From dreaded Bushtucker Trials to the freezing waterfall shower… Sun man crosses the famous I’m A Celebrity rope bridge to check out the camp delights first hand
I HAD always thought that the idea of going into the I’m A Celebrity... Get Me Out of Here jungle was a bit of a jolly.
What’s not to love about three weeks in the Australian sun, as much sleep as you can shake a stick at, and a good knees up with Ant and Dec once it’s all over?
However, that view changed when I was invited to cross the famous rope bridge and check out the delights first hand.
From the word go it was clear that this is no holiday camp.
Stifling heat, constant pestering from insects, and living conditions I wouldn’t wish on my worst enemy.
And of course, the dreaded Bushtucker Trials.
This is what this year’s crop of celebrity campers — including former Countdown host Carol Vorderman, 55, Gogglebox’s Scarlett Moffatt, 26, and radio host Danny Baker, 59 — are facing when they enter the jungle this weekend.
The jungle itself is actually a sophisticated TV set among the trees, built on a disused banana plantation in the small Australian farming community of Dungay, New South Wales.
Watching on television, it appears to just be Ant and Dec 200ft up in the sky, with the campmates plonked below.
But seeing it first hand shows it’s as slick a TV operation as X Factor or Strictly Come Dancing, with no stone unturned and every worst case scenario prepared for.
Giant walkways link the entrance to the Geordie hosts’ hosting platform, which then leads you into the camp itself.
A drawbridge comes up every night to stop rogue celebrities doing a runner, and a security guard kitted out in camouflage uniform and armed with a radio hides among the trees below it at all times in case of emergency.
But once you step off, it’s immediately obvious why so many rows erupt once the famous faces move in.
The camp itself is claustrophobic and tiny, with beds piled up within inches of each other.
Basic bunks and grubby hammocks are dotted around a small campfire — protected by a giant canopy above that keeps the best part of the rain off their preened heads.
And if it’s not the prospect of a snoring stranger just inches from you, it’s bound to be a creature of another sort.
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Joining the celebs in the jungle are spiders, snakes, leeches and ticks.
Before we head into camp we are warned by the infamous show medic Dr Bob McCarron about the dangers of all four.
Particularly the latter as, just by luck, the night before our visit the camp got its first rainfall in more than a month — music to leeches’ ears.
A heavy rain storm batters the camp as we enter, and despite the protection from above, we still get drenched.
At the top of the main part of camp there is the Bush Telegraph, the show’s diary room, where contestants are encouraged to pour their hearts out on camera to the millions of viewers back home.
In reality it’s just a bench, two cameras and a laminated sign which reads: “Look here” below the lens.
Down in camp itself there are the remnants of the previous few days’ guests — a series of stand-ins who test the camp for several days and nights for the producers to make sure it all works to plan.
There is just one toilet for the dozen celeb campmates — which producers affectionately call the ‘dunny’.
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The loo, which has just a rustic curtain for a door, is prone to collect spiders and snakes are often found on its roof.
Bosses have also added a new part to the camp this year — an allotment.
This will give the campers the chance to grow spices and herbs in a bid to try and make their boring beans and rice rations a bit more tasty.
They also hope that as well as growing spinach, tomatoes and radishes it’ll give sneaky participants a private place to gossip, unaware that a garden gnome right next to them is fitted with a camera.
The most iconic part of the camp, and arguably the show, is the waterfall shower — made famous by Myleene Klass and her white bikini in 2006.
This year producers are hoping former Strictly dancer Ola Jordan, 34 and ex radio host Lisa Snowdon, 44, will produce similar scenes.
Keen to see what the fuss is all about, I’m first in line to try it out.
The water is absolutely freezing, as it trickles of a man-made rock and onto my head.
There is no privacy at all, and despite it being just out of sight of the main camp I am acutely aware of two cameras pointing directly my way.
A trip to the jungle isn’t complete, however, without tackling a Bushtucker Trial.
There are three options for the trial which will see me put my head in a plastic box, and then be joined by either a snake, a bucket of cockroaches or some rats.
Having a phobia of snakes, I make it clear the latter two options are more up my street, but I draw the short straw and am told I am to be joined by a massive carpet python.
The challenge is to stick it out for 30 seconds, which doesn’t seem so bad.
But it feels like an eternity as producer and trials boss Matt Wilkinson lowers the 15kg snake onto my face.
I’m told to make no sudden movements so not to startle it, and I try and hold my breath for the duration.
Ironic given its way of killing is usually to suffocate its prey by constricting.
Fortunately after the longest half a minute of my life, the massive predator is lifted off my face, and I’m free to leave the trial area, and the camp.
I won’t go back in a hurry.
