by Joel Creasey
I also went down to the river during the daily lighting-of-the-fire to distract everyone from the fact I had no fucking clue how to light a fire myself.
After that was breakfast, which was always porridge, so it didn’t take long to cook, eat and wash up. And when I say porridge, I mean literally just oats and water – no brown sugar or banana or rhubarb coulis; it was beige snot. After breakfast we’d start to hear some noises from Chris and Julia’s set, which was about three hundred metres above us, hidden among the trees. At around 10.30 am, Chris and Julia would come into camp to tell us who had been nominated for the next Tucker Trial or, on Sundays, who was being eliminated. Sundays were always our favourite day of the week because it meant that one of us was going home. We’d all pack our few belongings in anticipation it would be us. Of course, the day I was eventually eliminated, I hadn’t packed my bags. But I truly could not have given two shits by that point.
If you weren’t going into a Tucker Trial, that was it for the rest of your day. You’d cook a little bit of rice and beans (which, unlike porridge, took fucking forever to boil) for your lunch in the heat of the roasting African sun. Then all afternoon you’d have nothing to do but wait for the Tucker Trial celebrity to return. And when there is nothing to look at but the same trees and each other, when there is nothing to write on, nothing to read, not even a car driving past or the sound of construction, nothing new to preoccupy your mind, you do start to go stir-crazy and the hours draaaaaaaag on. Some of those afternoons felt like eternities.
At first we would make up games to entertain ourselves. We made a chess board and painted rocks (with paint comprised of fire ash and water). Miss Australia Laura Dundovic would host personal training classes; I took part in maybe two. Andrew Daddo started Craft Club, whittling away at branches and trees. And when Julie Goodwin arrived she got into knitting using two sticks (made in Craft Club) and some twine from a bag we had.
Chrissie and I weren’t into any of these things. We are crafty, just mentally, not practically. She and I preferred to sit down by the river and laugh. We nicknamed ourselves the River Monsters as, while the other celebrities would lie in the sun, tanning their incredible washboard abs, we’d sit in the shade upstream fully clothed. We discussed every topic known to man.
The first intruders to come into camp to break up the monotony were the couple from The Bachelor, Tim Robards and Anna Heinrich, who came in on the Sunday after the elimination of the first contestant, Leiesl Jones. When I got back home after being voted off, I discovered that when the Australian public heard that there was going to be a celebrity couple going into camp, a rumour started that it was going to be Keith Urban and Nicole Kidman. Can you IMAGINE? Watching Nicole and Keith with Marcia Brady certainly would have put some entertainment back into our days. Tim and Anna were lovely, but they were a couple, and we were all missing our loved ones, so we were a bit jealous of them. We were all a little bummed Leisel had left so early too. Frankly, we were all secretly happy when Tim was eliminated the following weekend, leaving his girlfriend behind on her own (in tears). It also meant we got to know her much better.
Things did get even more interesting at the end of week two, when Julie Goodwin entered the jungle as an intruder. I was beside myself – Julie was my favourite contestant from Masterchef and my best friend Ashleigh and I obsessed over her in every episode from that first season. We would actually attempt to cook a lot of her dishes, and I loved that with every dish Julie was cooking, it always felt like what she ended up making was a chocolate cake. The judges would come in and say, ‘Okay, contestants, it’s time to present us with a seafood platter!’ And Julie Goodwin would go, ‘Nah! I’m making a chockie cake!’ And it worked, because of course she ended up winning the show. I don’t want any of that quail egg shit they’re pumping out in the current seasons. I just want Julie Goodwin’s home cooking. I also loved that no matter what Julie was cooking, she always looked a little bit crazy, covered in flour with a spatula or other random utensil stuck in her hair. Even in the jungle when we were eating porridge and rice and beans, somehow Julie still had a little smudge of flour in her hair. As I lay in bed the night of Julie’s arrival in the jungle, I thought of Ashleigh and how she would be laughing so hard knowing Julie was now trapped with me.
