Busted star Matt Willis has candidly spoken about his time as King of the Jungle as he admitted it was all an attempt to promote his career as a solo singer that backfired
Matt Willis has admitted he made ‘a bit of a mistake by signing up for I’m A Celebrity…Get Me Out Of Here! The singer, 42, competed in on Ant and Dec’s ITV1 reality survival series, which is just weeks away from returning to screens, in 2006, where he reached the final alongside fellow pop stars Myleene Klass and Jason Donovan before emerging victorious from the whole thing as King of the Jungle.
But nearly 20 years later, Matt, who has been married to former Big Brother host Emma Willis since 2008, has spoken candidly about how he felt after his time on the show. He recalled being encouraged to go on it in an attempt to raise his profile while trying to launch a solo career away from Busted, with whom he had enjoyed success with tracks like What I Go To School For and Year 3000 in the years prior.
He said: “I was thinking of a time when I lost my own narrative. And the one thing that springs to mind the most was leaving I’m A Celebrity. I was in a pretty bad place. The record company basically weren’t going to release my solo album… They said, ‘You’ve got to do something to raise your profile. Will you go on I’m A Celebrity? I went, ‘Yep, absolutely. Anything, please release my album!'”
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But the career move backfired in a sense, because once Matt returned from the jungle, he found that people were far more interested in his time on the reality show than the album he had hoped to promote.
Speaking on his On The Mend podcast, he added: “Once I came out of that show, I realised no one cared that I had a record out. Everywhere I went, they just wanted to talk about I’m A Celebrity. And it really bummed me out. Before I went on that show, I was only really famous to Busted fans. Then I came out and everyone knew who I was.
“When you’re in active addiction – which I was at the time – and you just want to hide, that’s the worst thing that can happen. Suddenly there were paps everywhere I went. I’d get in a cab and the driver would say, ‘Hello Matt’. It was such a weird experience. It was probably a bit of a mistake going on that show.”
Matt had released his solo album, titled Don’t Let It Go to Waste, while he was actually in the jungle in November 2006, and while his debut single Up All Night charted at number seven earlier that year, the album itself only made it to number 66. Following that, he carved out a career in theatre and starred in the musicals such as Footloose and Wicked before enjoying a short stint on EastEnders.
More recently, he starred opposite former X Factor contestant Lucie Jones in a UK tour of Waitress. The musician has also returned to his roots and reunited with James Bourne and Charlie Simpson for various tours over the years, and they have staged concerts with fellow noughties boyband McFly as a supergroup known as McBusted.
He’s also known for fronting programmes like Netflix’s Love Is Blind and Change your Mind, Change Your Life with his wife. Amid his fame, Matt has been open and honest about his past struggles with addictions but felt that the notoriety that came with winning the jungle allowed others to access ‘areas of his life’ he would rather have kept private.
He added: I felt like I won the show but lost myself. I’d become known for being a celebrity rather than for my music. I was a sneaky little drug addict who didn’t want everyone poking their nose into his life. It was a really strange place to be. I had no privacy. People were looking into areas of my life I didn’t want them to.”
