Jungle bullies forced me out says Lady C: Thought SHE was the aggressive rude one? Lady Colin Campbell begs to differ. And may sue over 'insults and plotting' by her two rivals
Let nobody say they couldn’t see this one coming. After an explosive 19 days filled with more insults and spats than even the most fevered producers could have dreamed of, Lady Colin Campbell has left the Australian jungle setting of ITV’s I’m A Celebrity... Get Me Out of Here!
With a look akin to E.T. in pearls, and a capacity for insult which left grown men close to tears, it is fair to say that Lady Colin was probably the most dangerous beast in the jungle.
Her final hours in the camp were spent arguing with entrepreneur Duncan Bannatyne, 66, and Spandau Ballet lead singer Tony Hadley, 55 - whom she called a ‘silly old man’ and told to ‘**** off’ before opting to leave.
After an explosive 19 days filled with more insults and spats than even the most fevered producers could have dreamed of, Lady Colin Campbell has left the Australian jungle setting of I’m A Celebrity... Get Me Out of Here!
Neither Duncan Bannatyne, 66, or Spandau Ballet's Tony Hadley, 55, were saddened by Lady C's departure
‘It’s a huge relief, as it was such a clash of personalities,’ said Hadley of Lady Colin’s exit yesterday.
Bannatyne heartily agreed. ‘Absolutely nothing I will miss about Lady C, her accusations, her swearing, the fact that she won’t do any work,’ said the businessman. ‘I’m so glad she’s gone.’
Last night Lady C herself said: ‘I think there were so many arguments because Duncan and Tony had taken the decision to shut me up, shut me down and run me out of the camp.
'There is no prospect of me ever having them in my life in any way, shape or form. They have earned my disregard.’
Lady Colin, 66, is holed up in the five-star splendour of the Palazzo Versace hotel near Brisbane, where she will be selling the story of her Bushtucker trials to two Sunday newspapers for a reputed £50,000. A princely sum, you might think, given that her fee for participating in the programme is a further £70,000.
The roof of her dilapidated castle in Sussex — the repairs to which she cited as the reason for entering the jungle in the first place — can now be repaired twice over.
However, in what may be the most extraordinary twist in what has become the talking point of the show, there will be a hefty dose of ‘poor me’ yet to come, peddled by Lady Colin herself.
See more of the latest news on Lady C's exit from the I'm A Celebrity jungle
The eccentric campmate brought a touch of glamour into the jungle but was also at the centre of arguments
Lady C called her allies Kieron Dyer and Chris Eubank 'true gentleman' and hoped they would remain friends
Somewhat astonishingly, given her outlandish behaviour over the past few weeks, she is going to claim that she had to leave the jungle because she was the one who was being bullied. The culprits? According to Lady Colin, none other than Tony Hadley and Duncan Bannatyne.
I understand that she claims she overheard the pair ‘plotting’ to get rid of her, and that was the final straw.
One source said she went into the Bush Telegraph — the booth in which contestants privately voice their frustrations to camera — and told producers she demanded an audience with her lawyer over what was going on, claiming she was being harassed to a point which she deemed an offence.
Another source says she had ‘various medical issues’ which had made it advisable for her to leave, but added that the problems with Bannatyne and Hadley had exacerbated her levels of stress.
When she reached the hotel in the middle of the afternoon on Tuesday, she cut a spritely figure and did not, say witnesses, appear to be a woman in need of any medical aid. Her son, Dima, who flew out to Australia to support his mother, tweeted soon after her exit that she was ‘fine’.
I understand that Lady Colin, who asked her fellow celebrities to call her ‘Lady C’, is going to claim she didn’t want to leave the camp but had been ‘forced out’. There is a possibility she will take legal action against ITV — as is well known, Lady C is as familiar with lawsuits as Ant and Dec are with television cameras.
Mutterings are already being made about her desire to subpoena some unbroadcast footage of Hadley and Bannatyne calling her names — which seems rather curious, given they had plenty of arguments on-screen, too.
However, sources at the broadcaster — which has yet to receive any direct communication from Lady Colin’s legal team — seem fairly relaxed about the mud that may be about to be thrown their way.
‘She may have felt she was being bullied, but viewers can make up their own minds from what they have seen,’ says an ITV source. ‘We feel we have accurately represented what has happened on the campsite.’
Another ITV source said: ‘What went on was some bickering between adults — it was not bullying.
‘As everyone has seen, she gives as good as she gets. In fact, it is she who has been making all the personal insults and she was also the one who started most of the arguments. It is bizarre for her to claim she was bullied.’
Lady C’s agent Mike Hollingsworth said: ‘The official statement is that she’s left due to a medical condition. I know she suffered a fall in the jungle camp, and because of that viewers will have seen that she has been using a special chair to sit on for a little while.
George Shelley picked Lady C as his deputy when he was camp leader and was saddened by her departure
George (pictured with Vicky and Jorgie) broke down in tears when he found out Lady C had left the camp
‘I have spoken to her, and she is sad to be out. I think the medical condition might have been exacerbated by a certain amount of bullying she has been receiving by two particular campmates.’
Agents for Tony Hadley and Duncan Bannatyne strongly deny any bullying on their part. Hadley’s agent said it was ‘unbelievable’ and ‘pure fantasy’ to suggest he had bullied her.
Maybe so — however Lady C’s son, Dima, told this newspaper a week ago: ‘I think she’s getting a bit fed up of being bullied.’