Chrissie also delighted in Julie’s arrival, and she and I would invite Julie down to the river with us, where we’d quiz her for hours. We’d say, ‘Potato salad . . . Go!’ and we’d make her rattle off the ingredients and method as quickly as possible.
The other intruder to arrive with Julie was Freddie Flintoff, the English cricket captain who ended up winning the show. He was a nice guy, and he had been on the English version of the TV show, A League of Their Own. He still does the show over there with James Corden. Freddie even had me on as a guest once the show was finished. What bothered me when he came in was the producers trying to bait me when I went up to the Tok Toki to be interviewed about his and Julie’s arrival. They’d say, ‘So you probably don’t know who Freddie Flintoff is . . .’ which I found irritating and a bit presumptuous, because I knew exactly who Freddie Flintoff was. But I was relieved they didn’t ask me anything about his cricket career or statistics – I’d have had nothing.
I loved Freddie, but his arrival did make my position in the camp a lot trickier, as Freddie was essentially a comedian too – just a lot less polarising than I am.
My favourite stories from the show of course feature Maureen McCormick. She was so kooky, but she’s gorgeous and, my God, she is a delight, one of the most delicious humans I’ve ever had the pleasure of meeting or having baboon faeces thrown at me with. Chrissie and I still talk about her regularly, wondering what she’s up to, what she’s saying and which dangerous animal she’s befriended. Without doubt, the craziest sentence I have ever heard in my life came out of Maureen’s mouth. It was the final week of the show, and it was down to six of us: Chrissie, Freddie, Barry, Anna, Maureen and me. It was afternoon and we were all sleeping, willing the hours to pass by more quickly. By this point we were counting the hours till the finale and home time. The line of scratches on the log/homemade calendar by the fire that we’d been marking the days into was getting longer and longer and we were so excited. But we truly did not have a single fucking thing left to say to one another. We had exhausted every possible topic.
This particular afternoon Maureen walked back into camp – where she’d been, no one had any idea. Sometimes she would disappear for hours on end and we assumed she’d been eaten by a lion, and then she’d suddenly appear. Lauren Brant used to think she was getting special celebrity treatment off camera. But I genuinely think she would just wander off, lost in her own world.
So Maureen walked back into camp and said to no one in particular, ‘Hey guys, you know baby hyenas, right?’
I had been lying down pretending to be asleep but I realised this might be worth getting up for. What was TV icon Maureen McCormick’s position on baby hyenas? What was her hot take on them, having been surrounded by them for six weeks in the African jungle?
So, intrigued, I got up and said ‘Yes, Maureen . . .’
And I’m so glad I did, because that’s when she repeated herself but added, ‘Do they grow into hyenas?’
I was speechless for the first time in my life. ‘What . . . Sorry – what?’ I couldn’t believe it. What a bizarre question.
Luckily for me I didn’t actually have to say anything because at that point Barry Hall, who really hadn’t said anything for the entire six weeks, finally snapped and spat, ‘Well, they don’t turn into fucking giraffes, Marcia!’
If I hadn’t already fallen madly in love with Barry Hall by that point, I certainly did then.
My favourite story from I’m A Celebrity . . . never made it to air, but it too involved Maureen McCormick – and Julie Goodwin. Two of my favourite people on the planet. I can’t imagine any time when these two are in the same situation and it wouldn’t be hilarious.
Every so oft
en the producers would give us secret missions to spice up camp life and the show itself. They weren’t always major things that would change camp in any way but they would be to win a reward like some chocolate or an ice cream. You know, those things you probably just have in your fridge. Those things you don’t normally spend all day trying to win. A few weeks after she’d arrived, Julie Goodwin was called up to the Tok Toki around midafternoon. The speaker box said, ‘Julie Goodwin, please come up to the Tok Toki,’ and immediately, Julie was stressed, it was like she was suddenly in a Masterchef pressure test. Julie, let me just say, is the single most lovely, gorgeous human I ever met, but she is also one of those people who seems to stress no matter what. Bear in mind we were called up to the Tok Toki on a daily basis, so this wasn’t out of the ordinary either. But still, it was enough to tip Julie over the edge.
