‘Petrified of everything’: Why Reggie Bird will face her worst fears

Could it be a hat-trick for Australia’s most beloved reality television star? Two-time Big Brother winner Reggie Bird will vie for the jungle crown on I’m A Celebrity … Get Me Out Of Here!

Could it be a hat-trick for Australia’s most beloved reality television star?

Reggie Bird, she with two Big Brother wins to her name, will vie for the jungle crown on the latest season of I’m A Celebrity … Get Me Out Of Here!

“I’m excited, but also shitting myself at the same time,” Bird said.

“I am absolutely petrified of everything. I am scared of snakes, scared of spiders, bugs, everything. It is my worst fear in life, all of it.”

Season 11 of I’m A Celebrity kicks off tomorrow with a batch of new familiar faces heading into the South African jungle.

Reggie Bird is off to the jungle. Picture: Channel 10

Winning Big Brother 3 in 2003. Picture: Andrew MacColl

Bird laughed at the suggestion she could have an advantage over her competition given she may not be able to see some of the creepy-crawlies coming her way in the various challenges. The 50-year-old mother of two is legally blind and suffers from both retinitis pigmentosa, a rare degenerative eye disease that causes severe vision impairment, and stage-two Usher syndrome, which causes deafness and hearing loss.

“Because my eyesight is deteriorating, I looked at it as an opportunity to grab with both hands.”

“Hopefully they will put things to the side of me because I won’t see it as I have no peripheral vision at all,” she joked.

“If there is something right next to me, I won’t see it. I’m hoping that is going to help.”

More seriously, she said: “Because my eyesight is deteriorating, I looked at it as an opportunity to grab with both hands. Like, who gets a chance to do this shit?

“And I will store it in the memory bank for if and when my eyes are totally gone. They say I will wake up one day and it is all going to be black, darkness, which is going to suck.

“When they diagnosed me 20 years ago now, they gave me a 15-year time frame so I am six years of hanging on to my little bit of nine degrees, so I am really hoping it stays this way. As frustrating as it is, I appreciate what little bit of vision I have got left.”

Do you have a story for The Telegraph? Message 0481 056 618 or email [e-mail]

Originally published as ‘Petrified of everything’: Why Reggie Bird will face her worst fears