Emotions ran high for campmates in this evening’s I’m A Celebrity… Get Me Out of Here! as former world champion boxer Barry McGuigan broke down about losing his daughter to cancer.
The hit ITV series returned to screens on Sunday evening with the biggest ITV overnight audience of the year outside of sport, with an impressive peak audience of 8m viewers.
In tonight’s show, campmates heard about the death of the Irish boxing star’s daughter, while Coleen Rooney opened up about the Wagatha Christie trial for the first time since arriving in the jungle.
The topic arose after the contestants were sat eating rice and beans around the campfire when Newtownabbey-born Radio 1 DJ Dean McCullough asked Barry if he goes to church.
The boxer who represented Northern Ireland in the 1978 Commonwealth Games replied: “I used to go to church a lot but after my daughter… you know, not so much. I used to go incessantly but when you lose a child it’s different.”
McGuigan told the campmates, who include TikToker GK Barry and Strictly star Oti Mabuse, about his daughter Danika who died aged 33 in 2019 from cancer.
“She had leukaemia,” he said, referencing a battle that his daughter had won early in her life in 1999.
“When I was making (the 1997 movie) The Boxer with Daniel Day Lewis, three weeks from the end I had to leave because she’d been diagnosed with leukaemia.
“They thought she wasn’t going to get better but she fought back and she won it. She had two years of chemo but she was good, she came back and…” he said.
However, before he could finish his sentence, the sportsman broke down with former McFly singer Danny Jones and N-Dubz singer Tulisa giving him a hug.
“Thank you, you’re all so lovely, I really appreciate it,” he said, discussing how his daughter had gone on to become a successful actress.
Speaking about Danika’s second bout of cancer 20 years after she beat leukaemia, he told Jane she had “pains in her tummy but she was making a movie, she put it off and went to the doctor, called us all in. Stage 4 bowel cancer, five weeks, five weeks she died.
“She suffered so much pain and she said ‘I can’t hold on.’
“I try to talk about it but no matter what I do it just comes back. It was hard just watching. It was shocking.”
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Over the years Barry has talked about the shock of Danika’s first diagnosis and his admiration for her bravery in battling the disease. Danika, too, had spoken about her father and how much of her strength came from him as she came through gruelling treatment as a child.
She had said what she admired most about her dad was his determination, and when she got the all-clear from her childhood cancer she said: “I know how lucky I am and I know there’s been one figure that, throughout, has been a huge inspiration to me. That’s my dad.”
It appeared that Barry opening up during tonight’s show got Coleen Rooney emotional too, as she confided in Dean and Oti about the loss of her sister.
“Even when Rosie died, I kept it together for me mum and dad,” the WAG said.
Revealing her anniversary is coming up in January, she added: “She was 14 when she died, she’d be 26 now. It’s hard to lose a child, I’ve always said that… so we’re lucky to have what we’ve got.”
The wife of former England captain Wayne Rooney also opened up about the infamous ‘Wagatha Christie’ ordeal for the first time in the jungle in tonight’s episode.
During a conversation with journalist and Loose Women star Jane Moore about her coverage of King Charles and then-wife Princess Diana, Dean turned to Coleen to comment: “Can you imagine if Princess Diana would have done a Wagatha Christie?”
The journalist replied telling Coleen it was “epic what she did”.
In 2019, Coleen was in the public spotlight after she accused her fellow WAG Rebekah Vardy of leaking stories about her to the tabloids.
When asked by GK if she had been scared about outing Vardy, Coleen said: “No because I just didn’t think it would have the impact it did, because I was just that sick and tired of it, it was draining.”
“That was my worst nightmare to go to court,” she added, referencing the pair’s legal battle last year which was won by Coleen.
“I felt like it was like putting on a show for the whole world. What got me, over the whole thing, was it became a bit of a joke and that’s really disappointing, it wasn’t a joke for me.”
“No one knew the full story.”
Elsewhere in the episode, singer Tulisa explained the origins of pop group N-Dubz which she joined when she was 11 years old, while Dean and the singer found themselves at the centre of ‘beangate’ after the pair accidentally emptied the camp’s food onto the ground.
Viewers also witnessed the first Bushtucker Trial of the series with GK Barry taking on ‘Vile Volcano’ facing snakes, spiders, rats and plenty of creepy crawlies, before collecting nine stars for camp.
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