Joe Swash doesn’t know how ‘I’m A Celebrity… Get Me Out of Here!’ in the UK will go down.
The former ‘EastEnders’ star won the 2008 series of the reality show and went on to co-host sister show ‘I’m a Celebrity…Get Me Out of Here, NOW!’, which would end up being named as ‘I’m a Celebrity: Extra Camp’, for a decade until 2019.
And with this year’s series set to be filmed at a castle ruin in Wales, due to the Covid-19 pandemic and travel restrictions, Joe has admitted it will be a "different" experience for the celebrities and viewers at home with it not being in the jungle Down Under.
Joe told OK! magazine: "It felt weird when Ant didn’t come back and Holly did it, but then when we got rolling with filming it felt fine and everyone’s worry was put to rest.
"But I do think Australia is as big a part of the show as Ant and Dec. So I don’t know how it’s going to come across."
However, Joe – whose partner Stacey Solomon was also crowned Queen of the Jungle in 2010 – has no doubt that the producers will make it work.
He added: "All I know is the people that work on that are top notch, so if anyone can make it work, they can.
"It’s just going to be a different show."
Producers at ITV decided there was no choice but to push on with a "contingency plan" with the situation in Oz changing daily amid the global health pandemic.
A source explained: "It’s been a dynamic and fast-changing situation. What is OK one day is impossible the next.
"The team have had many, many different contingency plans in play to deal with all the various possibilities that Covid-19 has presented.
"However as time went on it became increasingly obvious that as one problem is solved, another appeared and there came a point where producers had to make tough decisions."