The Giant on BBC Gladiators to ‘meet his match’ as series returns this weekend
With Gladiators set to return to our screens, East Midlands fans will be eagerly cheering on Ilkeston’s own Giant.
On Saturday, January 18, from 5.50pm, viewers will be able to watch as “Giant meets his match on the duel platform”, according to the episode’s preview.
Giant, whose real name is Jamie Christian, said the success of the show was “madness” which has meant that he can’t go to his local Costa Coffee “without having a few photos”. He told BBC Radio Derby that he is still living around the area, however, and still has his gym in Ilkeston. “It’s all good, I’m loving it,” he said.
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Christian, 39, runs Ilkeston Gym and Fitness in Wood Street with his wife, Katie. He also has links to Erewash having attended Friesland School, in Sandiacre, and played football for Sandiacre Town as a boy.
At 6ft 5in, Christian is one of the tallest bodybuilders of all time. He has been competing since 2009, but before that he worked as a firefighter. He eats 10,000 calories a day to maintain his physique and during his bodybuilding days could leg-press 600kg.
Alongside appearing in Gladiators, Christian has turned his hand to new hobbies. He has gotten into track cycling, and last year completed his track accreditation at Derby Velodrome which means he is now able to enter races.
Speaking about Gladiators’ success, Christian said the best part for him was that it has got his kids, and the kids of parents he has spoken to in public, “out of the bedrooms, off the iPads and on the sofa with the family on Saturday night”.
“We've got to thank the mums and dads that watched it back in the day. They've brought their kids into it,” he told the BBC. However, he said it was key that they did a good job with the reboot because parents were watching the show for nostalgic reasons “and if they hadn’t liked it, the kids wouldn’t have come down from upstairs to watch it too".
This Christmas, audiences saw Giant appear in Beauty and the Beast at the Wolverhampton Grand Theatre. He described the “fantastic opportunity” on his social media and wrote that he made memories he’ll never forget during the seven weeks.
In another post about being in the pantomime, he encouraged followers to remember “it’s never too late to start and anything is possible with the right knowledge, guidance and support”.
In this series, viewers will watch two new events - one completely unseen, as well as the return of a fan favourite. The Atlaspheres will be making a comeback from the original series and will see Contenders and Gladiators placed inside huge metal hamster balls. “The Contenders need to roll themselves over set points in the arena to score points, while the Gladiators smash into them to try to stop them,” Bradley Walsh, the show’s host, explained.
In Unleash, a new event, the Contenders will start in a smoke-filled tunnel and race around a track and up steps to grab the winning flag. This is all made more difficult by an unknown Gladiator who is unleashed behind them and will be trying to chase them down.