The line-up for I’m A Celebrity… Get Me Out Of Here 2023 has officially been announced – and this season is shaping up to be a wild one.
All the rumours that have been swirling this week – fuelled by Nigel Farage boarding a flight to Australia – have come true, with this year’s cast of campmates including Jamie-Lynn Spears, Sam Thompson and Grace Dent.
The hit ITV show will be returning to screens on Sunday 19 November, with brand new line-up of celebrities heading to the Australian bush.
Over the coming weeks the famous campmates will battle everything from food rations to the notorious Bushtucker Trials, leaving their usual luxuries far behind.
The madness will once again be overseen by Ant and Dec.
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Also on this year’s I’m A Celebrity 2023 line-up are This Morning‘s Josie Gibson, Fred Sirieix of First Dates fame (which films in Manchester), and YouTuber Nella Rose.
They’ll be joined by soap stars Danielle Harold (from Eastenders) and Nick Picard (Hollyoaks).
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The most controversial addition to the jungle so far is Nigel Farage, with viewers labelling ITV ‘a disgrace‘ for signing him up to the hit show.
The GB News presenter believes he’ll face a number of Bushtucker trials because ‘millions hate him’.
Nigel Farage will controversially join I’m A Celebrity 2023’s line-upJamie-Lynn Spears leads this year’s I’m A Celebrity castFred Sirieix joins the I’m A Celebrity 2023 line-up
Farage said: “I want to test myself. Business, politics, media, I’ve done so many different jobs and generally I have been reasonably successful. But I have never been tested in quite this way. It’s such a mental test and maybe I will discover who I really am.”
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He added: “Given millions hate me, I do expect people will vote for me to do trials! My crime was to stand against an establishment view and I was for many years the lone voice saying Europe wasn’t where we should be, so I have been a little bit demonised. I am hoping those who hate me might hate me a little bit less afterwards. But it’s a gamble.
“And the idea that somehow the things I represent – mean-spirited, small-minded, nasty, the ‘little Englander’ – all those accusations that have been flung at me over the years just aren’t true. If we can dispel some of those misconceptions, then that will be a good thing too.”
Jamie-Lynn Spears, actress, singer, and sister of Britney, is another famous face on this year’s I’m A Celebrity line-up.
She should be a fun watch, admitting she’s ‘absolutely frightened’ of all the creepy crawlies and terrifying heights involved in the show’s Bushtucker Trials.
Hollyoaks legend Nick Pickard will also join I’m A Celebrity’s 2023 line-upI’m A Celebrity 2023’s line-up includes food critic Grace DentMarvin Humes from JLS is heading into the I’m A Celebrity jungle
She said: “Everything I have seen I have been afraid of. Absolutely every one of these trials I am dreading. I haven’t looked at any of them and thought, ‘Oh cool, I could do that one’. This is going to be terrifying.”
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Former Made In Chelsea star Sam Thompson, whose girlfriend Zara McDermott just finished a stint on Strictly Come Dancing, said that he recently tried to test his camping skills but gave up and went home at 10pm… which bodes well for the jungle.
This Morning‘s Josie Gibson has warned she has a gripping fear of creepy crawlies; Channel 4 star Fred Sirieix so afraid of ‘everything’ he’s been having nightmares about the jungle; and YouTuber Nella Rose so frightened of bugs she once ‘moved out’ because a daddy long legs was in her bedroom.
The I’m A Celebrity 2023 line-up is completed by food critic Grace Dent (phobias: horrible people… her and Nigel should be a fun watch); JLS singer Marvin Humes; Eastenders’ Danielle Harold; and long-standing Hollyoaks icon Nick Pickard.
Sir Ian McKellen pays emotional tribute to long-time friend and fellow northern actor Sir Patrick Stewart
Emily Sergeant
Sir Ian McKellen has paid an emotional tribute to his long-time friend and fellow northern actor, Sir Patrick Stewart, following his death.
Sir Patrick Stewart – who was born and bred in Mirfield, West Yorkshire, and is best-known for his theatre work alongside an illustrious 60-year screen career, taking on prominent roles in franchises such as Star Trek and X-Men – sadly passed away at the age of 86, with his death being announced publicly yesterday evening (29 October).
And now, his long-time friend and fellow northern actor, Sir Ian McKellen, has paid tribute.
