Vernon Kay and Shane Richie snuck in mobile phones before they went into ‘I’m A Celebrity… Get Me Out Of Here!'.
Vernon Kay and Shane Richie snuck in mobile phones before they went into I’m A Celebrity
The BBC Radio 2 DJ has told how he and the ‘EastEnders’ star bought “manky burner phones” before they headed into Gwrych Castle - the alternative location for the ITV1 reality show during the COVID-19 pandemic, due to travel restrictions - in 2020, and Vernon compared their antics to the HBO crime drama ‘The Wire’.
The 48-year-old television presenter told Nick Grimshaw and Angela Hartnett on their ‘Dish’ podcast: “I knew Shane Richie was doing it ... I said, 'Look, they're gonna take all our stuff off us, your laptop, your phone ... take a burner and then we can keep in touch.
"So we both had these manky burner phones. It was like ‘The Wire’. We kind of kept in communication until the very last day.”
Vernon - who has daughters Phoebe, 18, and Amber, 13, with his wife, 'Strictly Come Dancing' presenter Tess Daly, 53 - was happy to break the rules alongside the 58-year-old soap star, so he could speak to his kids before the series, which is usually filmed in the Australian jungle, got underway.
He said: “Having five days of no communication ... I need to speak to the kids. I need to make sure everything's alright."
The sometime ‘This Morning’ presenter revealed he got his big break when he was approached by a model scout to strut his stuff on a catwalk on a boozy night out.
Vernon said: “It was me and two friends and we went there basically to do a little bit of Christmas shopping, but we knew that the Clothes Show Live was full of girls.
“Three guys, night out in Birmingham the Thursday before. It was great fun and we just ended up, once we’d done a lap of it, you think ‘Do you know what? It’s not all it’s hyped up to be this, let’s just sit in the bar’.
“So we just sat in the bar and we talked about football and this, that and the other. And then this guy, who I’m still friends with today, James North from Select Model Management, came up to me and said ‘Listen, you’ve got the look of the moment, would you mind doing this catwalk show for us?’
“I was absolutely bladdered, and I tried walking in a straight line and I’m all over the place and then at the end of it, the guy said ‘Look, if you want to we’ll offer you the chance to come down to London and see how it goes’.”
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