Ranking the 10 best I'm a Celeb moments featuring sports stars
From Harry's favourite pudding to an England left-back's fear of goats, these are the jungle moments involving sportspeople that we won't tire of watching.
10) Wayne Bridge is terrified by, erm, goats
An 11-year career going toe-to-toe against some of the world’s best footballers – and his own team-mate – wasn’t enough to prepare Wayne Bridge for the horrors that he was to face in I’m A Celeb.
No, not the spiders, snakes or scorpions.
Bridge met his match when faced with a pen full of baby goats during a Dingo Dollar Challenge.
He then committed the fatal error of letting on to campmate Adam Thomas, who responded by making goat noises at regular intervals, obviously.
9) Linford Christie in a cold pool
They obviously hadn’t invented ice baths as a recovery method when Christie was a professional sprinter. Or if they had, his coaches now suffer from partial hearing loss.
When all Christie had to do was get in the cold pool in order to win camp a treat, he began shouting: ‘We ain’t getting the treat today, because I ain’t going in the pool!’.
His campmates were only able to keep him quiet by eventually forcing him in, which stunned him into silence and completed the discreditation of his persona as a sporting tough man.
8) Willie Carson flicks crickets
As you will have gather by reading this list, the jungle has the capacity to send even the most switched-on celebrity bonkers.
Former jockey Willie Carson, who appeared on the show in 2011, was one of the most affected. It’s debatable whether before he set foot Down Under he would have responded to an onslaught of creepy-crawlies by flicking them away with his finger like Subbuteo players.
The ‘ping’ noise that the former jockey makes as he sends each one back where it came from proves the contempt with which he now holds these creatures after his ordeal.
7) Jimmy Bullard banters Jake Quickenden
When a bromance turns bad.
Jake Quickenden was fast-tracked into the jungle as a late campmate in 2012 after his elimination from X Factor and immediately took a shine to ex-footballer Jimmy Bullard.
The feeling appeared to be mutual until Quickenden made a joke at his new best friend’s expense.
But taking on the self-proclaimed ‘Governor of Banter’ was never going to end well.
Bullard bit back and went in hard, questioning why Quickenden had even been asked to appear on the programme – a scathing move which resulted in him being voted out at the first opportunity.
“End of the day, I wasn’t even bovvered,” the singer later told the Bush Telegraph.
Course you weren’t, Jake.
6) John Fashanu shadow boxes a tree
We’ve all been there, haven’t we?
Stuck somewhere you don’t want to be, surrounded by people you either don’t know or don’t like and, most importantly, absolutely starving.
It’s a recipe for disaster in even the most domesticated of settings, so imagine how much worse it would be in a literal jungle.
Yet that is the exact situation a presumably hangry Fash found himself in during series two.
His solution? Letting the nearest tree have it, obviously.
5) Steve Davis takes a tumble
It’s an unavoidable truth that watching someone fall over is almost always hilarious.
Just ask Steve Davis.
The six-time snooker world champion took an unfortunate tumble as he jokingly pretended to limber up for bushtucker trial Scares Rock.
After tripping on a platform he was standing on, Davis hit the deck in stages – think Paul Alcock after his shove from Paolo Di Canio – before falling into the lake beneath him with a Mr Bean-like level of slapstick.
Worse yet, after all that, he only managed to win three stars for camp.
4) Fatima Whitbread snorts a cockroach
Whitbread became famous for throwing javelins a long way in the 1980s, but she showed she had lost not of her mettle when appearing on the show in 2011.
Not only did a cockroach disappear up her nose so far that medical assistance was required to remove it, it did so early on in a 30-second bushtucker trial, remaining there for the duration.
Ant and Dec couldn’t look as Medic Bob extracted the insect using a syringe – they didn’t want to be put off their meal in the five-star hotel that night after all – but Whitbread kept her composure. The mark of a true champion.
3) Kieron Dyer and Chris Eubank strike an unlikely friendship
Kieron Dyer’s career as a footballer was marred by controversy, including a sex tape, an on-field brawl with Lee Bowyer and, worst of all, refusing to play for Sir Bobby Robson.
Chris Eubank was arrested in 2007 for a suspected breach of peace and appeared on I’m a Celebrity six years after being declared bankrupt.
So it was a bit of a surprise when the sporting duo teamed up to defend the honour of Lady Campbell, a 66-year-old socialite who spent her time in the jungle abusing her fellow campmates.
The highlight of their relationship was when Eubank and Dyer tried to persuade Lady C, who was ranting about the “deadbeats, bores and pretentious pifflers” she was living with, to not deliberately tank in her forthcoming bushtucker trial.
2) Harry Redknapp eats jam roly-poly
Given that he follows Harry Redknapp everywhere, it looks like Nico Kranjcar could soon be working in a jam roly-poly shop #ImACeleb #ImACelebFinal pic.twitter.com/YGkf4gAIys
— Gully Burrows (@gully_burrows) December 9, 2018
To some, it’s a steamed dessert they were served at school with lumpy custard and haven’t touched since.
To others, it’s an obsession. I’m looking at you, Harry Redknapp.
The King of the Jungle-to-be endeared himself to the nation during his time on I’m a Celeb in 2018 by showing his soft side.
He regaled campmates with stories about his marriage and the love of his life. No, not Sandra – although he was very fond of her – but jam roly-poly pudding.
So when he finally got to tuck in to his favourite treat during a banquet that was laid on for him and his campmates towards the end of the series, it made for beautiful TV.
As one viewer wrote on Twitter: “Find someone who looks at you like Harry looks at jam roly-poly.”
1) Amir Khan devours the strawberries
With hunger, tiredness and boredom riddling the camp, even the most trivial affairs matter.
So when boxer Amir Khan persuaded radio presenter Iain Lee that they themselves should devour a box of strawberries that were meant for the entire camp, it all went off.
At least it did for Lee, who took the blame for the crime when Khan shirked the responsibility.
Only under serious duress from Piers Morgan, long after the show had finished, did the talkSPORT host receive an apology.
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