Julie went flying up to the Tok Toki, a cloud of flour in her wake, despite the fact she hadn’t been near a kitchen in four weeks. When she got up there, the producers told her that they had a secret mission for her. They asked her not to tell the rest of us about it, but they wanted Julie to be back in the Tok Toki at the crack of dawn the following morning to find out the specifics of the secret mission.
Julie agreed to the mission and said, ‘Yes, of course, no problem, I can do that, but how will I know when it’s the crack of dawn?’
It was a good question because of course, although we did normally wake up when the sun came up, sometimes if you were lucky, you might sleep in an hour or so. There were no alarm clocks (if you didn’t count the baboons sometimes throwing shit at you to wake you up), so there was no possible way of telling the time. The producers realised that this was a problem. They couldn’t just do an announcement over the speaker either as it would wake the entire camp and thus reveal the secret mission. So eventually the producers said to Julie, ‘Get Maureen to wake you up.’
Something you must know is that it seemed that Maureen never slept the entire time we were in camp. I don’t know how she’s even alive – she must be a vampire. Every time we would look at her, she was wide awake. Actually, I tell a lie – she would always manage to nod off ten minutes before dinner was served. She had the most inconvenient timing. But otherwise: no sleeping for Marcia Brady. Even in the middle of the night, if you even slightly opened your eyes, Maureen would instantly be there, asking ‘How are you going? What are you doing? Do you want to chat? How are you sleeping?’
So in the Tok Toki, Julie Goodwin said, ‘Excellent idea, good plan, I’ll get Maureen to wake me up,’ and headed back down into camp. She walked past us very cagily but trying desperately to appear nonchalant, and Chrissie, Freddie and I immediately turned to each other and said, ‘Well, Julie’s definitely been given a secret mission!’
Julie went and found Maureen, pulled her aside and said, ‘Maureen, I need your help. Can you please wake me up first thing tomorrow at the crack of dawn?’
Now if you had asked that same question of any other celebrity in the camp, they would have immediately asked, ‘Why? Why do you have to get up first thing tomorrow morning? Have you got a meeting? There is nothing to do here, we are stuck in the middle of the African jungle and there is nowhere to go and nothing to do. Why do you have to get up?’ But of course, that’s not Maureen McCormick’s way. Maureen’s immediate response was, ‘Sure. Does it matter if it’s still dark?’
I personally would have seen that as a problem, I think most would. But Julie Goodwin, being particularly stressed and not wanting to stuff up her secret mission, panicked and said, ‘No, no, just wake me up as early as you can,’ which Maureen agreed to.
We usually went to bed at what must have been 8 or 9 pm, but to us that felt like midnight. It was dark, we were constantly tired and hungry and there was nothing else to do. Eventually it came time for Maureen to wake Julie. We were all oblivious to this story, by the way, until Julie recounted it to us the next day.
Maureen walked over to Julie’s bed, leaned right down over her ear and hissed loudly, ‘First warning!’ which of course is not the gentlest way to wake an already stressed person. Julie immediately and violently flung herself out of bed, a mushroom cloud of flour and a couple of spatulas flying into the air.
In the darkness Julie went racing – bolting – up to the Tok Toki. She slammed open the Tok Toki door, sat down and completely flustered said, ‘Right! I’m here for the secret mission!’
The overnight producer Kelly said, confused, ‘Julie – what are you doing here?’
Julie repeated, ‘I’m here for the secret mission! Sorry, am I late? Have I ruined it? I’m so sorry – I’ve stuffed up the secret mission! I asked Maureen to wake me up, but she mustn’t have woken up early enough!’
Producer Kelly said, ‘Julie, you can go back to bed . . . for a while.’
And Julie said, ‘I’m so sorry – I just thought it was time, I’m so sorry . . . I’ll go back to bed.’ And got up to leave. But just as she exited, she turned around and said, ‘Hang on – how long have I been asleep for?’
