I'm a Celebrity's behind-the-scenes secrets revealed by Christine Hamilton

Christine Hamilton, who was one of I'm a Celebrity's first ever campmates, has shared behind-the-scene secrets behind the ITV jungle show.

It comes as Hamilton was in the news this week with her husband and former Conservative MP Neil Hamilton after their kitchen was submerged in water after Storm Bert floods.

Talking to Yahoo UK about I'm a Celebrity, the former campmate says: "It's the most beautiful place to be in the rainforest. It's wonderful and it's fun, all the cooking on the campfire and goodness knows what. I shall be feeling twinges of envy and the fun they're having [on I'm a Celebrity], getting to know people finding out that — yes — they are quite as ghastly as you thought they were."

From giving into celebrity demands to spraying down the camp, Hamilton laid out what happened in the very first series of I'm a Celebrity in 2002 that she "absolutely loved" and looks back on with "much affection".

I'm a Celeb threats to quit

Stars threatening to quit I'm a Celebrity isn't a new thing TV bosses have to contend with, in fact it's been happening since the very beginning of the show. The When Louis Met... The Hamiltons star recalled fellow campmate Tara Palmer-Tomkinson warning she would walk if she didn't get cigarettes.

She said: "Tara was a very addictive personality. She was addicted to drugs. She was addicted to alcohol. She was addicted to nicotine. She was addicted to sex actually. And she'd smoke, smoke, smoke, smoke, smoke.

"Obviously when you got onto the helicopter to go out that was her last cigarette. Just before she got on the helicopter and that was it. Within 12 hours, she was slightly shaking and threatening to walk out."

Palmer-Tomkinson came second place in I'm a Celebrity and her fellow campmate Hamilton claimed the star didn't walk because she got cigarettes. She said. "I don't think any of this went out to the general public. It was behind the scenes stuff. They sent in nicotine patches which nobody really worried about that. But then they sent her in some cigarettes."

Palmer-Tomkinson's request wasn't a "diva" demand, Hamilton said, but as an "addict". The author said she hoped TV bosses were "tighter on the rules" now and that "nicotine addicts" shouldn't be allowed to head Down Under.

She explained: "It wasn't so much that she was demanding it as a diva, she was demanding it as an addict. That’s the difference. If she'd just been demanding it as a diva saying I want sparkling water, they would tell her to go jump."

Read more: How I'm a Celebrity bosses stop stars quitting the show

Making demands

Naturally there was fury in the camp and Hamilton can remember the rage she felt all those years ago. In scenes that didn't make it to air, she started a protest in camp. "I was the ring leader of course," she said.

"I said, 'Hang on a minute. This isn't fair. This is supposed to be a level playing field. She wants cigarettes. She's got cigarettes. I want alcohol. I want a nice bottle of dry white wine.' I think Nell McAndrew wanted chocolate."

The TV star said the girls all stood with their arms folded and demanded they were "treated fairly". "We won," she recalled. "They didn't show that, of course, because they don't want to show us getting a bottle of wine but it wasn't fair that Tara was being treated differently, in order to keep her in, and of course, she was wonderful box office."

Hamilton too proved popular, making the final of the series alongside Palmer-Tomkinson and winner Tony Blackburn, coming in third place of the series.

Read more: I’m A Celebrity 2024 line-up in full

Inside reality of the jungle

As a self-professed "outdoorsy person", Hamilton says she loved the experience too, especially waking up in the rainforest and throwing herself into jungle life. When the chatter subsided in camp, she would think: "God this is heaven. I could actually hear the rainforest."

Behind the scenes, Hamilton claimed the I'm a Celebrity camp had to be "sprayed down" before the show got underway so everyone didn't suffer with "agonising mosquito bites" in the jungle environment.

Hamilton said I'm a Celebrity is an "enormous operation".

"There's hundreds of crew out there, hundreds and hundreds of people out there: technicians, runners electric, producers.

"For us, they cleared the area, they sprayed it to clear it of too many mosquitoes, because if everybody is getting agonising mosquito bites, it ceases to be a joke."

Read more: Where is I'm a Celebrity filmed? Inside the jungle makeover

The first series location was in Queensland but the 2003 series was moved to Springbrook National Park in Murwillumbah, New South Wales where it has been filmed ever since (with the exception of Covid where it was based in Wales in the UK).

Previously, when Chris Packham who hasn't starred on the show made the allegations the camp was sprayed down, ITV denied it. At the time, ITV said in a statement in 2022 to The Mirror: "This is categorically not true, as a production we do not spray the jungle or castle area with insecticide, we have a strict environmental plan in place."

Venomous snakes are removed

It's not shown on cameras but TV bosses step up to take precautions with any potential dangers in camp including poisonous snakes.

"They had cleared the area, as far as they could, of poisonous snakes," she said. "And I'm sure they still do that." Only last year it was reported a snake was removed from under Sam Thompson's bed in the main camp.

Hamilton recalled the jaw-dropping instance where a python made it into camp while she was filming the show in 2002. She said: "There was one amazing moment when the guys came into camp and none of us had noticed, but apparently sitting under Uri [Geller]'s bunk for 24 hours had been an enormous python which we had simply hadn't noticed and they'd been keeping an incredibly careful eye on it because it was fast asleep."

She added: "It's not much fun if somebody gets bitten by a deadly snake. It's not good telly."

Yahoo has reached out to ITV representatives for further comment.

I'm a Celebrity... Get Me Out of Here airs nightly at 9pm on ITV1 and streams on ITVX.