Kris Smith: How his jungle gamble is paying off

KRIS Smith leapt at a chance to show the man behind the model on I’m a Celebrity ... Get Me Out of Here! Now his time in the jungle also seems to have turned his luck around on the work front.

Reality TV show I’m A Celebrity ... Get Me Out Of Here! has allowed Kris Smith to show fans the sensitive man behind the image. Picture: Jonathan Ng

HE’S the hot hunk known for his chiselled looks and taut abs, but Kris Smith has had his share of setbacks in life.

The model and former professional rugby league player has only cemented his identity as a sex symbol with his appearance, often shirtless, on Channel 10’s I’m A Celebrity … Get Me Out Of Here!

But the reality TV show has also allowed the adopted Aussie to show fans the sensitive man behind the image.

Perhaps Smith’s most surprising revelation is about the lingering effects of struggles with his weight as a child.

“I was really short and heavy as a kid,” he says.

“I always still see that. With age and growing up, I always had that little demon in my head that I was still that little fat kid.

“It has probably ruined a lot of my relationships. I was insecure with people, I was jealous of what they did and what they said. I never valued myself. I never thought I was good enough for anyone.

“I would never let people get too close, I would push them away before they could hurt me because I always thought they would hurt me. I would never give them an honest chance to really, really know me.”

On entering the jungle, Kris hoped to “open up and let the whole of Australia see behind the image”. Picture: Nigel Wright

Smith said he hoped he could open up and let the whole of Australia see behind the image.

“It gives me an opportunity to now showcase who I really am,” Smith told BW Magazine before he entered the jungle.

“Nobody, I don’t believe, has ever got an insight into who I am and what I’m about. People say they thought I am going to be up my own arse, full of myself, and I am far from that.

“I am just a kid from a housing estate in Manchester that has taken a few lucky breaks and just jumped at every chance he’s been given. I just want to finally show people that.”

The enforced rawness of life in the jungle camp can draw out emotions in participants and encourages a brutal honesty.

Last week Smith revealed that he was once engaged, at 25, to a woman he was with for 3½ years.

The couple broke up when she allegedly assaulted him — perhaps a link to the charity Smith represents on the show, anti-domestic violence campaigners White Ribbon Australia.

“She busted my nose. She busted my lip,” he says.

“She could throw a punch as well. I went to walk off and she booted me right up the arse and I turned around and she punched me again.”

His time in the jungle has transformed the model physically and seems to have turned his luck around on the work front.

Before he was announced as a contestant, the public focus had become more about his attendance at social events and his love life than for his work as a model and television presenter.

The 38-year-old quit a plum hosting job on Seven’s The Daily Edition to pursue a fitness business — a move that proved futile when the project fell apart. There was also speculation over whether he would be re-signed as the male face of Myer.

Smith walks the runway for Myer in 2014.

Now, though, it seems Australia can’t get enough of the loveable larrikin.

Best friend Carlo Napolitano believes Smith has achieved his aim of showing his true self.

“In his line of work he has scripts and autocues so you never really get to see the real Kris,” Napolitano says.

“He is a helper and gets massive joy in making people smile. He never takes himself seriously and likes to have fun. Hopefully the Australian public have enjoyed this side to him.”

Napolitano also puts some of his mate’s openness down to the show’s strict food rations.

Smith moved to Australia when he started dating Dannii Minogue in 2008. The pair split in 2010 soon after the birth of their now six-year-old son Ethan. The move to Australia was a big deal for Smith, who was thrust into the spotlight as Minogue’s other half.

Smith was a bit of a sex symbol in the jungle. Picture: Nigel Wright

Smith enjoyed his time in South Africa with the other celebs. Picture: Nigel Wright

Having previously played rugby league with Leeds in the UK and modelled on the side, he quickly became a celebrity in his own right and landed the lucrative deal with Myer.

It was a very different reality to that working class upbringing in Salford near Manchester with parents Eddie and Elsie.

“Kris lives by the mottos, ‘It is nice to be important but more important to be nice,’ and, ‘Manners cost nothing but mean the world,’ ” explains Napolitano. “He doesn’t just say these things, he truly believes in these values. Maybe that is why he has lost it a few times in the camp; he doesn’t like to tolerate people who don’t have the same values.”

Tziporah Malkah and Smith work their way through a jungle challenge. Picture: Nigel Wright

One person Smith has “lost it” with on Celebrity is former model Tziporah Malkah. The pair clashed initially over lost socks in a fight that escalated to her labelling him a chauvinist.

He’s also done his best to avoid attention from Bachelor reality vixen Keira Maguire and Ash Pollard of My Kitchen Rules fame.

But it is his determination to be honest that has had the biggest impact on his campmates.

“Kris is very humble and has no problem telling people about his past,” Pollard says of the model.

“He is not from a wealthy family and he didn’t live in a wealthy community.”

Smith with Casey Donovan in the South African jungle.

Former Australian Idol winner Casey Donovan says: “He is very humble guy and I think a lot of people have that preconceived idea of how someone is. Judging a book by its cover, which I think we all need to do a lot less of, he is just an all-round nice guy so it is nice to get to know him a bit more.”

Smith says he is seeing someone but was coy about revealing her identity before heading into the jungle. And he says he still has feelings for his ex, believed to be model Maddy King.

“I’m not single,” he says.

“I didn’t want to expose it but now it’s getting constant jokes. It is early days. I’ve got very strong feelings. That is why I didn’t want it to be objectified to a point. I’ve not been seeing her for overly long.”

Looking ahead, Smith has spoken of his desire for more kids and his friends believe he’d like to settle down sooner rather than later.

“He just wants a life partner,” Napolitano says. “I just want the big fella to be happy and enjoy life.”

Kris Smith with Dannii Minogue in 2011.

Smith with ex-girlfriend Maddy King in 2015.

Before travelling to South Africa, Smith avoided speaking about his relationship with Minogue but being on the show 24 hours a day has meant he couldn’t avoid the topic.

Even before going into the jungle he spoke of the fact the pair put aside any differences they may have for the sake of co-parenting their son.

“That is one thing that I have been really fortunate about,” he says.

“You know how you will hear people who will use kids as leverage in breakups but she has never been anything but accommodating, so ... I’m very fortunate with that.

“The job she’s done with Ethan, cos I’ve not been there all the time, I’ve been in Sydney and she’s been in Melbourne, he’s turned out an incredible young boy, someone we are both very proud of.

“She is an incredible woman, always has been, I’ve always thought that from day one and I still think that now.”

Ethan has been Smith’s biggest inspiration for sticking out any tensions on the show. At one point he threatened to quit.

“(But) any time I’m sat there with whatever on my face or eating whatever it is — I am just going to remember that he is the one that went, ‘That would be so cool if you do it.’ ”

* The journalist is in South Africa as a guest of Channel 10