And Kelly said, ‘Julie, you’ve been asleep for ninety minutes.’
That means Marcia Brady woke Julie up at 9.30 pm! Ninety minutes after she went to bed! Imagine starting your day at 9.30 pm! The crazy thing was that Maureen hadn’t even slept yet. She obviously thought that ninety minutes was an entire night, and an appropriate time to wake Julie up.
When we were told the next day, we laughed like hyenas (baby and adult). Which was impressive, because there were hyenas everywhere. That was until a Marcia Brady–induced baboon shit missile hit us. And we promptly shut up again.
Life in the jungle was simple. There were no commitments and no responsibilities, we were just told what to do. There was no worrying about social media or what people thought of you. There was no worrying about what we looked like. The first week of the show I tried to make myself presentable, but by week six I had this awful, shaggy, Jesus-like beard and I weighed about as much as an Olsen twin’s finger. My hips and ribs were so prominent I actually had trouble sleeping on my front from about week four onwards. I was starting to get embarrassed about the way I looked.
But I had completely surrendered to my surroundings and I loved it. I could sleep all day, laugh with Chrissie Swan whenever I wanted and, when I was feeling down, I could swim in a fresh water lagoon complete with waterfall (apparently no crocodiles) while monkeys played in the trees overhead. I felt like Mowgli in the fucking Jungle Book. Similar tan, too.
So to be eliminated just a few days before the finale – to suddenly be pulled away from all of that – was incredibly surreal. When I was in there, all I could think about was getting back to the outside world and how this experience had given me a greater appreciation of my life. We would regularly comment on how we’d never again take things like coffee or eating a nice breakfast for granted. Though to be honest, I think we all forgot saying that thirty seconds after elimination.
Anna Heinrich and I left the show in a double eviction. She came sixth and I came fifth. (I only know this because I double checked with the producers.)
I was thrust back into my normal existence, and I was me again, on top of the fact that I was also a celebrity who had just been eliminated from a reality show. The first season of a reality show where even people who weren’t watching knew what was going on. I think the whole Marcia Brady factor helped: ‘Oh my God, I saw a show on TV last where Marcia Brady had to swim in elephant shit to win food for Andrew Daddo!’
Suddenly I was back in control. I could get a coffee whenever I wanted, I could have food whenever I wanted and I never had to use a long drop ever again. But I was pretty bummed to leave in a double eviction – the constant TV producer in my head knew I wouldn’t have as much screen time in the upcoming interviews.
We had the length of one ad break to say goodbye to our campmates and race up to the treehouse set that Chris and Julia broadcast from. I hugged a crying Maureen, said goodbye to Freddie, hugged Barry and then almost burs
t into tears saying goodbye to Chrissie. Which was absurd – I’d see her in a week. But she had become my rock and my lifeline. As I left, I whispered in her ear, ‘You have to win this. For us.’
Then producers were talking to us, hugging us, apologising for treating us like shit for six weeks. I had producers saying, ‘I’m sorry I couldn’t talk to you when you asked me for the time in week three . . . I really wanted to tell you, you were my favourite and I love you, but I couldn’t.’ One producer even gave me a fresh bottle of water, which felt so strange after they had deprived us for so long.
Up in the treehouse I was interviewed by Chris and Julia, given a glass of champagne and some M&Ms (apparently I was the only celebrity to drink the champagne, which I like to think is my biggest achievement of being on the show). They showed me a package of my time in the jungle and I couldn’t believe what the jungle and the show itself looked like. All I could think was, Oh my God, is that what I look like? Who is that dirty, skinny, bearded man? They showed a really sweet clip of Barry Hall talking about me, and then some live footage of Barry looking really down and upset about me having left, and I almost cried on national television over this guy I had really not expected to get along with at all – this big, tough footballer I had fallen completely, madly in love with, and who was just one of the nicest guys I’d ever met.
