Boy George will be the highest-paid campmate ever to appear in the I'm A Celebrity jungle with a £500,000 appearance fee.
The Karma Chameleon star, 61, touched down in Brisbane today wearing a lion mask as the ITV show returned to Australia after two years in Wales.
Telly insiders said the bumper pay packet tempted him Down Under – and put him ahead of US reality star Caitlyn Jenner, 73, as top earner in the show’s 20-year history.
The Culture Club singer’s arrival completed the 10-strong line-up for the new series that begins next Sunday night.
He joked: “I’m here to do a version of The Lion Queen, I don’t know what you are talking about, darling!”
But his signing was met with anger among those who feel he should be banned from TV due to his abuse conviction in 2009.
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George, whose full name is George Alan O’Dowd, was jailed for 15 months for falsely imprisoning a male escort by handcuffing him to a wall and beating him with a chain.
The singer served four months inside.
Speaking in 2016 after George became a judge on The Voice, his victim Audun Carlsen said the singer “ruined his life”.
And one Twitter user said of his Jungle appearance: “I, and thousands of other abused queer men, will see Boy George on that show and feel sickened.”
Another said: “He chained a man to a radiator. Why is he still platformed?”
We can reveal Boy George signed up to the show after plans for a Hollywood biopic on his life were shelved.
The film got the green light in 2019 but singer-actor Yungblud, 25, picked for the lead role, said: “I don’t know what’s happening with the film anymore.”
The other campmates are: Corrie’s Sue Cleaver, 59, Lioness Jill Scott, 35, ex-rugby ace Mike Tindall, 44, DJ Chris Moyles, 48, ITV News host Charlene White, 42, A Place in the Sun host Scarlette Douglas, 35, Love Island ’s Olivia Attwood, 31, Hollyoaks’ Owen Warner, 23, comic Babatunde Aleshe, 36.
