Starved, isolated, duped... how I'm A Celeb tried to break me: Westlife's Kian Egan exposes how the stars are cynically manipulated behind the scenes By Spencer Bright When former Westlife star Kian Egan won a night in a luxury villa during his stint in the Australian jungle for I'm A Celebrity . . . Get Me Out Of Here!, he was allowed a surprise visit by his wife, Jodi, whom he hadn't seen for two weeks. The cameras showed their reunion, but not what happened next. "She whispered that she wanted me to take her up to the bedroom," he says. "So I asked the producers if we could go upstairs and they told me, "By all means... no!" My feeling of isolation was complete. On the other side: Kian Egan was crowned King of the Jungle, but during the show was kept isolated from his wife Jodi Albert even when he won a prize to see her It was a classic example of how the show ruthlessly manipulates its stars. But if Kian found the loneliness hard to bear, the starvation was intolerable. And it was an ostrich egg that finally made him crack. He felt so ill after being given one for dinner in the camp that he couldn't get out of his hammock next day. It was the most disgusting thing I have ever tasted. I was already unwell because I was so hungry," says Kian. I'm a man who usually eats a lot, but our basic ration of rice and beans only gave me around 500 to 600 calories a day. Winning trials earned us extra food, but it would be only a small piece of meat. A couple of strings of carrot and a piece of fruit - 200 calories at most. It's not nearly enough to maintain our energy levels, and our minds and bodies got weaker by the day. The egg finished me off and gave me my worst day. I'd have a dizzy spell and have to lie down, go back to sleep for half an hour and try again. Kept apart: Despite winning time in a luxury hotel with his wife, Kian was not allowed to spend any 'quality time' with her Like his thwarted passion for Jodi, his illness was kept a secret from viewers. "The producers don't show that kind of thing because it's not entertaining," he says. He went on to win, emerging from the jungle a stone lighter - "and as I didn't have any spare fat to lose, it's muscle mass that's gone. Before I went into the jungle I was in the gym a lot and I was eating protein and vegetables, proper fatty acids and nuts, avocado, things like that. My body was full of energy and then suddenly - chop! The first four or five days your body is still feeding off its reserves. And then it realises that's not happening any more, so it starts going for the muscle. Once that starts and the food still isn't coming it just shuts you down. With respect to the likes of portly fashion designer David Emanuel, who finished up in the final stand-off with him, Kian says: "People who had a little bit more on them didn't find it as difficult." Boredom and lack of food are both a deliberate attempt to lower everyone's defences, make them more fragile, and the atmosphere more emotionally charged. The sense of isolation is vital to make it all work and is strictly enforced. "You couldn't get a word out of anybody in the production team, who are there, but never seen by the viewers," explains Kian. When you left the camp for a trial, you would be accompanied by a guy. You'd ask a question like, "Did you see my wife this morning?" He'd say, "Can't tell you." The three-man crew weren't allowed to even say that. The cut-off is as real as it can get. He adds: "When you're in the jungle your first concern is to know how your family is. I really missed my wife and my two-year-old son, Koa. Your second worry is how you are coming across in the nightly programme. When he won his night in the villa, shared with EastEnders actress Laila Morse and former snooker champion Steve Davis, he asked Jodi how he was doing in viewers" eyes. "The producers must have put the fear of God into her because she said, "I can't say." So, what of his camp mates, particularly the controversial ones? Camp Saviour: Kian, Amy Willerton and Joey Essex as they prepare to return to the Main Camp According to Kian, Joey Essex of Towie is a "smart guy," beauty queen Amy Willerton is "an absolutely lovely girl who means no harm to anybody," Channel 5 presenter Matthew Wright is "hilarious," and everyone in the jungle with him was "a nice warm character." It's hard to know the full truth when everything in the show is so heavily edited - 24 hours compacted into an hour or so. But you may wonder whether three weeks on low-calorie food rations affected Kian's judgment. Or are these the qualities that won him the show, an over-generosity of spirit and a saintly willingness to overlook and forgive foibles? Joey is smart, though not in the everyday sense. Can he tell the time? Of course he can. Joey claimed in the camp not to be able to. The first thing he did when he came out of the camp was put on a big blinging gold watch with dials. There is a lot about Joey that is innocent, he's like a sponge wanting to learn from everybody in there. He asked one day what politics meant. Everybody laughed at him, but I thought why are you laughing, he might not actually know the answer. The trouble was you try and describe to him what politics is and he looks at you more confused than he was before he asked the question. To me he was like a little brother - I felt protective over him. He makes me laugh. I have a need to want to help him. We had a conversation about designer