Me Life Story by Scarlett Moffatt (best classic books of all time txt) 📗

Go’. I used to be claustrophobic, and I’ve never been scuba diving or anything – Jesus, I didn’t even dare to put my head under the water in the bath for a long time. I’d get properly freaked out. I couldn’t even go in some lifts as I’d feel anxious. Sometimes I could go in them if they were mirrored or you could see through them, but not being able to see an exit for me is terrifying.

So you can imagine how I felt as I stepped into a tank full of eels. I sat myself down and could feel them against my skin. Trying to stay calm, I then had to put my head in another tank. The trial hadn’t even begun and I could feel myself hyperventilating. Medic Bob fitted me with a snorkel and I knew I had to endure hell for the next four minutes. ‘It’s just four minutes of my life, that’s all,’ I told myself. ‘If you can do this, Scarlett, you can do anything.’

Medic Bob outlined what I needed to do. We called him Dr Gloom, because even though he’s got a smiley face, it’s always bad news. He may as well have said, ‘Basically, you could die, but we’re on hand so try not to panic and try not to die on live telly. It wouldn’t be good viewing.’

‘Bob, what happens if I swallow some water?’

‘I am going to show you some techniques because you will be swallowing water all throughout the trial. You need to breathe in through your nose then out through your mouth, spitting the water out as you go.’

I was like, ‘What happens if I swallow too much water and drown?’

‘Just calm down, you’ll do fine. If you want to get out at any time, signal with your hands or pull hard on the rope to the left-hand side of the tank.’

I closed my eyes and focused on my breathing. I couldn’t hear anything Ant and Dec were saying. OK, what song can I sing, I thought, what will take my mind off things? So in my head I kept replaying ‘Tragedy’ by Steps (fitting, I know). They dropped toads in the tank with me; they came down hard onto my head. I bit down into my snorkel so hard my gums bled a little. I did not want to lose the snorkel; that was my breathing apparatus. Six yabbies came next, followed by more slithering eels. I had eels by my feet and eels by my ears. A hundred soldier crabs were lobbed in next, then spiders. Then all of a sudden the water drained and I could see Ant and Dec’s smiling faces through my misty goggles. ‘Yes, I’ve done it.’

I was sat there smiling; it was my worst day and best day in that jungle. My worst because that was a huge fear of mine, my best because I’d just faced it and kicked its arse. The jungle was so good for my confidence. It is bizarre but on the walk back from trials you think about the oddest things. On this day I remembered the piece of paper my little sister Ava had given to me just a week before I went to Australia. She had scribbled a Winnie the Pooh quote on it. It read:

‘There is something you must always remember.

You are braver than you believe, stronger than you

seem, and smarter than you think.’

Chapter Sixteen

AND THE NEW QUEEN OF THE JUNGLE

Celebrity camp-mates are given red socks to wear so that blood from insect bites doesn’t show up on camera. (Reassuring.)

Ridiculous amounts of creepy crawlies are used during jungle trials. In 2004’s ‘House of Pies’ trial, 1.5 million flies were used. (Lucky for Brian Harvey, the flies couldn’t actually fly, due to the conditions they’d been bred in).

I’m a Celebrity … Get Me Out of Here! has been going for sixteen series starting back in 2002. Over this time it has seen ten kings sit on the throne and six queens.

‘We are in the final three guys, we have made it to the very end.’

‘Bro, this is crazy.’

Adam was jumping around, we were like three big kids hugging and jumping around in a circle, we could not believe it.

‘I feel so lucky that we all came in on the first day and we are all leaving on the last day. We’ve experienced it all.’

See, a lot of the camp mates wanted to get back to reality and to see Australia and live it up in luxury at the Versace Hotel. But I know for a fact that me, Adam and Joel, well, we weren’t arsed about that. How many people get this opportunity to experience something as bizarre as I’m a Celebrity … Get Me Out of Here!? I didn’t think it would happen but I really wanted to make the final three. I had imagined what it would be like for so long and it wasn’t even what I thought it would feel like. I knew how amazing all the camp mates were, so for people to actually pick up their phones, tablets, iPads, laptops and actually take time out to vote for me, well, that meant I felt accepted.

‘Guys, this means we get to have the final feast together.’

We weren’t all hugging for too long when we realised what was coming.

‘I know the feast sounds good but to earn it, ha, it means we have to do our final trial, doesn’t it?’

Adam went first and came back looking shell-shocked. He had tackled the jungle classic, ‘Fill Your Face’. He had to put his head into a clear fish bowl-style helmet where 3,000 crickets, 300 cockroaches, 10 giant burrowing cockroaches, 10 scorpions, 10 millipedes and 20 spiders were dropped in to keep him company. He had aced the trial through gritted teeth and won us all a starter plus a drink each.