Confessions of an I’m A Celebrity … Get Me Out of Here! stand-in

What is it really like behind the scenes for reality TV contestants? One news.com.au reporter went all the way to Africa to find out.

For years now, I’ve been harbouring a dirty little secret: A hidden urge to be a reality show contestant.

Working as an entertainment journalist and constantly reporting on reality shows, though, I’ve always had the good sense never to follow through on this yearning.

Sure, there can be upsides to being a reality star – a big cash prize, a career in regional breakfast radio, a one-off novelty single with the Sirens. But to me, the risk far outweighs the reward: Imagine emerging from the show to discover the nation hates you, and you’re now a very recognisable person without any of the monetary benefits that fame usual provides.

But visiting South Africa last week to do some on-the-ground reporting on the new season of I’m A Celebrity … Get Me Out Of Here!, I was given an offer I couldn’t refuse.

A few days before each season starts, production holds a ‘dry run’: A full, filmed, multi-day rehearsal of the first two episodes, with 12 non-famous stand-ins taking the place of the celebs. It’s an opportunity to iron out any kinks before the celebs get in, and help train up new members of the production team before the main event.

This year – for the first time – a journalist was permitted to be among the 12 stand-ins.

All the fun of appearing on a reality show, without the risk of being booed afterwards every time I pop to Woolies? I’m Not A Celebrity … Get Me Into Here!

Here’s what I learned during my two days as the world’s least-famous I’m A Celeb contestant.

You’ll get no say in what you wear

This season’s hottest colour combo: Red and khaki.

A long-lost Irwin.

Reporting for stand-in duties, I’m handed my uniform and instructed to change in a portaloo. I emerge in bright red shorts, a too-tight red T-shirt (why did I tell them I was medium and not a large – what did I think that would achieve), a khaki shirt and slightly battered akubra. I look like the love child of Terri Irwin and H from Steps.

Thankfully, the rest of the contestants – mostly aspiring young actors who’ve come up from Johannesburg, plus Aussie comedian and influencer Matt Hey, who’s here to film content for his channels – all look equally dorky.

You need to be really good at talking to yourself

With fellow Aussie stand-in Matt (right) in the show’s ‘Tok-Toki’ confessional booth.

Stand-ins don’t have to pretend to be the celebs, but they do have to do the trials and challenges earmarked for them. For me, that means first standing in for radio host Woody Whitelaw, who debuted on the show during Sunday’s season premiere by sawing his way out of a small wooden box. I assume this will be all be TV fakery – until crew members hand me a small saw, guide me into the box and drill it shut behind me.

Once I’m out, the real nightmare starts. I’m the first contestant to arrive, which means ample camera time without anyone to talk to. My instructions: Vamp.

Catching a glance at the crew of 50 or so people behind the cameras looking at me, I take a deep breath and launch into the same stream of consciousness monologue I’ve judged harshly when I’ve previously watched the first contestant arrive each season.

“WOW! SO THIS IS AFRICA? LOOKS AMAZING! HOPE I DON’T GET EATEN BY A LION!” (Can I stop now? Keep going?) “WONDER WHO THE OTHER CELEBRITIES WILL BE? WHAT EXCITING CHALLENGES AWAIT US?” (Seriously, can someone call cut? Can I go home?)

“OH LOOK, HERE’S A LITTLE CLUE! SHALL I READ IT LOUDLY TO MYSELF? YES I SHALL! WHAT FUN AWAITS!”

Five mortifying minutes I go on like this, feeling like a Play School presenter having a manic episode.

It will get gross very quickly

Finally, mercifully, the first game begins. I have to ask yes or no questions to the second celebrity, who is trapped in another box (this show LOVES boxes) – and who gets pelted with goo for each one I get wrong. As each celeb emerges from the box, they can join in the questions, until each star’s been slimed.

“Are you female?” I ask, trying my best to stop them getting gooped. “Are you already a reality TV star?” “Are you under 40?” “Are you Australian?” “Are you a singer?”

The next “celeb” to join me, a smiling, bearded Namibian man named Joe, takes a … different tack.

“Are you a pilot?” he asks. “Are you 5 foot 4?” “Are you Chinese?” “Do you like babies?”

And here’s where the importance of the stand-in becomes very evident. By the time the real celebs step into the box for Sunday’s season premiere, brightly coloured food dyes have been added to the goo, which is a white-clear colour for our dry run. Obviously someone in the control room realises this isn’t a good look for a 7.30pm timeslot:

Come on now, this is a family show.

You’re kept in the dark

And I don’t mean that figuratively. If we have to leave camp to do a trial, we’re blindfolded and made to walk single file, with our hand on the shoulder of the person in front. Celebs don’t know where the camp is, and therefore don’t know how to escape without help.

The lack of information is extremely disorientating. I like to google a menu a week before I go to a restaurant. Here, I’m fronting up to a challenge not knowing if I’ll have to bungee jump, hold a tarantula or eat offal.

Before I go in, I find myself clutching at whatever tiny pieces of (dis)information I can get – a furtive glimpse at a call sheet in a producers’s hand, a garbled instruction sent over the two-way radio. At one point as I nervously await my entrance to the show, a van drives past with a small sticker on the side: ‘SNAKES.’ I do my best to swallow my nerves, convinced I’m about to be made to wrestle an anaconda.

