Tony Blackburn has said that he had no idea what he was getting himself into during the first season of I’m A Celebrity… I Need to Get Out of Here!
Over the course of 22 seasons, the juggernaut show has seen the likes of Gemma Collins, Caitlyn Jenner, Peter Andre, and now Matt Hancock, but back in 2002, Tony was joined in the jungle by spoon-bender Uri Geller, comedian Rhona Cameron, boxer Nigel Benn, performer Darren Day, and socialite Tara Palmer-Tompkinson.
DJ Tony, who was 59 at the time, received 55% of the public vote, which a fresh-faced Ant McPartlin and Declan Donnelly announced in camp totaled 1.5 million phone calls.
Tony cried, “Oh, I’m so thrilled!” when he learned he had won. That was really unexpected.’
But despite winning the series, the 79-year-old has since stated that he thought the bushtucker trials, a firm feature of the show, were a ‘mistake’.

Appearing on This Morning on Wednesday, Tony shared: ‘It just changed me as a person, I loved it, absolutely loved it.’
Host Holly Willoughby replied: ‘You didn’t know what you were going into, I mean, it’s different now, people can watch the last series and see what it’s going to be like and know that there’s going to be these trials, but you didn’t know any of that.’
Tony continued: ‘I don’t think that they told us that they were going to have these bushtucker trials.

‘Tara Tompkinson was the first one to do it, and she went out and she came back, and she said to us, “It was weird, they put me in a box and they poured stuff over me”.
‘And we all said, “Well it must have been a mistake!”‘
He added: ‘It’s harder now than it was when we did it.’
Despite the shock of the first ever bushtucker trial, Tomkinson went on to snatch 45% of the public vote and scored the runner-up place.
Very sadly, Tara died of a brain tumour and rare autoimmune illness in 2017 aged 45.
Christine Hamilton finished in third place. She was well-known in the media as the wife of Neil Harrison, a former Conservative MP for Tatton. He is now the leader of UKIP.
This Morning airs weekdays from 10am on ITV.