I’m A Celebrity star Tom Read Wilson’s career path could have been very different after fans unearthed old footage of the Celebs Go Dating star on another TV programme
View 3 Images
Tom is currently entertaining in the I’m A Celebrity jungle(Image: ITV/Shutterstock)
Fans of I’m A Celebrity were shocked to discover Tom Read Wilson’s previous reality TV appearance almost a decade before his spell in the jungle. The Celebs Go Dating star described himself as an “oddity” but a “nice surprise” as he appeared on singing contest The Voice in 2016.
Taking to the blind auditions stage to sing Accentuate The Positive, Tom, then 28, put in a performance that brought a smile to the judges’ faces. However, he failed to get a chair turn by any of Paloma Faith, Will.i.am, Ricky Wilson or Boy George – who was a jungle star himself in 2022.
It didn’t stop the quartet sharing their views on Tom shocking them. Will joked he thought he was an 85-year-old man, while Paloma sarcastically said she didn’t guess his musical theatre background as she mimicked his well-spoken voice.
READ MORE: Piers Morgan announcement halts the news as former ITV star makes £100m moveREAD MORE: Angry Ginge’s wild links to Manchester United after he branded player a ‘f***ing traitor’
Will was stunned by his actions as Tom called himself a “cultural throwback”. Will explained how his behaviour would have seen him be great friends with Michael Jackson, before Paloma added: “You’re everything that Will.I.Am thought he was going to find when he arrived in Britain.”
Boy George then suggested a new career for the hopeful – reading the Tube announcements. He told him: “I feel like you should read the news or something. Or the Tube, you know the Tube? ‘Next stop,’ can you do it for us?”
After pleasing the group with his joyful persona, Tom said: “I loved it. I felt like I was surfing a crest of a great wave. Regardless of the outcome, I just had so much fun. I couldn’t trade it for anything.”
However, it was far from his only TV appearance, with Tom racking up a number of shows over the years. Tom has also graced screens on shows like Strictly’s It Takes Two, Love Island: Aftersun, The Wheel, Celebrity Mastermind and Celebrity Best Home Cook..
And away from any voiceover potential, Tom’s sister recently revealed how her brother would love to turn his hand to TV presenting. Speaking with guest presenter Ranvir Singh on Lorraine, Tom’s sister Miranda revealed: “He would love to do some more presenting. I think he’d be great at that.
“I’d love it if he had a chat show, because the way he talks to people, he really cares, he really listens, I think he’d be really good at that.” She went on: “It’s amazing.
“I’ve never been this proud in my life, I’m so proud of him. It’s so nice because everyone is seeing that beautiful soul that we get to see every single day, so yeah, I couldn’t be prouder.”
Article continues below
Addressing his unique voice, Miranda added: “He’s always grown up loving language, like he said, my dad’s an English teacher and he really followed in his footsteps and he’s watched musical theatre throughout… he’s such an old soul, literally since he was two, he’s spoken like that.”
Tom is currently pleasing viewers of I’m A Celebrity after making it to the final four in this year’s series.
READ MORE: ‘Cosy’ slippers and ‘beautiful’ pyjamas that ‘help with night sweats’ are 20% off
Lee Mack hosts The 1% Club Rollover which is on ITV for five nights nextv week, starting on Monday at 9pm.(Image: ITV)
Forget smiling people in Christmas jumpers, Lee Mack’s family album is filled with photos of his mum taking her false teeth out and his dad with a cigarette stuck up his nose – playing for laughs.
So it’s hardly surprising that, at 15 he wanted to be a comic. He says: “At 15, I said in my head, ‘I want to be a comedian,’ but I didn’t know what that meant. It was always the thing I did with my mates. I would make my mates laugh.”
Now 57, for five nights, starting on Monday, Lee will be hosting The 1% Club Rollover. Described as ‘event TV,” this spin-off from the usual ITV quiz show sees the prize pot growing to a life-changing £500K.
Although Lee would never win it – he says his memory is so bad that he can never remember the answers. A great fan of the show, he says: “At the pilot I didn’t get any laughs, as everyone was intrigued by the questions.
