Celebrity SAS: Who Dares Wins star AJ Pritchard opened up about how one of the exercises on the Channel 4 show brought back "vivid" memories of his ex-girlfriend Abbie Quinnen's 'fireball' accident.
The former Strictly Come Dancing professional dancer, 27, has been one of the standout candidates on the show where celebrities take on gruelling challenges to see if they would be fit for SAS selection.
Their physical and mental capabilities are tested to the maximum by chief instructor Rudy Reyes, fellow American and directing staff Remi Adeleke alongside former special forces soldiers Mark Billingham and Jason Fox.
AJ was interrogated by Billingham and Fox when he broke down in tears after recalling the terrifying 'fireball' incident with Abbie in January 2021.
Abbie, 25, sustained third-degree burns when a social media video went horribly wrong, leaving her scarred for life and needing surgery.
When asked if he had made "any big mistakes in his life" by directing staff Mark, AJ started to get emotional when recalling the horrifying incident.
The dancer said: "One mistake specifically earlier this year, I was trying to turn a wine bottle into a vase to put flowers in for my girlfriend.
"In doing so, when lighting the piece of rope that was around the top of the bottle to break it off into the sink of water, it caught her hair extensions and caught her sports top.
"She was in a fireball, her top, her hair. I put her in a situation where she had to go to hospital for five or six days in intensive care. Her ear was fundamentally non-existent, it got infected after the first two operations.
"Everyone kept saying 'that's why they invented the word accident', people tell me that, still tell me that now. But for that to happen to her, you [start to] question a lot of things like why, what?"
AJ then admitted that one of the exercises on Sunday's episode made him realise that he had "not come to terms" with the accident.
He added: "When we were doing the driving exercise as soon as that barrel on the left went off with the fire, I realised that I've obviously not come to terms with the situation and just brought back a vivid image of her in front of me in a fireball."
The scenes were filmed before he split with the dancer after three years of dating 'out of the blue' last month. He is reportedly dating London social club founder Zara Zoffany.
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