I'm A Celeb star 'wanted to kill animals' during jungle experience

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A former I'm A Celeb star revealed the hunger she experienced in the jungle made her 'want to kill animals'. Amy Willerton said surviving on measly portions of rice and beans unleashed a primal instinct.

The former beauty queen, who was just 21 when she appeared on the ITV show back in 2013, has lifted the lid on camp life. She told Platinum Spas: "I’ve never truly been so hungry like that in my life before."

She said she'd make pretend beef burgers with Joey Essex to try and take her mind off it - and once felt so weak that when a brushturkey walked into camp she only had one thing on her mind. Amy admitted: "I was thinking how will I be able to kill it, cook it, and eat it without people seeing?"

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"I’ve never violently killed an animal before so that’s why I’m saying it’s a real return to the primal instinct," she said. "In this day and age, if you kill a chicken, it’s so barbaric because you order it off a menu and it arrives, and we lose that connection with the process.

"You get given a small ration of rice and beans every day but not a big ration, it’s one cup of rice and one cup of beans. That’s basically enough food to keep you alive so you know you’re not going to die and then anything else is a bonus."

Amy Willerton
Amy Willerton

However it wasn't all bad, Amy said the bland food became "absolutely delicious after a while", adding: "I think it’s a really healthy thing to do (with small rations of food). I’ve never truly been so hungry like that in my life before and it reminds us how lucky we are when you think of countries that don’t have access to food in that way so for me, it taught me a lot.

"Looking back, I don’t think ‘what an awful thing’ instead I think ‘wow what an incredible thing to experience at such a young age’ because I was only 21."

The mum-of-one said she would tell current campmates, which include Coleen Rooney and Danny Jones, to use the opportunity to connect with themselves and "disconnect from everything else". She continued: "We don’t get a lot of time to unplug. I would fully embrace it and that was one of the things I said to myself when I went in there, I would do every challenge, I would try my best no matter how scary it was and that was what my intention was.

"I wanted to fully enjoy it and commit myself to it and because I made that mental promise to myself, that really pushed me to not chicken out of everything. Even though there were challenges where you had to dunk yourself in a bowl full of fish guts, get buried with a snake, or eat this, I knew in myself that I had already made the mental decision that I was doing anything I was asked to do.

"You get to decide how you will approach the opportunity so I would just say, ‘are you going to ever put yourself in the jungle in this situation again’?" I’m A Celebrity… Get Me Out Of Here! continues on ITV1 and ITVX.