I’m A Celebrity... Get Me Out Of Here! alum Amy Willerton has shared her advice for Coleen Rooney ahead of the WAG’s stint in the jungle.
Rooney, 38, will enter the camp in Australia during Sunday’s launch show alongside famous faces like Strictly pro Oti Mabuse and McFly’s Danny Jones.
Former beauty queen Willerton, who came in fifth place on the ITV show in 2013 when she was just 21, urged Rooney to embrace the “scary” challenges and “not chicken out” of anything.
“I would just really use the opportunity to connect with yourself and disconnect from everything else. We don’t get a lot of time to unplug,” she told Platinum Spas.
“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.”
Willerton reflected on the grueling and often stomach-churning bushtucker trials, which in the past have shown celebrities eating things like blended bull penis, grubs, and fish eyes.
“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,” she said.
“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?’”
The model also discussed what it was like living on a small ration of rice and beans every day in camp.
“I would say living on little food returns you to primal because I didn’t know when I was going to eat,” she admitted.
“You are fighting for survival and they really put your body in a state where it believes it is fighting for survival.
“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.”
Willerton added: “I’ve never truly been so hungry like that in my life before.”
Earlier this week, Rooney shut down rumours that she’ll be exempt from trials due to her reactive arthritis, which causes pain and swelling in the joints.
“I want to experience something different, do something for myself and meet new people. I’m really looking forward to doing the trials,” she said in a video on Instagram on Monday.
“There’s been a lot of news saying I am exempt because of various illnesses. But I can confirm I can do every trial, so I am not excluded from any, and I am looking forward to it.”
