Rebekah Vardy’s having a pool party..
SOAP STARS Jennie McAlpine, Rebekah Vardy & Vanessa White washing in the I’m a Celeb pond
STANLEY Johnson has become an early favourite to win I’m A Celebrity – perhaps because he’s already well aware of the dangers lurking in the jungle.
For Boris Johnson’s dad was once rushed to hospital with a flesheating bug, which he contracted through his underpants.
Stanley was trekking in the Ugandan jungle when his backside started swelling up.
It got steadily worse after he returned to the UK, and he was sent to the Hospital for Tropical Diseases in Central London. He was told by a doctor that the rare tumbu fly had laid its eggs in his underpants while they were hanging up to dry.
The eggs had penetrated his skin and, after a few days, the larvae hatched. Usually, the larvae remain under the skin, feeding off their host until they have fully formed into insects. They then burrow to the surface and fly away.
The condition is known as
The doctor plucked it out. It was making a last effort to fight for life STANLEY JOHNSON ON HAVING LARVAE REMOVED
myiasis, and the larvae had to be removed by a medic.
In his book – Stanley, I Resume – he recalls the doctor extracting the larvae, in 2002. He wrote: “It looked large and fleshy, well nourished, I would say. I guess it must have been half an inch long, and almost as wide.
“The doctor had plucked it out from a position very near the surface. It had obviously been making a last desperate effort to fight for life and air.” He said his wife Jenny was so horrified at the prospect of the larvae breaking free that he was banished to the spare room.
Stanley is already a favourite to bag the I’m A Celebrity crown, with Twitter users backing him for the win. TV presenter Richard Osman tweeted: “Stanley is going to win this at a canter.”
Another viewer wrote on Twitter: “Stanley Johnson might be the only Tory I ever vote for.”
Fans were calling for Stanley to be King of the Jungle after a series of gaffes just minutes into the first episode. The father of the Foreign Secretary had a little trouble recognising his fellow contestants at the start of the ITV show.
First, he thought that Leicester City footballer Jamie Vardy, whose wife Rebekah is on the show, played cricket. Then, when meeting Hollyoaks actor Jamie Lomas, Stanley said he knew the soap because it airs before Channel 4 News.
The ex-member of the European Parliament also needed Rebekah to explain that Ant and Dec were the hosts of the show. And, when he found out he was paired with comedian Shappi Khorsandi for the first challenge, Stanley said: “I’m a happy chappy, Shappi.”
Ant told last year’s Queen of the Jungle, Scarlett Moffatt: “Stanley is a bit of a legend already, isn’t he? He has gone down well so far.”
Meanwhile, last night Amir Khan and Georgia Toffolo took on a Bushtucker Trial called Critter-Cal Rescue, which took place underground in a giant termites’ nest.
But Amir couldn’t take the pace and shouted to get out, meaning the camp had to survive on rice and beans. And it was the boys’ turn to bare some skin off for the jungle shower, with Amir, Jamie and Jack Maynard all stripping down to their boxers for the jungle tradition.