While millions watched Alex Scott power through the jungle on I’m A Celebrity… Get Me Out Of Here!, ITV never showed the terrifying moment the TV presenter was rushed to the medical tent after a tick burrowed deep into her shoulder.
Speaking exclusively to the Mirror after her elimination, the former England football star revealed the horrifying incident that left her “panicking” in camp.
“I was sitting next to Martin after carrying the logs and I felt my shoulder,” Alex recalled. “I thought, ‘Oh, that’s a big spot that’s come up.’ I asked him to have a look… then Kelly Brook jumps up and screams, ‘It’s a tick!’ I was panicking as she was shouting that I needed to get to medical straight away.”
Kelly, clearly alarmed, demanded the former Lioness seek help immediately. Medics swiftly removed the tick, but the scary moment – which never made it to air – left Alex shaken. “I knew about ticks and leeches, but I always thought it wouldn’t happen to me,” she admitted. “They got it off, but no one else has had one.”
The jungle’s wet conditions also saw fellow campmate Ginge battling leeches, proving the creepy-crawlies were out in full force this series.
But the tick drama wasn’t the only heartache Alex carried into the Australian bush. Before she even boarded the plane, her girlfriend, pop star Jess Glynne, was facing every family’s worst nightmare – her mother had suffered a major stroke and needed urgent brain surgery.
Alex agonised over whether to pull out of the show entirely. “Oh yeah, 100 percent,” she confessed. “It’s been a tough time for us and obviously her family. It was a tough decision to come into the jungle.”
In the end, it was Jess who insisted she go. “Jess never wanted me to step away from not doing it,” Alex said. “She was the one that pushed me to be here.”
So when Alex walked across the bridge after her eviction, her heart sank – Jess wasn’t there waiting with the other families. Hours later, Jess broke her silence on social media with an emotional statement explaining she had to stay in the UK by her mum’s side during this “serious, life-altering time.”
“Alex would always want me to be where I’m needed most,” Jess wrote. “I can’t wait to have her back by my side.”
Despite the personal turmoil, Alex still managed to become the camp’s most notorious smuggler. The former Arsenal defender was caught red-handed sneaking salt sachets into the jungle – an offence that cost the camp a precious star.
“I felt like such a naughty schoolgirl – I should have been put in detention!” she laughed. “We stopped at a service station and they had all these little sachets. I was staring at them thinking, ‘Shall I? No… they’ll frisk me.’ But I shoved them down my socks and didn’t get checked.”
She even had accomplices. “Jack knew about it, Ginge saw me one night… he just kept giving me the eye. Shona knew from early days,” Alex revealed with a grin.
Now out of the jungle, Alex has tipped the likely winners. “From the public and how the trials have been going, it’s going to be Ginge or Aitch – because of their fan base and how they’ve come across,” she said. “I’d love Shona to win, that would be a beautiful story. But I think it’ll be one of the boys.”
From hidden medical emergencies to secret salt stashes and heartbreak behind the scenes, Alex Scott’s jungle journey was far more dramatic than ITV ever let us see.