and embarrass them.
It was bizarre, I couldn’t tell anybody even though I wanted to scream it from the rooftop. I wanted to parade through my home town of Bishop Auckland with a huge banner saying, ‘I’m going in the jungle, I won’t let the side down, town’. There was only the fantastic five of my mam, dad, Ava, my auntie Kirsty and my boyfriend Luke who knew I was going into the Outback of Australia.
When I told my mam, she was like, ‘Please don’t embarrass yourself.’ It wasn’t even like, ‘Yeah, this is amazing.’ It was, ‘Oh please, for the love of God, don’t embarrass yourself. I know you’re scared of everything, but just try, just try not to be a Helen Flanagan. Don’t be saying, “I’m not doing it”, or “I’m a celebrity, get me out of here”.’ (Mothers, eh?)
I tried to spend as much time with my mother and my family and friends as I could, knowing I’d be away from them for a couple of months – which for someone who doesn’t really leave her home town is a huge thing.
Because I knew I was flying out on Guy Fawkes’ Night I decided to have a big get-together on my birthday, 17 October. ‘Thank you all for coming, I’m really going to miss you all. Just know I love you all no matter what,’ I announced to everyone after a few drinks.
‘Why are you going to miss us, Dafty?’
‘I don’t know. I just feel like now we’ve got older we hardly see each other. I know with it being Christmas it’s extra busy so I’m going to miss you.’
‘Oh yeah, this hasn’t got anything to do with your name being in the papers as one of the people who might be going into the jungle, has it?’
‘That’s stupid, isn’t it? I bloody wish.’
And all the while I wanted to scream, ‘Its true, I’m going into the jungle!’
Seven whole months I had to keep it to myself and the fantastic five. I agreed to do the jungle in April and honestly the time just flew by. I had my radio job and I was filming Gogglebox just a week before I flew out.
Imagine the excitement inside of my brain when 5th November crept up. I had had seven whole months of day-dreaming about what I’d get up to in the jungle and now it was about to happen. I knew I had to embrace every single minute of it; I didn’t expect to stay in there long because, well, for one thing, I wasn’t a proper celeb and two, I just watched TV for a living. I knew compared to who was going to be in there I was a nobody. I thought no one is going to vote for little