Sir Patrick and Sir Ian shared the stage together countless times over their decades-long careers, but also famously starred alongside each other in the X-Men franchise, and subsequent Marvel movies, as Charles Xavier/Professor X and Magneto.
The tribute, shared across Sir Ian’s social media platforms, reads: “Before everything else, Patrick was defined by being born and bred in Yorkshire, the proud county in the north of England which he loved to the end. You could hear it in his accented voice and in the stern honesty with which he told you what he thought and felt. Yorkshiremen have no truck with half-truths or avoidance of big issues. He wore his heart on his sleeve, which made him a man to rely on, to admire and in my case, love.
“We first met as ambitious young actors with the Royal Shakespeare Company half a century ago but we weren’t in the same productions.
“My first strong memory was a few years later, meeting him in the street in central London when he told me about an offer to take over a leading part in ‘Star Trek’. “But Patrick think of your stage career in the UK. Do you really want to risk getting lost in Hollywood for years and years?”
“Well, he took the risk and thank goodness for us all that he did, for not just his devoted Trekkies, but film and theatre audiences who marvelled at his using international celebrity to star in a string of cinema successes (‘X-Men’ of course) and in great classical plays by Shakespeare, Ibsen, Arthur Miller, Peter Shaffer, Pinter and Beckett at Stratford-upon-Avon, in London’s West End and on Broadway.
“America was his adopted home, where he met his adored Sunny who has cared for him through sickness and health, through thick and thin.
“But he never forsook his origins: and the proudest achievement of the most respected and beloved actor of his generation on either side of the Atlantic, was his appointment as Chancellor of Huddersfield University in Yorkshire.”
Sir Patrick Stewart’s farewell performance will be in Avengers: Doomsday, which is being released in UK cinemas on 18 December 2026
Featured Image – Gage Skidmore (via Flickr)
TV & Showbiz
James Acaster reveals eerie song all Traitors contestants are forced to listen to before every roundtable
Emily Sergeant
James Acaster has revealed the eerie (and pretty surprising) song that all Traitors contestants are forced to listen to before every roundtable.
In case you’ve been living comfortably under a rock, you’ll probably be aware that comedian James Acaster is currently a contestant on this current season of BBC‘s smash-hit reality TV competition show, The Celebrity Traitors – a show that viewers in their millions are tuning into each week, with some big names on the cast.
Acaster is currently (spoiler alert… but it shouldn’t be at this point, we are several weeks in after all) one of three Traitors competing on the show, and he’s doing a pretty good job at it.
But we wonder how much of his success can be put down to the producers’ love of a certain song they like to play before every roundtable? Probably next to none, but it’s surprising to find out how much of an integral role the tune plays though.
The song we’re referring to here, it has been revealed, is ‘The Hanging Tree’ – a folk ballad made popular by The Hunger Games.
‘The Hanging Tree’, composed by James Newton Howard and Suzanne Collins, was famously sung by Jennifer Lawrence’s character Katniss Everdeen in the third instalment of the film franchise, The Hunger Games: Mockingjay – Part 1.
The lyrics are as follows:
Are you, are you Coming to the tree Where they strung up a man They say who murdered three? Strange things did happen here No stranger would it be If we met at midnight In the hanging tree
So, as you can see, the song does make reference to ‘murder’, which is a key part of The Traitors game (not real murder, of course), but even with that context, we’re still not sure why the producers are keen to play it out before every roundtable.
During a viral TikTok clip from an on-stage Q&A this week, Acaster revealed the song’s usage to the audience: “You all walk in silence down the corridor, and you all sit down, and they don’t announce it’s gonna happen.
“The first time this will completely blindside you, but they do it every single roundtable. They play that song from The Hunger Games, that ‘coming to the tree’ song. Like acapella, Jennifer Lawrence.”
He continued: “It was every f***ing time, it was the only song we heard the whole time we were in there, and all day I would have it in my head constantly, everyone would, I’d go ‘have you got coming to the tree in your head?’ and they’d go ‘yes, it’s in my head, again’.”
Viewers who watch the show may have spotted the song being played in the background or transition between certain scenes, but now it’s been revealed that the contestants hear it too.
Who would’ve thought?
Featured Image – Euan Cherry / BBC / Studio Lambert
Daisy Jackson -
13th November 2023 
