I'm A Celeb's Craig Charles opens up about heartbreaking reason he left the show in 2014
8 April 2026, 21:00 | Updated: 9 April 2026, 12:48
I'm A Celebrity South Africa star Craig Charles said the show was "bittersweet" for years after his brother's sudden passing.
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I'm A Celebrity... South Africa is here, with the likes of Sir Mo Farah, Scarlett Moffatt, David Haye and Craig Charles returning to compete for legend status.
Craig's return saw him enter the show with none other than The GC, Gemma Collins. The pair were thrown right into an eating Bushtucker Trial, which show hosts Ant and Dec have revealed took 4-5 hours to film!
Bushtucker Trials are one of the reasons Craig is back on the show after he had to leave the jungle after only four days back in 2014. At the time, he had been made aware of the sudden death of his brother Dean and chose to come home.
Now, Craig has opened up about the passing of his brother and why he decided to come back to I'm A Celeb 11 years later.
In conversation with Capital, on what he was most looking forward to getting to do this time round, Craig said: "The chance to do some trials and challenges, because I never really got that. I did one, didn't I, with Nadia [Forde], when I was buried underground and had to get some stars and there were just some rats in the room.
"But I thought, 'oh, well, if I can do that, it'll be easy'. I didn't realise they'd ramped the challenges up so severely, though. So I went straight into an eating challenge and then I did quite a few of the challenges and they just got progressively harder."
The Red Dwarf star added: "They've really ramped it. They're taking the mick. To be honest, I left with ptsd."
Separately, Craig opened up to the tabloids about how his brother's death and leaving the jungle in 2014 stayed with him for years and how he knew he was ready to return for the South Africa spin-off.
The actor shared that it was a huge reason as to why he quit Coronation Street after ten years. He shared: "The death of my brother, and my unexpected departure as a result, did change my life.
"It made me re-evaluate things and made me ask: ‘If that had happened to me, would I be happy with what I had achieved?’ I came up with the answer and it was ‘no’."
"I was 50 at the time, my brother was 52, I had been in Corrie for ten years and I felt in a rut. I was really enjoying my time in the Australian jungle and it got sadly cut short. I knew I wanted to have some new adventures after that," Craig explained.
He added that leaving the show after just four days left him with a lot of "what ifs". "At first, I’m A Celebrity felt bittersweet after I’d left, and in the first few years I couldn’t watch the show.
"It made me sad and it opened a world of loss. Every year it came around, I would feel a sense of loss and a feeling of what might have been – both for my brother and for me. He was only 52 and he would have been 63 now, which is no age," he shared.
He explained that that feeling of "loss" "decreased over the years", saying: "And the last few years I have been able to watch it again without feeling the pain and the grief.
"And so, when this came round, it was at the right time. I feel strong and confident enough to face it again and have a laugh!"
Read more I'm A Celeb news here:
- I'm A Celebrity South Africa 2026 line up revealed
- I'm A Celebrity South Africa salaries cause pay row among cast
- I'm A Celebrity's Gemma Collins shares shock weight loss after coming off diet jabs
- Who is Gemma Collins' fiancé? Rami Hawash's net worth, child, proposal and more
