‘BULLYING’ LARRY’S 4-LETTER TIRADE OFF CAMERA
I’M A Celebrity star Martin Roberts today tells of his jungle hell at the hands of “bullying” actor Larry Lamb.
Homes Under The Hammer host Martin claims his reality show co-star mercilessly laid into him in scenes which were not screened by ITV.
In a passionate interview, the 53-year-old suggests Larry, 69, “tried to destroy” him because he saw him as a rival.
Shaken father-of-two Martin accuses the former EastEnders actor of foul-mouthed abuse, of calling him “a porker” and hurling other insults. Larry denies the claims.
Martin is speaking to the Sunday Mirror at a hotel on Australia’s Gold Coast – as, bizarrely, Larry sits just metres away.
He says: “Larry tried to undermine me and the group and he tried to turn people against me. I’ve heard that he actually said on camera that I was a ‘ f****** lower middle class snob’. I don’t understand what that is. But clearly it’s not very nice.”
Viewers saw Larry and Martin go on a fishing challenge together.
But Martin – who suffered years of bullying at school – claims that at one point Larry told him to “get out of the way you f*****g t***”.
He continues: “It was completely out of the blue, I was like, ‘Larry, whatever you feel about what has happened, this is a family show, if you want to say something bad to me say ‘get out of the way you silly sausage’ because my kids are watching’.
“By that time I realised I am never going to get Larry Lamb to like me. Afterwards he kept throwing these really random insults at me. Whenever he could he tried to put me down. I was like, ‘ Why are you doing this? What is your end game here’?
“Are you trying to destroy me like the bullies used to try and destroy me?
“Because you are not going to do that mate, because I’m a bigger and better person than I was then.”
On one occasion he heard Larry insult him – already knowing that he had been bullied over his weight.
He explains: “I lived a long time in the jungle with Larry and it turns out a lot of the stuff that he did to me wasn’t shown.
“One thing that hurt most was when he was interviewed after a challenge and I heard him say: ‘He doesn’t need to win, because he’s a porker and he doesn’t need the food’. The day before, I talked about how I was badly bullied because I was fat, so Larry heard all of that.
“He heard the start of it, then stood up in the middle and started tending the fire, which is how much he respected me. He didn’t at all.
“So then to go and say that in an interview a day later, when he knew that was the thing that had caused me five years of pain, it reminded me of my school times when I was bullied.
“I didn’t say anything to him but it hurt a lot and I said to the producer at the time, ‘ Please don’t use that’. The only way I survived in the jungle was putting an emotional protective bubble around myself, otherwise I would have been a wreck.”
One scene viewers did see captured Larry snapping at Martin when he suggested drawing straws for a challenge.
Martin goes on: “He went from zero to extremely obnox- ious, like that. I said, ‘Look, I’m really sorry, Larry, you seem upset’. I was always trying to make amends with him.
“He said, ‘ There are 10 people in there, they are great people’. And he was very insistent that that didn’t include me.
“He said, ‘ We have a way of doing things here’. Well it’s the Larry way or no way.”
Martin says he was “treading on eggshells” when he was around his co-star.
PATRIARCH
He insists Larry wanted to be king of the jungle and believes the actor felt threatened by how much attention he was grabbing from the likes of Sam Quek, 28, Carol Vorderman, 55, and Ola Jordan, 34.
Martin says: “Larry set up this nice environment where he was king of the jungle, they were all his family. He was the patriarch and I came along and, as Sam said, ‘ We all gravitated towards you’.
“Larry didn’t like that, he wanted to be the centre of attention. He probably thought he was going to win but he was never going to.
“I didn’t go into the jungle with anything other than the highest admiration for Larry Lamb. I’ve not got an axe to grind with him, I admired the guy. I respect the guy... well, respected.”
Martin says Carol would back his version of events and adds: “If you don’t believe what I am saying, she saw it all. I wouldn’t
He’d insult me, put me down when he could and had no respect... MARTIN ROBERTS TELLY HOST ON LIFE WITH LARRY