You’ll do things you never thought you would

Matt and I are selected as the guinea pigs for the ‘Unsafe Crackers’ trial, which went to air last night. I’m tackling the role I was born to play: Kerri-Anne Kennerley’s stand-in.

Poor Matt has to stick his hand into six separate boxes, rifling around all sorts of dangerous animals to procure me codes for six safes.

The safes are around me in a box, which will fill with cold water as the challenge progresses until I’m entirely submerged. Inside the safes are stars – 13 stars means 13 meals back at camp.

I’m in a glass case of emotions.

As we’re briefed, I feel calm. It’s just cold water. I go snorkelling back in Oz. I’ve got this. And then, the safety adviser quickly mentions one more thing: “At any time, live animals may join you in the box. Please stay calm.”

Cue panic.

Poor Matt puts on a hell of a show for the camera – as does the catfish in box three, which somehow takes a flying leap out of the box towards his face when he touches it. Matt shrieks and runs one way, the catfish glomps the other, as handlers try to catch it. Peering across from my tank, now neck-deep in freezing water, I still think I’ve got the better end of the stick.

Suddenly feeling a lot less relaxed.

And then they put the crocodile in. Sure, it’s only a baby – about a metre long – but the sight of a clawed, sharp teethed croc sliding down a chute and landing on my face is enough to send my heart rate spiking.

I am the lizard queen!

Finally, the challenge is called. Matt’s tapped out of a couple of the more perilous boxes – I do not blame him – so we end up with nine stars out of a possible 13. Considering we’ve had to deal with flying fish, snakes, biting ants and one small crocodile, we did pretty well.

Have to assume that if this made it to air my nipples will have been pixelated.

Here’s where the show makes another adjustment before filming: By the time KAK arrives, the trial has been tweaked so that several large snakes join her in the box before the croc is added.

I can’t help but feel partly responsible: Did my Zen reaction to the rising water make the producers realise the fear factor on my half of the trial could be upped a little? Soz KAK, my bad.

KAK copped it much worse than me.

Your crisis will be content

By this point, the hard part is over: We’ve completed our trial, and are walking back to camp (blindfolded of course) ready to boast to our campmates about our nine-star haul.

Then, all of a sudden, Matt goes a bit funny. Dizzy, faint, and suddenly on the ground – surely a result of the lack of food and the massive adrenaline spike he’s just endured.

Matt's minor medical emergency, thankfully caught on camera.

Thankfully, the show’s medics are by his side within seconds. As they set up shop and check his vital signs, it takes me a minute to realise that a roving camera crew are also now with us to capture this possible near-death experience.

Any fears that Matt (who is still alive, FYI) might feel exploited are allayed when his panic passes, his breathing returns to normal and he faces directly into the camera to announce: “Thank you SO much for filming this.”

You’ll become immediately food-obsessed

Eyeing off Lorraine’s serve of flavourless mush.

Yes, the food is terrible. And such small portions! Rice, beans, and a brekkie of about a small fistful of bland, flavourless oats per person. Twelve hours in, all most of us want to talk about is how much we miss salt.

One of my campmates, Lorraine, has prepared for this by smuggling in as much contraband as she can. She’s more pinata than human, shaking out treats every time she thinks the cameras are off her. (Spoiler: They’re never off her.)

After dinner, she pulls me aside and reaches up into her ponytail, pulling out a loose Mentos and shoving into my hand. “Eat this.” I dutifully shove the ponytail Mentos into my mouth.

Lorraine’s smuggling adventures continue the next morning, as she slips a sachet of instant coffee out of her sock and pours some into my empty cup. There’s only enough coffee to share with her favourite campmates – with the others left wondering why she has so enthusiastically insisted we all enjoy a “hot cup of water” with our oaty breakfast.

I’m A Celeb is a surprisingly good night’s sleep

Waking up at dawn to find nobody had been attacked by baboons in the night

It’s not all bad. We all arrive in camp feeling anxious about what the night will bring. As they turn in for the night, campmates transform into human burritos, burrowing into their sleeping bags to protect themselves from the outside world.

But it turns out, almost everyone sleeps soundly. Is it the fresh forest air, or the exhaustion from the day’s trials and challenges? Of course, each additional night spent at camp ups the chances of some weird African bug laying its eggs in your ear.

You’ll make friends with people from all walks of life

A day ago we were all strangers – now we’re camp family.

Among my campmates are a South African stand-up comedian who entertains us all with a very funny set about the differences between South African and Nigerian men (I laugh along, despite not understanding a single joke) and a glam young fashion student who insists we all refer to her as ‘Queen’ rather than her celeb name.

Somewhat more concerningly, another campmate announces, apropos of nothing, that he believes humanity is due for a ‘great cleansing’ to rid the Earth of sin.

Hopefully he doesn’t think this is it.

We survived! Reunited with our campmates after two days in the jungle.

After our two days in camp are over, several of us immediately race to the only restaurant within a 20km radius, screaming our orders before the waiter has even handed us our menus: “PIZZA! FOCACCIA! BURGERS! CHIPS!”

We must look a little crazy, still covered in bush dirt and smelling like camp smoke, but we’re definitely not famous. Back to normality.

I’m A Celeb continues 7.30pm tonight on Ten

Nick Bond travelled to South Africa as a guest of Ten