Nigel Farage is rumoured to appear on I’m A Celeb (Wikimedia Commons)
Fans of I’m a Celebrity… Get Me Out of Here! have been left outraged following rumours Nigel Farage will appear on the show.
Farage has long been a controversial figure in UK politics for his views – particularly on immigration – which have been described as stoking hate between communities and encouraging xenophobia.
The former UKIP and Brexit Party leader was spotted at Brisbane airport in Australia ahead of the new series starting on Sunday (19 November), where he told journalists he “might” be going into the jungle.
Farage told a MailOnline journalist he “can’t confirm” if he is joining the show’s line-up but added the ITV programme has a “big audience” of people “worth talking to”.
Since rumours broke that Farage might be going into the jungle – for an alleged £1.5 million – fans have expressed their dismay, with some even planning to boycott watching it all together if he does appear.
“People should really boycott this with Nigel Farage in it,” one person wrote on X, the platform previously known as Twitter.
“This is what happens when you normalise and platform the far right. Something @ITV should think long and hard about before selecting Nigel Farage to go on ‘I’m a Celebrity’,” another said.
A third questioned: “Do advertisers really want their brand to be forever associated with Farage? Boycott.”
A fourth, coly wrote: “It would be proper hilarious if Nigel Farage was the first person to get voted out. Proper hilarious. I mean I don’t want to start a campaign or anything.”
“Nigel Farage will enter the jungle, everyone will vote for him to do the trails, then eventually people at home will be like “aw he’s not actually that bad” and then by 2035 he will be prime minister,” someone else sarcastically wrote, nodding to the public’s reaction to Matt Hancock’s time of the show last year.
A number of other famous faces have been linked with this year’s show, including Britney’s sister Jamie-Lynn Spears, Josie Gibson and Denise Van Outen.