Blackburn comic Tez Ilyas on Celebrity SAS: Who Dares Wins

Tez Ilyas has joined 14 other celebrities from the world of entertainment to take part in the Channel 4 show, which puts them through Special Forces selection.

Tez, 40, said the experience was far from smooth saying it was “awful, uncomfortable and brilliant”.

The former Witton Park High School pupil said he went on the show, which started on Sunday (September 22), to have a “money can’t buy experience.

He said: “I just thought what an amazing experience it would be, a money can’t buy experience. I feel like with my stand-up, I travel around and after a while it starts blurring into one.

“Wouldn’t it be nice to be in one place and just really see it, feel it, touch it and smell it and also have a money can't buy experience. I'm not SAS material, so the fact that I got to do some SAS training and exercises was very, very exciting.”

Tez said he didn’t go on the show expecting to win.

He said: “I'm not going to sit here and be like, ‘I was hoping that I'd win’ because I didn’t expect to win.

“I was pretty sure that I wasn't going to make it to the end. I was hoping just to experience it, see how much I can take mentally as well as physically, see how much of my own personal boundaries I could push, how much of my comfort zone I can be out of and still be okay and survive and be mentally intact. And I think it did that."

The show is physically demanding and celebrities are often asked to complete gruelling challenges that are taxing on the body. Tez said he only had five weeks to prepare for the show.

He said: “I'm not an athlete like some of the guys on it. I can't just go into training camp mode, you know, I'm a civilian. I'm a normal guy. So I did the best I could.

“I hit the gym as much as I could, but I was probably starting from quite a low bar, so getting to semi-normal is probably all I could have done in the five weeks that I had.

"I probably didn't have enough time to really push myself and get myself into the shape that I would have probably wanted to be in or needed to be in.”

Tez said he loved filming the show in New Zealand – but said he faced some cold nights.

He said: “As a massive Lord of the Rings fan, it was amazing. Beautiful.

“It was cold, obviously, sleeping in those bunks in what was possibly amongst the coldest I've ever been in my life.

“It was so cold I couldn't sleep. I was too scared to take my sleeping bag out because I was so scared that we'd suddenly be woken up at 6am with 10 minutes' notice to be completely ready and out the door ready to go on a mission or whatever.

“I thought, I'm not going to have time because it takes me so long to properly get my senses in the morning that there's no way I'm going to be up and alert. So I slept with a blanket as it was so cold.”

Tez, the author of Sunday Times bestseller The Secret Diary of a British Muslim Aged 13 ¾, said the team worked well together but noticed fellow contestant Ovie Soko became “less patient”.

He said: “I didn't really notice any sort of tensions or arguments, no one was mega frustrated with anyone. I think Ovie was a bit less patient with some stuff than possibly other people. But I think that was because he's a real go getter, he was really good at everything as well.”

Tez said he learned a lot about discipline from the directing staff (DS) on the show.

Tez Ilyas (Image: NQ)

“I did learn stuff from them, like their discipline and the fact that they've been through this for real so they really know what they're talking about,” he said.

“The harsh treatment is probably nowhere near as harsh as they probably suffered in the real world. That was quite inspiring in a way, like, wow you really went through this.”

Tez found the physical challenges the hardest.

He said: “I wasn't as physically fit as some of the others there because they were athletes. And also reality TV stars.

“Part of their job is to look good and part of looking good is being in the gym a lot. So they were very, very fit and active. Being in shape is good, but it's less important in my career. So my fitness was definitely one of the hardest things to overcome.”

As a comedian, Tez said he often found it hard to “bite his tongue” and avoid snapping back at the DS.

He said: “I guess the mental challenge for me was when they're shouting at me and I felt like I was being singled out a little bit, but you just have to bite your tongue a bit because if you don’t, you might get everyone else into trouble.

“That'll be a smart way of punishing you, punish everyone else and then you feel super guilty about it…biting your tongue was tough, especially as a comic, you're always used to firing something back.”

Tez, known for hosting his own Channel 4 show The Tez O’Clock Show, said the experience showed him that he is more resilient than he first thought.

He said: “I now know I have some level of resilience. There are comfort zones that I go out of and I'm able to cope with that. That was nice. Maybe I do need to bring a bit more of the army discipline into my life.

“I would go on the show again but I feel like I'd want slightly longer notice so I could get into better physical shape to give it a really, really good go.”

Stream or watch live on Channel 4: Sundays and Mondays at 9pm.