Former boxer Barry McGuigan was a fan favourite in the I’m A Celebrity camp in 2024 and has opened up on his experience and any chance of an All Stars reunion
He won the hearts of the nation on I’m A Celebrity Get Me Out of Here when he appeared alongside Coleen Rooney and McFly guitarist, Danny Jones, in the 2024 series. Yet Barry McGuigan, reflects on whether he would ever be tempted for a round two on the show.
Speaking ahead of last night’s dramatic final he said: “I enjoyed it, but would I do it again? Probably not…the jungle was phenomenal. It was great. I was starving the whole way through – genuinely really hungry, and if we mucked up our trails, we didn’t get food, so that happened several times.”
Discussing the lack of nutrition the 65-year-old former world boxing champion., continues: “I was genuinely very hungry, and I lost a stone and a half in the time I was there. It was an amazing experience – incredible, but I was terrible at the tasks. I was just rubbish, and I couldn’t see.”
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Recalling the great sense of camaraderie he formed with his campmates, he says: “I made a lot of friends, and they were all a great a bunch of people. Danny in particular, Melvin [Odoom] is a great fella, and Alan [Halsall] from Coronation Street is a fabulous lad as well – all the lads were really great.”
Yet Barry’s life in the limelight, has seen immense highs and lows, and in 1982 he tragically killed a Nigerian boxing opponent in the ring, called Young Ali (Ali Mustaffa).
The story was loosely touched upon in the 1998 film, The Boxer. In it Oscar-winning actor, Daniel Day-Lewis, depicted the Irishman.
“I killed that young man that night. I will never forget it – it was a terrible fight. I dropped him and he was hurting. I dropped him again in the fifth round twice, and I went to the neutral corner.
“In those days we didn’t have paramedics ringside or ambulances, and the nearest neurosurgical hospital wasn’t aware that a fight was going on. That’s all that’s changed now, but that was the fight that actually changed it.”
Tragically, Barry’s daughter, Danika, was diagnosed with acute lymphoblastic leukaemia at age 11 in 1997, but after two years of treatment she recovered from the illness.
Heartbreakingly, she later died from bowel cancer at 33. And Barry admits that Daniel Day-Lewis, inspired her to become an actress.
Holding back tears, he says: “I had to leave that [film] set at the end of 1997 because my daughter got leukaemia. She got better, and sadly she died in 2019, but that was an amazing time, and she came and watched the movie.
“She watched how Daniel went through the process and she loved him. She became an actress because of that.”
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