Thomas Skinner is said to be travelling to the jungle for the upcoming season of I’m a Celebrity… Get Me Out of Here!.
The Apprentice star is presently at 7 to 1 odds, so he might think about finding his passport and bag.
The Australian show gives celebs the opportunity to tackle their anxieties (willingly or unwillingly), and Tom’s challenge will be heights.
Recently Tom said: ‘I am scared of heights. When I have to go up high I s**t myself. I have a wobble.
‘I hate it. I’m not good in lifts. I’m not good on planes.’
With the show’s penchant for throwing celebrities out of aircraft (luckily with parachutes) and integrating huge structures in challenges, Tom would have his hands full.
Aside from that, he’s ready for anything the show may throw at him.
‘I’ll eat anything. I’ll drink anything. I’ll do anything. I’d be fine.’
He also has an ulterior motive for potentially doing the ITV show: ‘Going on the show would do me a favour as I could lose a bit of weight. I’d go in and have a little diet.’
There’s only one person he’d want in the hammock across from him: heavyweight champion boxer Tyson Fury. ‘He’s a legend and cracks me up,’ he says.
While he wishes Gemma Collins will not return. ‘She’d do your head in wouldn’t she?’
Lord Alan Sugar isn’t planning on sleeping beneath the stars anytime soon.
‘He would last five minutes because he’s used to luxuries. I can’t see him rolling up to the jungle in his Rolls Royce,’ he joked.
Despite being dismissed from The Apprentice in week nine (three weeks before the final), Tom has maintained contact with the 76-year-old businessman.
‘He’ll message me on WhatsApp. He checks in on me every now and again, but mainly he just sends football memes. He supports Tottenham and I support West Ham so we like to wind each other up.’
Tom will be eternally grateful to Lord Sugar for giving his enterprises, Bosh Beds and The Fluffy Pillow Company, a “leg up.”
‘I started my business before being in the spotlight, but the show helped me massively. It was a big leg-up. It means everyone could get to know me.’
He continued: ‘It’s crazy to think how far I’ve come.’
Tom used to’sell knock-off items, sleep on a fold-out bed on the floor downstairs, and drive a clapped-out £500 van.’ He attributes his success to dedication.
‘It’s all been about hard work and not giving up. I also don’t spend too long looking back on how far I’ve come, I just keep going.’
Of course, we had to ask Tom to reveal a The Apprentice secret, which he gladly did.
‘If you make a successful sale during a task and it isn’t filmed, then it doesn’t count! I made that mistake a few times and it was quite frustrating.’
If Tom did the jungle, four key people in his life would be unable to join him: wife Sinéad Chambers, two-year-old son Henry, and twin daughters Roma and Darla, who are just two months old.
‘The longest I’ve been away from them is three days when I went to America so I would struggle with that massively.’
Tom is alluding to a competition in North Carolina when he was guiding a West Ham Legends squad.
While he was there, he received a call from Sinéad, who informed him that she required an emergency C-section within the next 24 hours since one of the twins’ heartbeats had slowed and they were no longer gaining weight.
As he hurried home, Sinéad’s sister kept Tom updated, and he was warned that all three of his family members were now in “serious danger.”
Tom sobbed in the airport as he contemplated informing Henry that the rest of their family had not arrived.
He then proceeded to his flight, and just as he turned his phone to aeroplane mode, he received another message from Sinéad’s sister, this time with the joyful news that his twins had been born.
Tom hadn’t slept in two days by the time he arrived at Heathrow and saw his girls and wife.
‘My wife and the twins were in the hospital for the first few weeks of their life. It was scary times,’ Tom recalled.
‘It did have an impact on me, but they’re all good now so I’m grateful. The doctors and nurses did an incredible job so now they’re gaining weight and they’re blinding!
‘That situation feels like a million years ago now because I’ve always got so many things going on. We just had to get on with it. That’s how I dealt with it. I would get my head down, go to work and then give them love.’
Now he’s settling into life as a family of five, and he has one word to describe it – ‘hectic’. Bosh!
Tom is working with iCandy, an award-winning creator of pushchairs. He is using the iCandy Cerium Twin Pram.