READ MORE: Coronation Street: From Joanna Lumley to Suranne Jones and Michael Ball – all the celebrities who have stepped onto the cobbles
“I thought ‘this is a good format as my jokes are brilliant!’ The questions are researched to within an inch of their lives.”
Endlessly funny, Lee’s life has been a balancing act between comedy and tragedy. He started out as an aspiring jockey, working with Ginger McCain, who trained Grand National winner Red Rum – the first horse Lee ever rode. But, in his inimitable style, he developed a lucrative sideline selling Red Rum’s manure for 50p a bag – declaring it was “good for rhubarb!”
Away from the comedy, he speaks movingly of his brother Darren McKillop’s death in 2014, after taking an overdose of anti-depressants, aged just 47. Speaking on Gyles Brandreth’s Rosebud podcast, he says: “I don’t really like to talk about this. He did take his own life, but it was alcohol connected.”
Of the ‘misadventure’ inquest verdict, he says: “I think that’s a fair assessment of the situation.” According to Lee, his brother and his parents – who were publicans – all died through alcohol abuse. No longer drinking himself, he adds: “When you’re in a pub, you see everything. I saw the parties, I saw the fights in pubs, I saw my dad in very violent situations having to throw people out of pubs. “I’ve seen him dancing on a pool table, the happiest looking man in the world. “So I’ve seen all the gamuts of emotion that come with alcohol.”
Lee stopped drinking after reading Allen Carr’s Easy Way book. He says: “Not the comedian, a different Alan Carr. “I love Alan to bits, the comedian, but I don’t really look at him for my lifestyle choices!” Lee’s wife used the Alan Carr book on quitting smoking, so he read the alcohol one, saying: “I just suddenly for the first time saw alcohol for what it was, and decided I just wasn’t interested.”
The flipside of Lee’s early life was the comedy that came with a family life based around a local boozer on a tough Blackburn estate. He says: “My dad was as close as you can get to being a comedian without being paid for it. It’s like a little stage being behind a bar.”
He also recalls his dad being the spitting image of comedian Bobby Ball. Lee says: “He did have a permanent moustache like Bobby. Because in the 1980s, it was a criminal offence to live in the North and not have a permanent moustache.”
Lee’s uncle remembers Bobby Ball – who played his dad in his sitcom – performing in his parents’ pub, before finding fame. He says: “My uncle said, ‘I remember Cannon and Ball coming because they were just breaking through.’ I like the fact that my fictional dad and my real dad probably did meet.”
Lee’s dad also encouraged his comedic personality. “I can’t remember any serious conversations as a child,” he says. “Everything was brushed under the carpet. Even when they [his parents] split up, I don’t remember a big chat about it. “After my mom died, I went through the photos. There’s far too many where she’s taken her false teeth out to get the laugh for the photograph. There’s a lot of the ones with my dad with a cigarette up his nose, because it’s a funny image, isn’t it?”
Marrying when his dad was 21, Lee is fairly sure his mum was pregnant, but he says: “They seemed very happy. They were party animals.“ But they split up when Lee was 11. His dad was a heavy drinker and he recalls his parents having ferocious rows when they were on holiday in Spain. “They were feisty. It was chaotic. He’d slam the door and walk off,” he says.
“My mum went to bed, woke up the next morning, and very calmly and casually said, ‘go by the pool and see if your dad’s asleep on one of the deck chairs. We’ve got to leave for the plane in a few hours.’ We couldn’t find my dad anywhere near the pool. Turned out he just couldn’t face going back. And he just went. He left and started hitchhiking. He was drunk.
“He told me years later that in the middle of the night, the guys that picked him up stopped in a layby, pulled him over. And he genuinely thought he was going to get killed.” Lee says his dad was more like an older brother. “He wasn’t dad material,” he says. “He was a really nice guy. He was funny. He was a good person. He just didn’t know how to be a dad.“
He recalls telephoning him from Australia, where he went backpacking for a year, saying: “I just said, ‘I just wanted to say hello’. And he said, ‘Well, that’s really good of you to ring me today of all days. I thank you.’ And I said, ‘what do you mean of all days?’ He goes, ‘I’m getting married in three hours.’”
