Boy George threatened to quit I'm A Celebrity... four times

Boy George threatened to quit 'I'm A Celebrity... Get Me Out Of Here!' four times.

The Culture Club singer admitted he's still surprised he didn't "do a Gemma Collins" - referring to the reality star who left the show in 2014 after just a few days in camp - and walk out because he got so frustrated at times.

He admitted to The Sun newspaper: “I am a bit of a stomper-outer, I spent the whole of the 80s saying I was going to leave Culture Club. My manager calls it my marching, when I start going, ‘That’s it I’m leaving’.

“So I was amazed how I was able to stop myself from doing a Gemma Collins. I can remember watching her quit and thinking, ‘That could be me’.

“The thing is, the jungle is designed to drive you crazy and it works, because everything in there is impossible. So there were times when I said, ‘If this isn’t beneficial to the show, I’m not doing it’."

George confirmed reports he had threatened to quit after being denied a golf buggy to take him back to camp after a trial.

He explained: “That’s what happened in the stand-off with the buggy. Basically Sue Cleaver, who is younger than me, had a buggy back after a trial but they wouldn’t get me one.

“My view is if the cameras are on, the lights are on and it’s beneficial to the show, I’ll trudge over any mountain you like covered in animal entrails. But when the cameras are off . . .

“Sue had her buggy and Ant and Dec have gone off in a lovely Range Rover, and I’m like, ‘OK, now there’s a duty of care issue, there’s no way I’m walking up that hill.

"I’m 61, I’m asthmatic, I’m pulling that card. And there’s no reason for this. Unless you can give me a really good reason why I should walk up that hill, I’m not walking up it’...

"I ran into the shed, locked it. This guy from the crew unlocked it. Then I locked it again. Then I started chanting.

“I was laughing a bit, crying a bit, thinking, ‘What is happening?’.

“Then they got me a buggy. And thank God, because it was miles back to the camp.”

Asked how close he was to quitting at the time, George said: “It was close.

"But then once I got in the buggy I was over it and I felt like a total nana. I had to apologise to the security guard later in the car, but he was fine."

The 61-year-old singer admitted he went on strike a number of times, leaving off his microphone until show bosses agreed to his requests.

He said: "There were moments. I would usually just take off my microphone, put it in the Bushtucker Telegraph cabin and say, ‘Call me when you’ve got my socks’, because it’s unreasonable to not have socks.

“And I did have some victories. I got a water filter installed in the camp after a week of drinking this disgusting water that tasted like wood, like fire.

“I was saying, ‘I’ve had a week of this, it wasn’t in my contract and it’s like torture’. After that they got us electrolytes and put a filter on the pump, so we didn’t have to boil water."