Ant McPartlin has made a plea to I’m a Celebrity...Get Me Out of Here viewers after Radio 1 DJ Dean McCullough was voted to do yet another Bushtucker Trial.
The Northern Irish radio personality has become a divisive figure on this year’s show, with some viewers calling his conduct “insufferable” and McPartlin also criticising him for his lack of effort in some trials.
After successfully collecting eight stars with Coleen Rooney on Sunday’s episode, McCullough has again been voted for by the public to do Monday’s trial, called “Jack and the Screamstalk”.
This will be the sixth trial the 32-year-old has done on the series so far, with only Barry McGuigan, Danny Jones, GK Barry, Coleen Rooney, Reverend Richard Coles and Maura Higgins taking part in the other challenges.
If McCullough is voted to do another challenge, he will have tied with Katie Price and Gillian McKeith for doing the most trials in one season.
McPartlin has now made a public plea to viewers to start voting for other contestants.
During his appearance on Sunday’s, I’m a Celeb Unpacked, the TV veteran directly addressed viewers and asked them to vote for another contestant aside from Dean McCullough.
After being asked about McCullough taking on another challenge, McPartlin held his hands up and said: “Let’s all have a serious talk, I’m going to look directly at the camera here.
“I think it’s good to see other faces down there [in the trial area]. It’s not a personal thing, it’s not about Dean, it’s about us.
“We want to see different people on the show being featured. I’d like to see Barry do a trial, Melvin on there, Oti ...”
Continuing, Ant said: “We find this every year when someone gets voted in multiple times, you just get to a part where you go, ‘who’s still voting for Dean?’ I don’t get it.”
Declan Donnelly added: “I think we all know how he’s gonna react and how he’s gonna do. I just wanna see someone else down there.”
It would appear that Ant and Dec’s annoyance is shared by some viewers, who have called for the ITV show to make a rule change for the trials.
After it was announced, many fans voiced their frustrations on X/Twitter.
One person wrote: “Please implement a new rule where people can’t get voted after their second trial in a row. It just makes the show boring and makes your show very repetitive.”
“I think once you’ve done one trial you should be exempt from the next one to give others a chance,” a second viewer said.
A third added: “This is getting boring now. Campmates shouldn’t be able to be voted for twice in a row for trials. It’s ruining it every year.”
