I’m a Celebrity Hunted star – these are the show secrets that prove it is NOT staged
CELEBRITY Hunted returned this week with five new pairings desperately trying to avoid a team of expert trackers.
And if viewers had any doubts that the teams’ jailbreak and subsequent escape antics were staged then they’re very mistaken.
YouTube and Strictly star Saffron Barker, who is partnered with maths whizz Bobby Seagull, has revealed what it’s really like to go on the run and assured viewers that it is all very real.
Fan of the show Saffron, 22, was sceptical herself before taking part, but that quickly changed once she was selected for the hunt in aid of Stand Up 2 Cancer.
In an exclusive interview, she said: “There’s always a massive part of me that thought there are so many parts that are staged. When I went through the interview process, after I got it, I was like ‘oh my God, amazing, so which part is fake and which part’s real?’ And they were like ‘there’s no part that’s fake’.
“I was so adamant it wasn’t legit until I started doing it and, hand on heart, it’s so legit. Everything you see actually happens. It’s just crazy. You can’t explain it.”
Saffron and Bobby’s game plan was to go off-grid as quickly as possible and camp in the great outdoors in a bid to avoid detection.
It meant the duo, and their assigned cameraman, did a great deal of hiking that isn’t necessarily going to be seen on the show.
“It’s non-stop moving,” said Saffron. “Not at night time because they don’t film at night time. They film when you go to sleep and then in the morning it’s like the game starts again. Wherever you go to sleep, you have to finish. Most days we were walking eight hours a day but you just don’t see it.”
Questions about the way the show is filmed are often asked by viewers, who are suspicious that cameras just so happen to capture the pairings’ every move without the hunters being aware of what’s going on.
Shedding light on the scenario, Saffron said: “We had one cameraman for each pairing, but also there’s a different camera crew that’s always following you. They get all the CCTV footage, they’re the ones who track us and stuff.
“Another thing that really surprised me was with our cameraman, where you sleep he has to sleep. Whereas the other cameramen, there were three others, they would go and stay in a hotel and stuff. There were quite a lot of people around us, but in no way are they allowed to help or give opinions.”
With 1.8million followers on Instagram, it’s little wonder Saffron struggled to go incognito.
In fact, she’s so well-known online that she became the most snitched on contestant in the show’s history.
Snitching in this context is when members of the public contact the show to alert the hunters to her whereabouts.
She said: “I got told I was the most snitched person they’ve actually ever had on the show. I get recognised a lot when I go out and so I thought it would be bad for that reason.
“I tried to stay low-key and wear caps and my hair in plaits and stuff, but I still got recognised a lot. I feel awful ever saying no to a picture with somebody so I honestly, even if it meant getting caught, I couldn’t find myself saying no to people.
” I tried to trust the public whenever anyone asked for a picture. I trust that if they watched my stuff they would not post the pictures. Believe it or not, everyone who asked me for a photo on the show I would say to them ‘of course you can, but can you please not post it for a few days?’ and they actually didn’t.
“Everybody that came up to me was super lovely, but the amount of people who snitched on me was actually crazy. A lot of couples could stay in one place for 24 hours or 48 hours. Bobby and I, most days, had to move cities like three times in a day. We didn’t stop moving because we could see how many photos and how often we were getting snitched on.”
However, not everyone the pair approached for help was familiar with who they were.
In scenes that won’t be shown, Saffron was verbally abused by a man who was less than happy to host them in his home.
She said: “There was one time we had to knock on a stranger’s door because we were desperate to stay somewhere. We’d had enough of camping at this point.
“He basically shouted at me and told me to ‘F off’. I think he thought I was somebody literally off the street that wanted to steal from him or something. He was an elderly man, but we didn’t know that until we knocked on the door, but he was so rude. I remember how much it took me back. I’d built up all this confidence and it sent me straight back down again.”
Even though her career is thriving, Saffron has always felt like the underdog when it comes to her TV career.
Often younger than her co-stars and seen by audiences, initially at least, in an inferior light because of her self-made online background, Saffron feels like she faces a battle to beat her stereotype.
She said: “In every TV show I’ve been in I’ve always been the youngest person in my series, and, so naturally, people look at me as the young dumb blonde, an influencer on social media, which is why I was really excited to film this show because I think it shows another side of me, that there’s more to that.
“Even in the first episode they [hunters] compare Bobby and I being on opposite ends of the spectrum, and I think even their opinion changes as the show goes on, which is nice to see.”
If that’s the case, it sounds like Saffron is a winner whether she escapes or not.
Celebrity Hunted returns to Channel 4 at 9pm on Tuesday.