How jungle stay put a smile back on Harry’s face
HARRY Redknapp has said his stint in the I’m A Celebrity jungle taught him how to laugh and have fun again after years of football management turned him into a “miserable git”.
The former Tottenham and West Ham boss, 73, was crowned the ITV show’s King of the Jungle in 2018.
He is convinced the experience changed his outlook on life and improved things for wife Sandra – married to the football fanatic since 1967.
Speaking to fellow jungle contestant Fleur East on her podcast, Harry – pictured right at a match in his management days – said: “I started having a laugh again. I mean, I did become a miserable git when I was a football manager, I must be truthful.
“It’s hard. You’re on your own, you get beat, the players are in the dressing room, you’re not one of them any more.
“You’ve gone from being a player to being the manager and now you’ve got to keep them disciplined.
“You can’t have a laugh with them, you take it home with you, it’s all on your shoulders.
“When I went in there [the jungle] with you guys, we had a laugh and it was fun. And it took me back to being a player again when I used laugh and a joke.
“And since I’ve come out, doing that show, and I’ve retired from football, I have found myself enjoying myself much more and laughing and to love
abeing happier – although Sandra won’t agree with that!”
Looking back on his time as a manager, from 1983 to 2017, Harry said: “I used to come home on a Saturday night after a bad defeat and I couldn’t talk to anybody.
“You don’t realise at the time just how low you’re getting. Scary, scary low. And that was how I’d be. We never went out with anyone for dinner. I’d say to Sandra, ‘Don’t make any arrangements to go out with anybody because if we get beat I’ll be no use to anybody’. But I don’t have that any more. So we’re enjoying life more. It’s changed my life completely.
“Now, it’s women and kids who come up to me. It’s not men anymore, talking about football. It’s all women and children. Everywhere I go, little kids come up.”
Since leaving the jungle, Harry has made multiple TV appearances. But he says one dream job still eludes him.
“I really want a part in EastEnders. That is my long-term dream. I want to be in the [QueenVic] pub.
“And I can see it now. I’ve got it planned. They’re at the bar, they’re going, ‘Here, I hear Redknapp’s moved back into the Square, hasn’t he?’
“‘Yeah, well, he’s gone skint or something. He lived down in Sandbanks. He must have done his dough’.
“And suddenly I’m in the pub... ‘Hello Harry, just talking about you, mate, yeah’. And there I am, in EastEnders.”