His dad hadn’t told anyone, but Lee continues: “To him getting married is like pancake Tuesday. You know, it’s not a big thing. It’s just another marriage. Yeah, I met the second wife. She was part of my upbringing, but the next two, not at all. They were very quick.”
Outside the chaos of home, Lee’s academic results were failing. He says: “I dug out my school reports. It is literally like a declining graph of academic achievement. It starts off, I’m your textbook, swotty kid, top marks. Then it slowly just goes downhill to the point where, by the time I leave, I just scrape through two O levels.”
His academic decline coincided with moving schools as his parents split-up. He says: “I became the class clown.” With the advent of alternative comedy, thanks to The Young Ones and Ben Elton in the early 1980s, that ‘class clown’ grew up to become a household name. And, of course, his parents loved the anarchic humour. Lee says: “My mum’s favourite programme was Bottom. She loved anarchy.”
A night at The Comedy Store in 1990, with Eddie Izzard as compere and Steve Coogan headlining changed Lee’s life – inspiring him to go to university, where he hoped to be surrounded by people like the kids on TV’s Fame. Instead, he met his wife Tara during Fresher’s Week. Together for 32 years, they have three kids and he says their marriage succeeds as: “The same things make us laugh.”
Article continues below
As for comedy, from the moment he picked up the mic, he knew he’d found the right career. He says: “I remember before I even got to the microphone thinking ‘this is alright, I’m going to do this as a job.’” And while his stage name is Lee Mack, he says: “On my passport is Lee McKillop, my bank account is Lee McKillop. I’m only 5% Lee Mack. I’m 95% not that person. It’s just the one person who occasionally does this act.”
Ruby Wax shared her insight into her I’m A Celebrity…Get Me Out of Here! campmates as she confirmed who she had to take down because of their sweltering egos
View 3 Images
Ruby Wax was voted out earlier this week(Image: James Gourley/Publishd/Shutterstock)
I’m A Celebrity…Get Me Out of Here! star Ruby Wax has been busy sharing her take on her former campmates since her departure from the jungle. The popular TV personality named who she thought had ‘huge egos’ until she “took them down a peg.”
Ruby, 72, became the fifth celebrity to exit the camp on Wednesday and has wasted no time since then in giving her very honest opinions about the whole experience. Speaking to podcast hosts Ally and G she was asked the most shocking thing the experience had taught her.
The question prompted her to mention two people in particular. First up was Angry Ginge as she detailed how she had learnt a lot about his life. She said: “Suddenly, he became quite vulnerable with his story. I like digging deep.”
She then turned her attention to Aitch, as she added: “I liked Aitch’s answers to what he wants in life and it was just a dog and a wife and a kid. So they’re [Aitch and Ginge] so straight, underneath their wild exteriors.”
Ruby then added her trademark cheeky twist to her response continuing, “They’re just boys who want a normal life and a wife. A wife who will probably cater to them, because their egos are huge. I took them down a few pegs.”
Ruby’s exit rocked the camp and as she chatted with show hosts Ant McPartlin and Declan Donnelly she spoke about the great friendships she had formed with the pair. However she was left disappointed when she learned about their milk bottle stealing fiasco.
Ruby also shared her hopes for who the eventual winner will be as she shared how she felt “sure” that ultimately the winner would be Ginge, she also described him as a “deserving winner” and said that she would be willing to put money on it.
Content cannot be displayed without consent
While Ruby seemed happy to support her new friend as the potential victor, she still wasn’t too happy about her exit meaning she was now ruled out of a place in the final on Sunday, December 7.
Speaking on This Morning following her exit, she said:”‘I’m totally devastated. I’ve been ripped from my family, ripped from the womb.
Article continues below
“I’m so upset I can’t even tell you. I belong in that jungle. I want to go to my people. I didn’t think it was going to be so adorable, I didn’t know I’d love those people more than most people I know. I should have won!”
Last year’s winner, McFly star Danny Jones, has already been seen spending time in Australia ahead of the final, where he will be on hand to crown his successor. Contestants still in the running are Aitch, Ginge, Shona McGarty and Tom Read Wilson.
