Staring at the shot glass of goat's blood in front of me, I wondered how it had all come down to this.
"This is the palate cleanser," the producer teased as I looked at him pleadingly.
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As press visiting the I'm a Celebrity...Get Me Out of Here! set, obviously my camp mates and I could have packed it in and gone back to the lodge.
But a weird pack mentality and desire to win takes over when you're in one of the show's tucker trials.
The lukewarm goat's blood went down easy enough, but the metallic aftertaste was overpowering and our hands shook with adrenaline, shock and rising nausea afterward.
We'd come this far, why give up now? From there we were served a sushi train of boiled fish eyeballs, witchetty grub, maggots, offal, flies, fly larvae, goat's stomach lining and cow intestine noodles.
I got off lightly, munching on boiled fish eyeballs while one of my camp mates ate a sushi roll of curl grub, blood caviar and maggots in just two bites.
It really is incredible what you can achieve when put in that tense environment. While for us it was just a game, in the camp it translates into a real meal for celebrities who would otherwise starve.
And if you were worried about hygiene, don't. The fly larvae on your plate is perfectly sanitary. All of the insects are bred in captivity by a team of critter specialists. It's no wonder the show's crew stands at more than 400.
All of the tucker is also prepared by a chef and food stylist whose job it is to consume every dish beforehand. Just don't expect her to make it taste nice.
Portion sizes are tested, and while goat's stomach lining and cow brain might horrify you, it's not going to kill you.
My buddies and I managed to stomach nearly everything except the fly larvae, impressing producers who said we'd done rather well.
Fast forward an hour and our hands were still shaking as we stuffed ourselves with Pringles, rice crackers, anything we could get our hands on to disguise the lingering taste of goat's blood.
And while we could go to our lodge, brush our teeth and numb the distress with an ice-cold gin and tonic, you couldn't help but feel for the celebrities who'd be walking back to camp with stomachs full of blood and guts and a long, un-airconditioned night in the jungle ahead of them.
*This journalist travelled to South Africa as a guest of Channel Ten.