He then conceded: ‘She has asked for it a little bit, but then it’s a country versus one lady and she’s keeping her head up. Good on her.’
From the very start, Lady Colin showed a talent for incendiary over-reaction. On the second day, she and former Blue Peter presenter Yvette Fielding were ‘punished’ with a pot-scrubbing challenge. Lady C refused to take part, leaving Yvette to do the task alone.
Not only did she refuse, she also became volcanically annoyed with Tony Hadley, who had nominated her for the task on account of her being ‘lazy.’
She thundered: ‘I have five tiaras and I turned down one of the richest men on earth!’
‘The whole thing is a farce,’ she went on, telling a plainly terrified Hadley: ‘You’re 55 years old and you haven’t figured out that everything has consequences?’
She concluded: ‘Tossers, tossers, the whole bunch of you!’
There was then a fall-out with American choreographer Brian Friedman. She told him he was a ‘self-important little runt’ and added he was ‘so full of s*** that if you ever took an enema you’d disappear off the face of the earth’.
Friedman, who has left the jungle, later made up with her, but cautioned: ‘When you are Lady C’s target, you have got to watch out because she is very sharp. I got on the wrong side and I suffered the consequences.’
Hadley seemed to be on the receiving end of many of her greatest insult-fests, and he and Bannatyne formed an alliance against her.
After Hadley told Lady C that the Italian dictator Mussolini would have liked her, she said: ‘Tony has got to be one of the biggest bores I’ve encountered and his voice . . . he has the voice of a whining 14-year-old girl. As for that goat (Bannatyne), I would like to understand anything he says because he doesn’t speak English.’
In another huge fall-out, Hadley scolded Lady C after she was seen to throw a beetle on the fire, telling her she had been ‘really cruel’. She hit back with a string of threats and insults, telling him: ‘You are a pretentious piece of s***.
‘If you say one more word, I am going to take it further. You are a misogynistic bully. You are a chippy oik and I’ve had a belly-ful of you.’
Two days later there was another furious argument, this time with Bannatyne. An emu had apparently made a mess near her sleeping area, and Bannatyne had failed to clear it up. ‘That’s diarrhoea. He needs to clean it up,’ she said. ‘Duncan dodges his duties at every point. He knows there is a poo and has clearly ignored it. Unless that poo is cleaned up, I want to leave this camp.’
Not that hostilities between this trio were self-contained.
Tony and Duncan were at their wits ends with Lady C, often bickering with her during their time in the jungle
Lady C did leave some friends behind - she insisted she would stay in touch with unlikely ally Kieron Dyer
Former footballer Kieron Dyer, 36 — one of the few to have befriended Lady C — was made to feel so uncomfortable by the combative atmosphere that he said he wanted to leave the camp. ‘This whole thing is just not fun any more,’ he said. ‘The first couple of weeks were so good and the last three days have been pure s***. And the oldest three are acting like the youngest three.’
When Dyer learned of Lady C’s departure, he said to Hadley and Bannatyne: ‘She’s gone, but I don’t want to hear any gloating from you two — can we agree to that?’
Union J singer George Shelley, 22, also said he was fed up with the older camp mates always arguing, comparing their childish behaviour to being in a playground: ‘It’s like having your parents drag you into an argument you don’t want to be part of.’
Lady C (pictured) finally bid farewell to the jungle on Wednesday night's show, following a day of relentless bickering with her bitter camp rivals Duncan Bannatyne and singer Tony Hadley
Meanwhile, Yvette Fielding, 47, who was voted out of the jungle earlier this week, said that what has been seen of Lady C on screen is not the worst of it.
She said: ‘What you’re seeing is not the real woman that we see. I don’t want anything to do with her. What you see is this very jolly, eccentric, older lady, and yet in real life she can switch just like that, and then the abuse comes. You’re walking on eggshells.’
Fielding — who screamed at Lady C to ‘shut up’ and called her ‘rude’ — added: ‘There was a build-up. The reason why I snapped at her is because of the personal things that were said that weren’t shown on camera.
‘I took it and took it . . . and then I just thought: “I can’t cope with you any more — you’re a very rude woman.” ’
Fielding declined to expand on what Lady C had said to her with ‘such venom, lots of bad language’, but her remarks are thought to have included a scathing reference to her career.
Bannatyne appeared to get particularly exasperated by Lady C’s boastful assertion three days ago that she had always had ‘a modest degree of renown’, and that she’d been counselled by Jackie Onassis on ‘how to walk so that people wouldn’t recognise you’.
Last night, after her exit from the jungle, Lady Colin said: ‘I was obviously the grandest person in the camp, and we know the British public are obsessed with class.
‘After it became apparent I was getting all of the attention, it caused a tremendous amount of bad feeling in the camp.
‘Tony’s refusal (to be chambermaid) became personal because I was a Lady with a capital L. Had I been asked to be chambermaid, of course I would have done it, I am a sport. And I don’t have a chip on my shoulder.’
For now, she can celebrate her freedom and entertain various lucrative media offers, including Celebrity Big Brother in January.
Her former husband, Lord Colin Campbell, to whom she was married for a mere 14 months, has this to say: ‘She is trouble with a capital T. If I could offer any advice to the other contestants, it would be to avoid her at all costs.’
Additional reporting: Izzy Ferris in Brisbane.
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