I’m a Celeb star GK Barry has revealed Miranda Hart as the inspiration for her comedy.
The Loose Women star and content creator is one of 10 contestants currently being doused in bugs in the I’m a Celeb jungle, and used some rare downtime in the camp to discuss her upbringing and sexuality.
Barry, who is speculated to be earning low five-figures for her participation in the show, told her campmates that she first discovered comedy through studying episodes of Hart’s hit BBC sitcom.
“I used to watch the boxsets of Miranda to learn how to be funny,” she said, adding that it wasn’t until she began cracking jokes that she overcame her insecurities as a teenager. “I was really lanky,” she said. “Buck teeth. Gap. Hairy arms. Greasy hair.”
The 25-year-old also said that her parents always suspected that she was gay, joking that she lived in a “glass closet” before officially coming out to them at the same time as she introduced them to her girlfriend, Ella.
“It was by accident I found Ella, through a mutual friend and then I really liked her the first day I met her but I’d never told my parents,” Barry said. “I’d mentioned, ‘Oh I’m just going to see my friend Ella’, or ‘I’m staying round Ella’s’ so they’d heard her name.”
One day, she remembers, she nonchalantly said that Ella was actually her girlfriend, to which her parents offered nothing but support. “They just love her, they never had an issue with it. They’ve always said whoever you end up with we do not care, boy or girl we don’t care, as long as they’re not a d***.”
A number of campmates on Tuesday’s show discussed their personal lives, with Coronation Street’s Alan Halsall talking about being single in the wake of his divorce, and N-Dubz star Tulisa revealing that she’s been celibate for three years.
“I feel like I’m demisexual,” she explained. “I need to have a really close emotional bond with someone.”
Demisexuality falls on the spectrum of asexuality, and means having absolutely no sexual attraction to a person unless a strong emotional connection has first been formed.
McFly’s Danny Jones is currently the bookies’ favourite to be crowned King of the Jungle on the series.