A Blackburn racing legend, who was once crowned the winner of I’m A Celebrity… Get Me Out Of Here, has warned the new contestants that the experience will change them.
Carl Fogarty, a four-time world superbike champion, sunk to his knees in delight after it was announced that he had pipped Jake Quickenden and Melanie Sykes to the title, a decade ago.
Coleen Rooney, Tulisa Contostavlos, GK Barry and Barry McGuigan are among the latest set of camp-mates to head down under and Carl, better known as Foggy, believes they will view life differently after being on the hit ITV show, which returns tonight (Sunday, November 17).
“It was a rollercoaster ride of emotions. To do all the challenges, live on rice and beans and keep the fire going, keep boiling the water and meeting people,” Foggy said.
“I became a real team player and I learned a lot about myself. I wasn’t sure about going in at all, they really had to persuade me to go in. I think they wanted the guy that was racing, that was angry, determined and focused and wouldn’t like other people and would kick off and stuff. But I was never really like that away from the racing, I was just an ordinary guy from Blackburn.
“I was making sure everybody else was all right, especially the girls in there. I learned a lot about myself, I’m a nicer guy than what I thought I was - Michaela (his wife) said ‘I never recognised you in there’. It was an incredible experience, it really was.”
Foggy, who retired from racing in 2000 and is now a doting grandad, has two daughters. His youngest Claudia enjoyed a slice of reality TV herself last year when she entered the Love Island villa.
It was glory on the racetrack that propelled her father to fame as an army of fans cheered him to glory in the 1990s. Even greater support during his time on I’m a Celeb made him one of the most popular champions of all time.
“I don’t know how I won it, being an ordinary idiot from Blackburn. It was just unbelievable to be honest,” Foggy added in a video interview, posted on the Bikesure website, to also mark 30 years since his first world title win.
“The [I’m A Celebrity… Get Me Out Of Here producers] came asking 15 years before that just after I’d just retired from racing in 2002 and 2003. I said no because I wasn’t in the right frame of mind to do it. They came back in 2013 and asked me to do it and I said I’d maybe do it next year because my mum wasn’t so well and I needed to look after her a little bit.
“It took a lot for me to say yes, it really did. It would have been easier to say no, but I wanted a challenge and to test myself. King of the jungle, it’s the coolest title I’ve ever had!
“It did mean a lot to me to have that much public support. I think I won every night’s voting, apart from one. When I was announced as the winner I just dropped to my knees, I was gone, I was so emotional.
“It was like I’d won the world championship again all those years before. It felt that good and I think I said at the time ‘it was kind of the best thing that’s ever happened to me’. It felt like that at the time but obviously the best thing was racing bikes and becoming world champion.”
You can watch the video, produced by Bikesure, the motorcycle insurance broker he has been brand ambassador for since 2012, by visiting the website at www.bikesure.co.uk. You can also watch it on YouTube on the Bikesure Motorcycle Insurance channel.
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