‘Exactly, surely everyone would be able to understand that person? They would have the same accent themselves or at least live in that place so they’d hear it all the time.’
We also had in-depth conversations about how women still haven’t got equality. She told me about the time she went for an interview for a presenting role and they told her, and I quote, her ‘tits weren’t big enough’. (Bloody charming, eh!)
We bonded after our trial, ‘The Big Bush Bake Off’. We kept getting the name wrong and calling it ‘The Big Bush Off’. (But that’s a whole totally different show, probably for Babestation not ITV.) Carol went first, gobbling down two turkey testicles presented as ‘French knackeroons’.
‘God, you ate them balls so fast, Carol.’ It was as if she had done it before.
‘They taste quite nice, like sweetbreads,’ she said.
I went next. ‘Look at the size of that!’ I could not get to grips with how big the deer’s penis was. I had to eat the tip of a ‘sticky cocky pudding’. It tasted like really out-of-date corned beef. ‘Oh, it’s like meaty lard,’ I said. I wouldn’t advise having a nibble on it anytime soon. Carol ended up eating vomit fruit, which honestly is the worst thing I’ve ever smelt in my life. This was presented by Ant and Dec as ‘sicktoria sponge’. She also devoured ‘whole brain loaf’ (sheep’s brain) and a ‘danus pastry’, which was in fact an ostrich anus. One of the things I was pleased to get to eat was my ‘bumoffee pie’ (cow’s anus). I mean I didn’t understand how you could eat a hole, because technically an anus is a hole. I thought I’d be able to stick my tongue through it (I know that sounds gross) but honestly I was quite shocked at how little a cow’s arse actually is.
One of the things I felt terrible about eating was the ‘Cornish nasty’. It has genuinely put me off pasties for life. I had to eat a live beetle. I actually felt guilty about eating it, to be honest. I mean it had never done anything to me, and what an awful way to die. So apologies to the beetle but I did it. I asked Medic Bob what would be the quickest and most painless way I could kill it. ‘Grab it between two fingers and bite its head off quickly,’ he said. It tasted like a really hard Smarties shell.
I had completed three of my foods and only had two left. ‘The next delight is “chocolate nip cookies”. These are in fact camel nipples,’ Dec announced with his cheeky little grin.
‘One of my favourite foods is doner meat, I eat it sober sometimes and I don’t even know what meat that is, so honestly I don’t mind eating a nip or two,’ I replied. They were just really chewy and later in camp I had to use the tweezers to get one of the camel hairs out from between my teeth.
One of the questions I often get asked is what was the worst thing you had to eat in the jungle and I’ll tell you. A fermented duck egg. Jesus Christ on a bike, I can still taste it now. It was so huge. For those who don’t know (as I didn’t), a fermented egg is an egg that’s basically a hundred years old. The yolk was a dark greeny-grey colour and it had the same texture as creamy Play-Doh with the taste of a sweaty rotten egg. I knew I had to eat it, I couldn’t let the team down. Also before I went in there, one of the bits of advice my dad gave me (apart from leaving plastic spiders around the house and making me eat Scotch eggs as apparently that’s what kangaroo balls taste like) was, ‘I always say, what won’t stick in your throat, won’t stick in your arse.’ But I swear I have never gagged so much in my life.
Poor Carol’s final challenge was a live scorpion with the venom taken out. She just couldn’t do it; I’m not surprised as it nipped her finger as she was holding it and her finger went bright red. Imagine if it had nipped her gum or tongue, ouch! I wasn’t disappointed in her, though. I was sort of pleased because hooray, the scorpion lived.
Lisa Snowdon was my big sister in the camp. To everyone else she is known as one of the top models in the UK, or as a judge of Britain’s Next Top Model, appearing in magazines like Vogue and Elle. To us in camp she was our go-to chef. Joel Dommett used to have her poster on his bedroom wall and here she was cooking him kangaroo loin and rice. I mean I was the cook for two days and it is hard work, cooking for twelve people who are absolutely ravenous from eating nothing but a portion of rice and beans for the day. Even when you have won loads of stars, the portion sizes are ridiculous.
One day, we won a crocodile arm.
‘Woah, feel how heavy the basket is.’
‘Oh my God, it’s crocodile hands.’
I was a little confused. ‘How many hands does a crocodile have, like, or is this from a couple of crocs?’ They looked huge but it has actually got the tiniest bit of meat on it. It’s all skin, and ooh, you can’t eat that. You’re chewing on what’s essentially a cocktail sausage’s worth of crocodile with some vegetables you’ve never heard of, most of which taste like celery. In fact, all of the vegetables in Australia taste like celery. I’ve never known anything like it in my life. Proper pissy celery vegetables – even if it looked like a potato it tasted like
