Following I’m A Celebrity’s first ever All Stars series crowning its first ever jungle legend, campmate Paul Burrell has dished all about his second stint on ITV’s much-loved reality series. In an exclusive interview with Slingo, Paul opens up on his ‘liberating’ experience in camp second time round, as he reveals how he no longer had to ‘hide’ his true self from viewers and his celebrity campmates.
The former Royal butler reflects on the toll the show’s famous trials took on his body this time round and how he fell into the role of playing camp comedian - and he also said there is one person who would have ,ade him walk out of camp.
Paul said: “I loved it. I loved doing it a second time around with that cast of people because they’ve done it before, they knew the ropes and they knew how to behave, generally. They knew the process of making the show and I loved it. I loved the people in it, I really did. For me, going into it 19 years later to do it again as a different person, I felt, was very liberating. My world had changed and this is what I mean with the monarchy too, it’s changing. Charles has changed, Camilla has changed, everybody has changed, nothing stays the same. So for me, I didn’t stay the same. I was now married to a man instead of being married to my wife, and yet I’ve evolved and moved on and become myself. When I did it 19 years ago I couldn’t be myself because I was too busy looking over my shoulder, whether somebody was going to say something bad or if there was going to be some story in the press, I had to hide then. This time around I actually didn’t even think. I thought nobody’s watching, nobody’s listening. I’m just going to have a bit of fun and what you saw was me having fun.
“My mind told me ‘Oh yes, it’s just going to be like it was in 2004’, my body told me differently because I was tired, I had more aches and pains and I thought the trials were even more difficult. It seems to have evolved into some kind of gladiator's contest because back in the day the trials were very simple. Now they’re very technical and you’re stepping off the edge of a cliff or hanging on a ball suspended above a canyon. Incredible trials that scare the bejesus out of you, and scared me. Luckily, I didn’t have to eat any creatures or juices or mashed-up hearts of animals, I didn’t have to do that but it did scare me. If you get the chance to do that once, you’re lucky, if you get the chance to do it twice it’s extraordinary and you cannot pass up the opportunity. I was 64. If I had been 74 I’d have been crazy not to take on board this opportunity again because it’s such an incredible show to be part of that, you don’t realise it when you’re in it but when you’re out of it you realise how big it is.
“No, I didn’t consider myself as one because I looked around the camp and saw celebrities. I don’t think I’m a celebrity. I may be well known, but I don’t think I’m a celebrity. I looked at other people who are actors, musicians, singers and sportspeople and I thought ‘you’ve earned your stripes, I haven’t actually earned my stripes’. I felt as if I’d got in under the radar.
“I am good friends with Andy Whyment and it’s a cliche to say friends for life because people always say that after a reality TV show and you never keep in touch with anyone. I can say this time around that is not the case, and I have made friends for life. Andy is such a genuine, kind man. He’s been to my house with his family, I’ve been to Manchester and had dinner with him. We’ve got this reciprocal thing going on where we can go backwards and forwards. I’d support Andy in anything he did because I know he’s coming from the right place. He’s a genuine, kind man and I’m very proud to call him my friend. I got on very well with Amir [Khan] of course and I was very upset when Amir left. There’s no one I didn’t get on with, some more than others. I got on well with Carol [Vorderman] because I met her when I did Dictionary Corner 20 years ago on Countdown, she was still the numbers girl. I fit in with a very nice group.
“Had Janet Street Porter come down that tunnel, and I’d say this to her face, I might’ve gone out the back door, I might’ve screamed ‘I’m a celebrity, get me out of here’, I think there might’ve been sparks. She’s an anti-monarchist, I’m a monarchist and I think there’s a huge gap between myself and Janet Street-Porter. Is she my nemesis? Only if I let her. I hadn’t met her before I did the jungle but I’ve met her many times since and she’s still as annoying as she ever was. I think she’d like to wrap her hands around my neck, but there you go, it’s a love-hate relationship.
“Do you know who surprised me? Shaun Ryder. Because when would you put a rockstar with the butler? Never. When I first met him he said to me ‘I’m Uncle Fester, and you’re Buzz Lightyear, I think we’re going to get on really great’, and we did. He wasn’t there long enough to form a proper friendship but what a nice man, a lovely man. That’s what you find in the jungle, people show their true colours. Yes, Fatima [Whitbread] is a little bit bossy and I told her ‘you are bossy at times’. Phil [Tufnell] and I, I had to pick him [for a trial] and he didn’t speak to me. But Phil’s a professional sportsman so you have to understand the world he comes from. He doesn’t like to be defeated, he wants to win all the time but if the ball is in somebody else’s court he doesn’t like it, he wants to be holding the ball. I understand that dynamic, that’s why we had a bit of friction. Not much, but we joked when we came out, about his wife who he calls ‘the Duchess’, and they are a lovely couple. When you’re in the boiling pot in the middle of a jungle little things can irritate and boil over and I think at times you get to a point where the elastic band breaks.
“Was I trying to overthrow Joe? No, I was trying to give Fatima some confidence because at times even Fatima sort of doubted her own strength and capabilities and so what I was trying to do was say throughout history there have been great partnerships and partnerships that work in tandem with each other can be great forces, like Alexander the Great and Hephaestion. I think people think I’m more Machiavellian than I am. I think people were thinking maybe it was a little bit shady. I wasn’t throwing shade, I didn’t do it intentionally, I was just trying to bolster Fatima. I didn’t go in there to mix it up, I didn’t go in there to make enemies or to irritate people, other people have that role. It seems my role was to scream and shout in the trials, so my role was the funny man, and I’m not a comedian. There wasn’t a comedian in the camp, so I got into that role for some reason. When I was starving, lying on my bed. I didn’t realise I’d said it and I’ve watched it the other night and I said, ‘I can see mirages of wobbly jelly and trifles and spotted dick and wet nellies’, and they all looked at me as if to say ‘he’s gone, he’s lost it’. Nobody knows what a wet nelly is! It’s a Lancashire pudding, like a bread and butter pudding but it’s very wet and soggy. So in a way, I became the jungle comedian.”
