BREAKING: The Chase’s Anne Hegerty admits she was ‘desperately trying to get out’ of ITV show
Anne Hegerty (Image: Getty)
Anne Hegerty has admitted that she felt as if she couldn’t carry on while taking part in an ITV show and said she spent her first days trying to leave.
Speaking to Emma Jo Real-Davis on QVC’s The Joy of Shopping podcast, The Chase star reflected on her time in the Australian jungle on I’m A Celebrity… Get Me Out Of Here! and confessed just how overwhelming she found the experience at the beginning.
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She said: “The Jungle was quite an experience. Oh my goodness, I spent the first 48 hours desperately trying to get out of it.”
Anne, 67, explained that although she wanted to leave, the show’s welfare team encouraged her to keep going instead of making a snap decision.
She recalled: “They were basically saying, you know, talk to your campmates, talk to Medic Bob, take it day by day, take it hour by hour. And basically it was sort of like, try and stay another night, try and stay another day and another night.”
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The Chase star said her outlook shifted once the two camps merged, remembering how John Barrowman greeted her with open arms while Nick Knowles spent time chatting to her and reassuring her.
She said: “I remember waking up the next morning and thinking, ‘You know what, I can actually imagine staying till I get voted off.’ And I didn’t actually try to get out again.”
Anne also revealed a psychologist recommended she be excused from taking part in Bushtucker Trials for around a week because of how distressed she had become after the opening challenge.
Despite that, she insisted there were later tasks she felt capable of attempting and even said she would have happily taken on the famous Celebrity Cyclone.
“I would have been pathetic and I would have landed completely on my face, but I would have been laughing and I would have been giving it a go,” she said.
Anne Hegerty (Image: Getty)
Emma Jo Real-Davis also praised Anne’s performance in one of the show’s most memorable eating trials, saying: “Also, you downed those blended fish eyes in about 12 seconds, Anne.”
Anne replied: “I absolutely did.”
She dismissed suggestions the concoction had been something less revolting, adding: “It left a residue in the bottom of the glass. You could see that was not Diet Coke.”
However, she admitted viewers never saw what happened after the cameras stopped rolling.
Anne Hegerty (Image: Getty)
Anne said: “What you didn’t see was I threw up half an hour later… I was just being walked back into camp and I suddenly said to the security guys, ‘Hang on a second, guys,’ and leaned over and threw up.”
Anne appeared on I’m A Celebrity… Get Me Out Of Here! in 2018 and was the fifth celebrity to leave the competition after spending 19 days in camp, losing the public vote alongside John Barrowman.
After her exit, she thanked her fellow contestants for helping her through the experience, saying she “couldn’t have done it” without them and admitting she discovered she was “much more of a wimp” than she had realised.
