Joel Dommett’s ex girlfriend backs his budding I’m A Celebrity romance with Carol Vorderman – despite their 25-year age gap
THE ex-girlfriend of jungle star Joel Dommett has backed his budding romance with older campmate Carol Vorderman.
Russian stylist Natalia Noir, who met the comedian after he fell for an online sex scam, reckons their 25 year age gap is no obstacle.
Joel, 30, and Carol, 55, have already surprised I’m A Celeb viewers with their flirting.
On Monday they watched as the twice-divorced former Countdown star bond with Joel over their passion for maths.
And the pair, the only single campmates, also cracked a series of innuendos over a “sturdy shaft” tree branch Joel had fashioned into a walking stick.
Natalia told The Sun: “You can’t tell your heart what to do.
“It’s not just about age, it’s about different things which people like about each other.
“He’s a single guy. He can do whatever he wants, whatever he feels is the right thing for him.”
Carol is no stranger to relationships with younger men.
And ex-Skins star Joel had a 34-year-old doctor girlfriend when he was just 22.
Before he entered the Aussie jungle, he told The Sun he was looking forward to meeting Carol.
When asked if he fancied the mum of two, he said: “I like maths. I like to show my working out.”
Joel starting dating Natalia, 28, earlier this year after being duped into having webcam sex with a stranger using her pictures as bait — known as “catfishing”.
Despite his humiliation when the footage was leaked online, Joel tracked down Natalia, of Swansea, to warn her.
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She explained: “He found me on the internet and he told me there was a person who has catfished him using my pictures.
“He wanted to see me in person and I thought it would be great to meet up in real life.
“He told me everything in detail about what was going on, which I didn’t know about. It came as a shock to me exactly what this person was doing.
“I thought it was just someone pretending to be me, with my pictures but it actually went much further than that and became something horrible. It was really scary to find out that.”
“We were dating for a while. It was great, it was a really good time. He’s a real gentleman, that’s the best way to describe him.
“We tried to see each other as much as we could. I had to go back to Wales but we still stayed in touch. We kept good friends.”
Asked if they talk often, she joked: “Yeah, we occasionally catch up, but not on Skype!”
Natalia also hit out at cops for their inability to help catch those behind the scam which fooled Joel and others.
She said: “I’ve had messages from people breaking down to me about it and asking if I could stop them somehow.
“The police said they don’t deal with stuff like that. So I had to try and deal with it myself with Twitter and Instagram. I tried to take down those profiles myself but they just kept coming back.
“Literally there was nothing I could do to prevent this from happening again and again. It went on for about a year and then I gave up in the end.
"They don’t have any kind of law against it. They don’t protect you against anything like that. There’s a crime going on online and they just let it happen.”
Natalia said of Joel’s sex shame: “The situation he got himself into is really funny. I think he should have been more careful who he was sending pictures to.”
But she is backing him for jungle glory, adding: “I think he’s going to do really well.
“He’s definitely entertaining to watch. I think he will be definitely one of the last people to come out