I’m A Celebrity…Get Me Out of Here! star Dean McCullough’s mum is ready to have a word with host Ant McPartlin (Picture: ITV)
I’m A Celebrity…Get Me Out of Here! star Dean McCullough’s mum is preparing to have a word with host Ant McParlin after he was ‘hard’ on her son.
The BBC Radio 1 DJ, 32, entered the camp as one of 12 celebrities competing on the current season of the long-running ITV series last week.
Although Dean first endeared himself with viewers for delivering a Wagatha Christie quip to Coleen Rooney and sharing details of his IBS issues during the first eating challenge, the tide of public sentiment quickly turned.
Being voted by the public to do six of the first nine Bushtucker Trials, Dean struggled with most, breaking down in tears and even ending some early.
Viewers also noticed Ant seemed fed up with him not following through, with the host then admitting: ‘My annoyance came across on screen and I was quite unprofessional and I’m not happy about it.’
Now Dean’s mum Ann has said she’s not happy with how Ant has been treating her son.
Ann McCullough arrived in Australia this week (Picture: Marc Giddings)
She thinks Ant has been ‘a wee bit hard on her son’ (Picture: Marc Giddings)
Landing in Australia wearing a T-shirt with a photograph of her son on it, the 55-year-old gave the host a heads up.
‘I think Ant’s been a wee bit hard on him,’ she said when speaking to the Daily Mail.
‘I’m going to have to have a word with Ant about that later.’
She went on to speak about how ‘awful’ it had been watching her son in the show after he’d experienced ‘such a hard few years’.
‘It’s hard to watch him do the Trials. I had him warned though, there’s nothing in that Jungle that’s going to kill you, do it, just get over yourself do it,’ she said.
Dean has struggled through six Bushtucker Trials (Picture: James Gourley/ ITV/ Shutterstock)
‘The moments he shouted I’m A Celebrity were the ones I was hiding behind a cushion. Me and the two dogs begging, “Don’t say the words, please don’t say the words”.’
However, Ann said she believed the reason her son was repeatedly being chosen to undertake trials was because he was ‘good to look at, is good fun and is enjoying every single minute of it’.
She jokingly added his fake teeth were ‘designed to chew down on cockroaches and bugs’.
Addressing Dean’s run-in with Coronation Street star Alan Halsall, Ann also said it was ‘hard to watch’ and said Alan ‘didn’t really give him much time to wake up’.
Ann also said that while her son was a ‘team player and loves everybody’, he was clearly ‘starstruck’ by Coleen Rooney.
Ant begged viewers to start voting for other celebrities to take part (Picture: ITV)
Her comments come after Ant & Dec begged viewers to stop voting for Dean to undertake the trials as they weren’t ‘getting to know the others’.
‘It’s good to see other faces down there. This is not a personal thing. It’s not about Dean. It’s about us and just seeing different people from the show being featured,’ Ant said on I’m A Celebrity Unpacked.
‘Some people, unfortunately, aren’t getting [airtime]. I’d like to see Barry [McGuigan] do a trial, I’d like to see Melvin [Odoom] down there, Oti [Mabuse]!
‘This happens every year when someone gets voted multiple times, you just get to a point where you go “Who’s still voting for Dean?” I don’t get it.’
I’m A Celebrity…Get Me Out of Here! continues tonight at 9pm on ITV1.
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