Christopher Biggins interview

Christopher Biggins ranks winning I’m A Celebrity… Get Me Out Of Here! as his career highlight.

The star, 65, was crowned victor in the show in 2007.

Despite a huge career on stage and screen, from Nero in the 1976 BBC’s dramatisation of I, Claudius to Herod in the Jesus Christ Superstar, Christopher said the reality show topped it all.

“People ask me, ‘what’s the greatest thing you’ve ever done?’, and I have to say it was the jungle,” he said.

“No-one was more surprised than me when I won it. I was so touched and humbled that the whole nation was behind me. It was a life-changing experience having all those deprivations and eating horrible things like cockroaches and sharing a bed with a rat, but it also relaunched my career and got me noticed by a whole new, younger audience.”

He said of going on the show: “You take a risk, of course, going in for a reality show like that, it can literally make or break you career-wise. If you come over badly, that’s it!”

Christopher said he was offered Big Brother on condition he could get Joan Collins to join him on the show.

“She refused it though, so I did too,” he said.