Piers Morgan is set to expand his Uncensored YouTube channel brand after raising £22.5million from investors which will now allow his brand to be global media business
View 2 Images
Piers Morgan lands huge multi-million pound deal to expand Uncensored brand(Image: X)
News talk show host Piers Morgan is set to finalise a £22.5million fundraising deal to expand his Uncensored brand. The YouTube channel currently has more than 4 million subscribers and news of its multi-million expansion interrupted a Sky News segment.
The news anchor issued a breaking news alert to tell viewers that “Piers Morgan is raising tens of millions of dollars of funding to turn his Uncensored brand into a broad based global media business.” The 60 year old TV personality, who has covered some of the world’s biggest stories to date, posted the breaking news clip and shared it to his Instagram.
In the clip his fans saw Sky News City Editor Mark Kleinman, explain the details of the investment which could change the media world as viewers know it. He said: “The Piers Morgan YouTube show has amassed well over four million subscribers. And I understand that he is in the process of finalising the fundraising of about $30million to expand the Uncensored brand globally.”
He added: “This deal will value the business just under £100 million before the new money is factored in and we’ll see it launch new areas, such as in history, technology and sport.”‘
Providing the Sky News City Editor with a statement, Piers said: “I’m very excited that some of the most experienced and successful players in the global media industry share my ambitious vision for Uncensored. This is the future of modern media.”
He captioned his social media post saying: “Some exciting news for Uncensored…” Rushing to the comment section, one follower said: “Deserved success.” Another penned: “Big congratulations.” Meanwhile a third person wrote, referring to Prince Harry and Meghan Markle: “Well done you as an aside couldn’t help but think there’ll be plates smashing in Montecito.”
The new investors include New York Merchant bank The Raine Group and Greek media mogul Theo Kyriakou. This comes after he refused to be drawn in on answering whether he was set to apply for the position of Director General of the BBC, while on Newsnight.
Piers appeared on the news programme last Monday and simply replied “no comment” after he was being probed over whether he would consider taking on the role, following the broadcaster’s latest scandal.
Article continues below
Newsnight host Victoria Derbyshire moved away from the discussion of Donald Trump and Ukraine, and turned to Piers and said: “The advert for the new Director General has gone out tonight.”
She went on to say: “A former Conservative cabinet minister, Michael Gove, recently tweeted that you would be the man for the job. I guess that was a joke.” In response, Piers quipped: “Oh, he’s a very smart guy. No, I think he was deadly serious. Why would that be a joke?”
READ MORE: Currys ‘Lowest Ever Price’ sale is the best I’ve seen– here’s what I’m buying
Angry Ginge’s wild links to Manchester United after he branded player a ‘f***ing traitor’ – The Mirror
Skip to main content
The I’m A Celeb star is a huge fan of football team Manchester United and has built an online platform around it, leading him to have some wild connections to the club
View Image
Angry Ginge’s wild links to Manchester United after he branded club star a ‘f***ing traitor’(Image: angryginge13/Youtube)
Angry Ginge’s links to Manchester United:
Before I’m A Celeb fame, the Youtube and Twitch streamer built a platform about his love of football. Angry Ginge, whose real name is Morgan Burtwistle, grew up in Manchester and made no secret of the fact that his favourite team is Manchester United. Some of the videos he posts to YouTube are of his reactions to his favourite team’s games.
As a lifelong Manchester United fan, he grew up idolising Wayne Rooney – and later became friends with the footballing legend.
Wayne joined Ginge’s Fifa team Girth and Turf, despite his questionable e-sports skills, and the two have regularly collaborated on videos.
According to Ginge, Wayne is one of the reasons he’s doing I’m A Celeb. He told the Mirror: “He said he can’t wait and he’ll be voting for me to do trials as well.”
He’s even worked with the team, appearing in their promotional video for their 2024-2025 seasonal kit, alongside Barry Keoghan and former Man Utd captain Bryan Robson.
