Aussie TV ‘hero’ joins I’m A Celeb cast in season’s second episode

One day on from this year’s I’m A Celeb premiere, another celebrity has joined the show – this one a real-life hero who found TV fame.

Another contestant was revealed on Monday’s episode of I’m A Celebrity … Get Me Out of Here! – although his arrival probably won’t do much to quell the familiar viewer complaint that this year’s season is missing a bit of star power.

The twelfth celeb to enter the jungle is, drumroll please …

Bondi Rescue lifeguard Harrison Reid is I’m A Celeb’s latest contestant.

Bondi Rescue lifeguard Harrison Reid. He’s been a longtime cast member on Ten’s Logie-winning factual series, which has been running since 2006 and follows the daily lives of a group of lifeguards on Bondi Beach each summer.

Reid joins a cast that includes several comedians (Dave Hughes, Geraldine Hickey), a few reality TV veterans (Reggie Sorensen, Samantha Moitzi, Tina Provis) and a smattering of successful athletes (Shayna Jack, Zack Tuohy, Sam Thaiday).

But some viewers grumbled after Sunday’s premiere that this season’s cast was missing some star power. And even the cast members themselves seemed a little disappointed that the show’s most hotly-tipped contestant, divisive Olympic breakdancer Raygun, was nowhere to be found (the “controversial Olympian” clue many assumed pointed to her in fact related to Shayna Jack, who copped a two-year ban from competing in swimming in 2019 for using a banned anabolic agent).

I'm A Celeb hosts Robert Irwin and Julia Morris: Genuinely more famous than many of this year’s contestants.

Dave Hughes is probably the only member of this cast who could make a case for being a ‘household name’ here in Australia in 2025 – and as he himself acknowledged in the premiere, a sizeable proportion of the people who do know him find him very annoying (equal to the “who are these people” sentiment on social media during Sunday’s premiere was the vocal anti-Hughesy brigade, many wondering aloud how long they’d have to endure the divisive comic in the coming weeks).

There were awkward scenes on screen too, as they all met each other for the first time, and more than a few were clearly unrecognisable to their fellow “celebrity” contestants.

“So … what’s your talent?” Married At First Sight “star” Samantha Moitzi asked sporting great Sam Thaiday, who patiently informed the fellow Queenslander that he’d played for the Brisbane Broncos for many years.

I’m A Celebrity … Get Me Out Of Here! Sunday At 7.00pm And Monday to Thursday At 7.30pm on 10 and 10 Play.

Originally published as Aussie TV ‘hero’ joins I’m A Celeb cast in season’s second episode