clothes when I was trying to convince him the only difference between an Armani pair of shorts and a pair from Primark is the impact it will have on his bank balance. He'd look at me as if I had 50 heads. I worry about him. He has a clothes shop, but he doesn't have a clue what he's paying for someone's salary. This year's biggest upset among the campers was "contrabandgate" over smuggled luxury items banned under the rules. Amy Willerton was the prime offender. If she had been caught the camp would have been collectively punished by having meals won in trials deducted. On the final "Coming Out" show, when all the contestants party together after their ordeal, a furious Rebecca Adlington criticised Amy for suggesting the swimmer had used Amy's smuggled lip concealer. Unsavory expedience: Kian was affected by the low-calorie diet and even fell ill from eating an ostrich egg during a challenge Kian at first thought when the issue of contraband was raised he might have infringed the rules by taking two cooking knives he brought back with him from Camp Saviour, a separate camp he was in briefly with Joey and Amy. He had become the camp's main cook and preferred the knives to the ones he had been using in the main camp. "I went straight to the Bush Telegraph and said, there's the knives back, I stole them from the other camp, shoot me down, what can I say," Kian says. They said actually, Kian, that's not what we're talking about. So I was left scratching my head. We all confronted Amy and I told her to empty her bag to make sure everything is gone, but she wouldn't. I really do think she's an absolutely lovely girl who means no harm to anybody. She's 21, and a model, and she's not thinking about everyone else. There were a few incidents like when I put more rice than beans in David's tin because he didn't eat beans, they were making him feel ill. She saw this was the biggest tin and took it. Things like that used to bother me. I wouldn't call her selfish. I would say she's immature, doesn't pay attention to other people's needs. I come from a band and a big family, I understand what it's like to share. She comes from a small family and I don't think has an understanding of what it is to be a team player. Though Matthew Wright was often portrayed as sour-faced and moaning, Kian says he saw the opposite side. Matthew was absolutely bonkers but I absolutely loved it. He entertained me on a daily basis running up and down to the toilet, his hair all over the place, the beard growing bigger and greyer every day. The day he left, 50 per cent of the life of the place went out the door. I was really sad to see Matthew go, even though I had one or two little spats with him here and there. Trivial matters were often blown out of all proportion because of the boredom. There's a schedule to keep to. You wake up in the morning. Ant and Dec come in, tell you either who is doing the Bush Tucker Trial or who's going home," he says. After that, within 15 minutes the person who is doing the trial gets whisked away, and then you are sitting around for about four hours with nothing to do. You try to make conversation with each other or fall back asleep. You might do the firewood run, have a shower. That done, what's next? The beans are on, the rice is cooking for lunch. What else? And that's when the fatigue sets in. King of the jungle: Kian Egan powers through the Cave Danger Bushtucker Trial during his time in the jungle Kian reckons most of his fellow contestants had a game plan before they came in to the jungle, conscious of how they wanted to be perceived by the public and how they were going to play it. My game plan was 100 per cent be myself and if people like that great, if people don't like that what more can you do. I didn't exaggerate or modify my behaviour in any way. What the viewers appear to have warmed to in him and fellow finalist David Emanuel was their caring nature, sensitive to other's needs. It was funny to me that everyone wasn't like that. You have someone like Laila [Morse, the EastEnders star] in there who's nearly 70. Well, the first thing you do is make sure she's all right, make sure she's in a comfortable position because I'm 33, I can sleep on a piece of wood, it doesn't bother me. I can get up the next day and bounce around, but someone like Mo couldn't. He is adamant he wasn't in it to win. Not in a million years. I went in to have fun, to have an experience. It's something I spend money to do in my own time. I go surfing on the North Island in the Philippines, in different parts of Indonesia, and live in a tent, go fishing and surf, go into a little village and try all the weird foods. So what has he learnt about himself from being on the show? I'm a lot more patient than I realised. As much as I found it difficult being cut off from society and away from Jodi and Koa, mentally I was a lot stronger than I expected myself to be. I was worried my hunger would make me angry. In every day life Jodi will say, "Oh I can't talk to you, you're hungry. Don't even come near me. Go off and eat and then we'll have this discussion," but somehow I managed to deal with that quite well in there." He was convinced David Emanuel would be the winner once they both reached the final. He's a gentleman. He's kind-hearted, very easy going and helped a lot of people in there. He's a big funny, bubbly character. I genuinely thought he was going to win. I would have been a very happy runner-up.