Dougie Poynter is the 2011 King Of The Jungle. Digital Spy caught up with the McFly star to chat about his I’m a Celeb experience, beating close friend Mark Wright and why he never showered. How does it feel to be King Of The Jungle? “It feels amazing. I think there was some kind of typo or something. I’ve got no idea how I won. Did I really win? It’s crazy.” How do you think you won? “I honestly don’t know. If I analyse it too much I think I’ll go a bit mad.” You’ve won I’m a Celebrity and your McFly band mate Harry is still on Strictly Come Dancing… Is there a lot of rivalry going on? “There’s absolutely no rivalry between Harry and me. I just think there’s a lot more pressure on him now.” Have you heard from Harry? “Not yet. I’ve only just turned my phone on, but I’m looking forward to getting back to the UK so that I can see him dancing on Strictly as soon as possible. I’ll be there on Saturday. I’m going to take my jungle crown into the studio and say, ‘The pressure is on, dude’.” Are you eating everything in sight? “I ate a little bit earlier, but Dr Bob said not to go too nuts – especially after my last night in the jungle. I absolutely nailed so much food on the last night that I was sick.” Are you surprised by how well you got on with Mark in the jungle? “I knew we’d get on, but I didn’t expect to get on that well. We’re both from completely different worlds and we’re both into completely different things – but somewhere we connected.” Did you ever get close to quitting the jungle? “I was close to running away to find food – but then I would’ve come back. When there were a lot of people in the camp, I thought, ‘They might not notice if I’m gone’. The weirdest things start to go through your head when you’re hungry. I kept thinking, ‘Someone must have left some rubbish somewhere. I’ll go through that for food’.” You’re having a very memorable year. How would you describe 2011? “This year has literally gone up and up and up… I don’t think it can get any better than this. And now I’m going to get home and it’s Christmas. I couldn’t be happier.” Before you went into the jungle, you compared the jungle to rehab… Was the experience anything like rehab? “The jungle was nothing like rehab. It was so much fun. I would seriously recommend it to everyone out there. They should do one for non-celebrities. It was awesome.” Everybody usually leaves the jungle saying it was tough. Was it a breeze for you? “I wouldn’t say the jungle was a breeze, but it was one of the best things I’ve ever done. I got to sleep out under the stars every night. There’s so much wildlife there. Tom and the guys told me that they didn’t show much of the wildlife on the show – but every day I’d find something new in the jungle. “I’d find tree frogs every night. I’d find skinks, which is a type of lizard. There were a gazillion different types of insects that would come out at different times of the day. It was brilliant. I was really in my element in the jungle. It was so much fun.” Would you do it again? “I’d definitely do it again. I’d love to do it again. If I could do it with the whole of McFly, that would be brilliant. We’d have such a laugh.” Have you got your eye on any other reality shows? “No, this is my one reality show. We talked Danny into doing Popstar To Operastar. When he messes about, he does an opera voice so we said he’d be amazing on the show. After that, he said to us, ‘Right, now I’ve done one – all of you b**tards have to do one’. Tom did The Cube, Harry did Strictly and this was my one.” Was the jungle emotional? “It was never a real emotional rollercoaster. I never hit any super lows where I cried in there – but there were a lot of DMCs, deep and meaningful conversations. When I say DMC, it wasn’t too emotional, though. We were talking about space a lot and wildlife.” Were you teaching Mark about the wildlife? “He’d ask me questions about the wildlife in the jungle. I don’t know if he was that interested in my answers, but I told him anyway.” If Mark asked you to appear in TOWIE, would you give it a go? “I don’t know about that. To be honest, I wouldn’t want to make Arg jealous.” Were you thinking, ‘Arg is going to be livid with me’? “No. Mark and I get on in a different, special way. We’ve done this epic thing together – and we shared it to the very end. On the last night, we were saying, ‘It doesn’t matter who wins, we’ve gone right to the end and we’ve walked over the bridge at the same time’. It couldn’t have got any better for us.” Is there space for Mark in McFly? “There’s already too many people in McFly, but maybe Mark can drum when Harry is off on the Strictly tour next year. That might work!” Do you think you’ll be friends forever? “We’ll definitely hang out forever. I used to see Peter Andre and Kerry Katona hanging out all the time and he said that’s down to them doing I’m a Celebrity the same year. I didn’t realise they were in the same year together, but that shows that you can make a long friendship.“Mark and I have got so many things planned together over the next few weeks anyway. It’s going to be like a really cheesy Mark-Kate and Ashley montage of us running around shopping together.” What plans have you made? “We’ve planned a lot of different food places. You’ll see us go to one place for a cookie and we’ll take it to Starbucks. Then we’ll go shopping for a bit to work up an appetite for Nando’s – and so on. We’ve got a whole day of eating planned. We’re going out to buy some Christmas jumpers. It’s going to be awesome.” How are you going to use the raised profile from the show? “I don’t know. I didn’t do the show to try and boost ticket sales for the tour or anything like that. That’s not how we run McFly. I did the show because the opportunity came up and everybody knows how much I’ve always wanted to go and live in the jungle for a bit. It’s something I would’ve paid to do if it wasn’t on TV.” Do you think it might change your audience? “Maybe it will, but that can’t be bad.” דאגי ומארק מתוך מסיבת הסיום של התוכנית, מהטוויטר של מארק