And he’s played at the team’s iconic stadium. In June of this year, Ginge was part of the England squad for Soccer Aid, which also featured the likes of Louis Tomlinson, Sam Thompson and Bella Ramsey, as well as Ginge’s pal Wayne Rooney at Old Trafford. In a video posted to TikTok, Ginge said it was a “dream come true” to play there.
However, not all his links to Manchester United have been as positive. Ginge almost came to blows with ex Man Utd star Carlos Tevez at Soccer Aid. The pair grappled over the ball, and later Ginge took to social media to show he was bleeding after the incident.
He wrote: “Cheers Tevez. T***.” This isn’t the only time he’s bad mouthed the player, as Ginge later revealed that he had his Soccer Aid shirt signed by all the players, except for Tevez. He explained: “The f***ing traitor Tevez ain’t signing my f***ing shirt.”
READ THE FULL STORY: Coleen Rooney caught up in Angry Ginge prank on Wayne following X-rated insult
Follow Daily Mirror:
At Reach and across our entities we and our partners use information collected through cookies and other identifiers from your device to improve experience on our site, analyse how it is used and to show personalised advertising. You can opt out of the sale or sharing of your data, at any time clicking the “Do Not Sell or Share my Data” button at the bottom of the webpage. Please note that your preferences are browser specific. Use of our website and any of our services represents your acceptance of the use of cookies and consent to the practices described in our Privacy Notice and Terms and Conditions.
Sam Thompson has accused ex girlfriend Zara McDermott taking his Crocs after the couple agreed to end their five year relationship in January
View 4 Images
Sam Thompson accuses ex Zara McDermott of taking his Crocs(Image: Instagram)
Sam Thompson has said his ex Zara McDermott took one of his favourite things. The former Made In Chelsea star, 33, dated Zara for five years before the couple decided to go their separate ways in January.
But soon after she left Sam’s Chelsea home, which she had moved into, he claims to have noticed that she had taken his Crocs with her. Sam made the admission while on the Staying Relevant podcast he shared with former TOWIE star Pete Wicks.
During their latest episode, Pete asked Sam what he would choose to wear to a high profile fashion event, to which Sam said Crocs, without hesitation. He said: “Got to be the Crocs. Shock value. Get the jelly shoes on.”
In response Pete said: “You haven’t worn the Crocs for some time now because you…” Pete wasn’t able to finish his sentence before Sam then chimed in and said: “Yeah, Zara took them.” Feeling sorry for his best pal, Pete simply said “Oh god.”
In a bid to not dwell on his break up and the loss of his beloved possession, he changed the subject swiftly. He went on to say: “I need a new pair of Crocs. I actually don’t have any Crocs.”
The conversation surrounding his break-up comes after he revealed that he had finally made his relationship with Talitha Balinska, official. Sam has been dating Talitha, 25, for a few months but recently announced that she was now his girlfriend.
Sam and Talitha first met two years ago when she modelled for Sam’s sunglasses brand, Dinelli, which he co-owns with former Made In Chelsea’s Reza Amiri Garroussi.
At the time, Sam was in a relationship with Zara but he is thought to have reconnected with her when she was invited to one of his live shows at the O2 Arena. Unable to contain his excitement, he informed his listeners of his news. He said: “I’ve got a girlfriend. I’ve got a girlfriend!”
Pete then joked: “We’ve lost him again to the dark powers of a woman.” And speaking about the moment he decided to take things to the next level, the reality TV star confessed: “Mate, it was just super relaxed. “
Article continues below
He added: “It was so boring really, but that’s kind of how I wanted it to be. We just went for dinner, and I was like, ‘I really like you’. And I just went, ‘I’d love to be your boyfriend’. I don’t know why I’m panicking more now!”
He continued: “Yeah, I just said, ‘Look, I really, really like you, and you make me feel really… comfortable. I feel like I can be myself around you. I don’t want to be dating anyone else. I’m 33, I wouldn’t be dating someone this amount of time if I didn’t think it had legs to last. So will you be my girlfriend?’ And she said ‘yes’ And so I said, ‘great’.”
READ MORE: I’ve been to Disney World 12 times but the Black Friday price is so good I’m booking again
