There’s a virtual orchard of bad apples on I’m A Celebrity… Get Me Out of Here! this year, and while their past misdemeanours vary in terms of gravity, there is one thing they’ve all got in common – going on the show is a thinly veiled attempt to save their reputations, and redeem themselves to the public.
We saw it earlier this summer, when Love Island bad boy Adam Collard went back into the villa – the first Islander ever to do so – to right the wrongs he’d committed back in 2018, when his behaviour lead to Women’s Aid releasing a statement about gaslighting and what to watch out for. And it worked; against a backdrop of Luca Bish's bullying, Jaques O’Neill’s angry outbursts and Andrew Le Page’s excruciating tit-gate debacle, Adam came out looking positively angelic.
And it’s not like Matt Hancock, Seann Walsh and Boy George don’t have some reputation management to do. Matt Hancock, as campmate Babatunde Aleshe so mildly put it, ‘messed up’, when he got caught kissing his married aidGina Colangelo - breaking lockdown rules - and was heavily criticised for his handling of the pandemic, for multiple reasons.
And it certainly seems like a gendered issue. When Katie Price entered the Jungle back in 2009, her career might have been on the decline, with her heady heyday of glamour modelling behind her, but other than being a bit mouthy, she had no such sinister reputation to salvage. And… she’s probably the most controversial female contestant I can think of.
What did Seann Walsh do?
In 2018 Seann was caught kissing his Strictly Come Dancing partner Katya Jones while he was in a long term relationship with actor Rebecca Humphries and Katya was married to fellow strictly pro Neil Jones.
But it wasn’t just the kiss itself – captured outside a pub by a grainy long-lens and dismissed by both as a ‘drunken mistake’ – that tarnished Seann’s reputation.
In a statement released after the story broke, Rebecca said:
‘Those pictures were taken on October 3rd,’ the statement read, ‘It was my birthday. I was alone at home when Sean texted at 10pm saying the two of them were going for one innocent drink. We spoke and I told him, not for the first time, that his actions over the past three weeks had led me to believe something inappropriate was going on.’
She continued, ‘He aggressively, and repeatedly, called me a psycho / nuts / mental, as he has done countless times throughout our relationship when I've questioned his inappropriate, hurtful behaviour.’
Choosing to finally leave Seann, she continued with a plea to all women who are in similar relationships to her, ’This whole business has served to remind me that I am a strong, capable person who is now free; and no victim. I have a voice and will use it by saying this to any woman out there who deep down feels worthless and trapped with a man they love:
‘Believe in yourself and your instincts. It's more than lying. It's controlling. Tell some very close friends who, if they’re anything like my wonderful network, will swoop in and take of the logistics and of you.’
She concluded by revealing she’d taken their cat.
Seann Walsh's Jonathon Ross interview
Appearing on Jonathon Ross’ popular chat show shortly after the scandal broke, Seann issued an ‘awkward’ and not-entirely-genuine apology, which I’m A Celeb fans will know he recently recalled in camp.
‘Me and my dance partner, who was married, I was in a relationship, we were photographed kissing when we were on Strictly Come Dancing … that was the front page of every newspaper,’ he told Corrie actor Sue Clever.
'I said sorry. I sat on Jonathan Ross's TV show and apologised. I sat next to will.i.am and Samuel L. Jackson and apologised. That will forever be the weirdest moment of my life and I have to say probably the worst moment of my life.’
Going into the jungle might be his most elaborate attempt at a remedial PR campaign, but it’s not the first time he’s tried to correct the public narrative.
Speaking on a podcast called Take Flight last year, he spoke about how Rebecca’s statement had created ‘a sort of image of me as a tabloid villain’.
‘I’d had panic attacks in my early 20s and they sort of went, the panic attacks came back, big big panic attacks, I ended up having what I later found out were vertigo seizures. I had one the other day, I just lied down – I had to lie down in the street, it's quite humiliating.
'I have to relive what happened. Still, I can be OK then suddenly the memories of it all come back and I can’t stop thinking about it and it defeats me and beats me until the place starts spinning. 'They're less frequent, I'd never had them before. I'm on anti-anxiety, anti-depression, it's called Sertraline, to try and help with that. For me exercise is what helps me.'
What did Boy George get jailed for?
In 2009, the Culture Club frontman was sentenced to 15-months behind bars after a judge found him guilty of assault and false imprisonment. The court heard how he’d chained Audun Carlsen, a Norwegian model, to a radiator in his home and beat him with a metal chain, before Carlsen was able to escape by breaking the fixture free of the wall.
Speaking to Piers Morgan on his Life Stories years later, Boy George said, ‘I sent myself to prison. I told police why I did what I did. I was having a psychotic episode. I was a drug addict so I can’t say my reasons for doing it were founded in any way. But I told the truth. I have always denied beating the guy.’
Boy George’s victim has also condemned his appearance on the show. ‘Had I been a woman and he did what he did, he would never have been given the platform. It’s hurtful that big organisations like ITV give him that platform,’ he told The Mirror. ‘I think giving him this sort of platform and a record fee sends the wrong message to survivors of violence and abuse and is plain wrong.’ As yet, ITV has not responses to Carlsen's comments.