Paddick and Kilroy-Silk to appear on I’m A Celebrity
Liberal Democrat mayoral candidate Brian Paddick and former Veritas leader Robert Kilroy-Silk will appear on this year’s ‘I’m a Celebrity Get Me Out Of Here’.
The programme, which films ten celebrities in a jungle habitat and forces them to eat live bugs and insects, begins this Sunday on ITV.
Both men are enjoying a hiatus from political life. Mr Kilroy-Silk still sits in the European parliament as an Independent MEP, after falling out with both the UK Independence party (UKIP) and his own party, Veritas.
Mr Paddick recently lost his campaign to become Liberal Democrat London mayor, when Boris Johnson took the post.
Mr Kilroy-Silk said: “I don’t think I’ll have any problems about integrating with a group of people. I’ve been dealing with people all of my life, both as a member of parliament, as a member of the European parliament, and of course, most important of all, on ‘Kilroy’ [his former BBC chat show].
“Clearly I have very strong opinions and other people will have too, but I don’t see the jungle as being the place where they should be aired,” he continued.
“It’s not, after all, a political meeting, a public meeting, or ‘Question Time’ is it? On the other hand, if people are expressing opinions that I dislike I may decide that it could be an interesting discussion.”
Mr Paddick, who made his reputation spearheading a softly-softly approach to cannabis possession in Brixton while with the police force, said he hoped the programme would take him away from “serious politics”.
“I get asked to do very serious programmes,” he said.
“I go on and debate policing issues. I talk about terrorism. I talk about racism in the police. And really it’s all very heavy and very serious.
“And I’m thinking once I’ve done this I probably won’t get asked to do any of those things any more and that’ll be great. Hopefully I might get asked to do different things. But at least the really heavy, serious stuff will dry up.”
He continued: “There will be people who have very opinionated views about things.
“You know I’m very liberal minded and I can usually take people’s arguments no matter what they are. But there will be some people there who are absolutely fixed on some pretty controversial views, maybe about religion, maybe about sexuality, who I’m going to have maybe a bit of a ding dong with.”
Programme makers promise the show will place contestants in “one of the cruellest environments on earth” with just basic food rations to survive on. They will have to undergo “petrifying and stomach-churning challenges to win supplies”.
Other celebrities include charity campaigner Esther Rantzen, tennis star Martina Navratilova and former Star Trek actor George Takei.
