Richard Madeley has opened up about his recent trip to hospital, which ultimately ended up costing him his place in the I’m A Celebrity castle.
Last week, Richard was taken to hospital after falling unwell overnight, and was subsequently not allowed to return to camp, as he’d come into contact with various people outside of the cast “bubble”.
On Monday morning, the daytime star returned to the Good Morning Britain studio, where he explained exactly what had gone down the previous week.
“I think what happened to me was I got dehydrated. I think that’s all it was,” he said. “But dehydration, if anyone’s ever suffered from it, is actually quite disturbing.
“Basically I think I had been up for about 20 hours the day before. And the day before that we were having very long days and sleeping quite late.. I don’t think I got to bed until about 4, 4.30 in the morning and I knew I was feeling thirsty – I’m quite bad at remembering to drink actually.
“And as I actually snuggled into my sleeping bag, it was freezing, I thought: ‘Ah, I haven’t had a big drink in a while, I’ll do it when I wake up’.”
Richard continued: “The next thing I knew I was sitting there babbling, I was talking nonsense… I basically woke up, I didn’t know where I was, what was going on and I could hardly string a sentence together.
“As it turned out, it was harmless, there was nothing wrong. I went to the hospital, had all the tests you can imagine, got a 100% clean bill of health and they were happy for me to go back in.”
Over the weekend, the former This Morning host wrote about his exit in a column for The Telegraph, recalling: “I reckon I must have been dehydrated that night (I’m forever not drinking enough water), because I got into my bunk and suddenly felt detached and discombobulated. ‘Funny turn’ really is about the only way of describing it.
“A nurse checked me over, but given my symptoms were so vague, it was recommended that I leave the camp and have some precautionary tests in hospital. They completed a thorough MOT in about an hour, including a high tech once-over from a consultant, and I was given the all clear by dawn.
“I felt absolutely fine, but by that point, the penny had dropped. A slightly tearful producer then confirmed my fears: by going to hospital and coming into contact with doctors, nurses, porters and so on, I’d broken the show’s hermetically sealed Covid bubble. There was no way I’d be able to return to the castle.”
During the same column, Richard also claimed that David Ginola had been rebuked by producers early on in the series for breaking one of the show’s key rules.
It’s not unfair to say the current series of I’m A Celebrity has hit a couple of bumps in the road since it started airing a week ago.
Following Richard’s impromptu exit, there was subsequently behind-the-scenes drama brought about by Storm Arwen.
Because of the adverse weather – which included 90mph winds – Ant and Dec were forced to pre-record their sequences for the first time in I’m A Celebrity history on Saturday.
It was later announced that the 11 celebrities had been evacuated from the castle due to the weather, and were all isolating individually so as not to break the show’s Covid “bubble”.
Meanwhile, it was also revealed over the weekend that an intruder had been removed from set after a security breach.