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The I’m A Celebrity… Get Me Out of Here! 2026 line-up is one of the strongest in years, mostly down to the blockbuster addition of Wayne Rooney – a genuine national treasure, hero and proud owner of the biggest glow-up of 2026.
The former Man United star is currently the bookies’ favourite to win the ITV show by quite some margin.
It makes sense; Rooney is by far the best-known name on the line-up – or any line-up – and he’s gone from being ripped apart by tabloids throughout his football career with scandal after scandal to polishing up his image and growing up to be a fairly decent bloke.
At least, that’s what his Disney+ reality TV series The Real Rooneys would have us believe.
Wife Coleen may have only narrowly missed out on winning her own series in 2024, but she carries more charisma and brought more to the jungle than I think Wayne will.
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She had a lot to prove on I’m A Celebrity.
Perhaps it’s unfair to say she’s lived in her husband’s shadow – she’s built an enormously successful brand through clothing lines, social media and allowing the public into her transition from teenage WAG to entrepreneur enough to keep us hooked, but not so much that we really knew who she was until the jungle.
Still, her surname accounted for a lot, even after that ‘Rebekah Vardy’s account’ bombshell.
Wayne, on the other hand, is much more visible before going into the jungle.
The fly-on-the-wall reality series is as intimate as it gets and he’s one of the most popular football pundits going.
He might not be a man of many words, but he is funny, softer than people may have imagined him to be, and I think he’ll only do well out of letting us in more on I’m A Celebrity.
He may have been King of Old Trafford – but King of the Jungle? I don’t think he stands a chance.
Perhaps in many other years, he’d walk it.
But this line-up is boasting some massively beloved stars, with one in particular standing out as my early favourite to be inducted into the Jungle Royal Family: Joanna Page.
She doesn’t get enough credit for the success of Gavin & Stacey, but Joanna was instrumental in making it the phenomenon that it became.
No, she didn’t write it and its titular characters may have become secondary to Nessa and Smithy – but for me that’s more likely down to the ego of James Corden rather than the audience’s tiring of Gavin or Stacey.
But Joanna does possess the exact same Welsh warmth and distinctive sense of humour that made Stacey so special – and could be what sees her go all the way.
Though, she’s also shown she’s not scared to rock the boat, can even be quite forthright with her opinions and with a sharp tongue too.
Just ask actress Lucia Keskin, who felt the wrath of Joanna after the latter labelled her debut comedy Things You Should Have Done ‘unbearable’.
‘My mother could have written it. My mother could have done it. I just thought ‘My God, this is just unbearable. I’m so bored. I just genuinely am bored. I’m bored,’ she said on the Off The Telly podcast she hosted with EastEnders star Natalie Cassidy.
Of all the stars of Gavin & Stacey, Joanna’s acting career deserved so much more afterwards.
Perhaps she’ll benefit from the Emily Atack effect, who defied the rule that acting careers end with a jungle stint and has never enjoyed more success.
But Joanna has tougher competition than Wayne.
YouTubers have a strong track record of being the ones most of the audience has never heard of, before inevitably leaving the jungle everyone’s favourite camp mate.
Sharky – real name Sharmarke Mohamud – is the latest who will be hoping to replicate the success of Angry Ginge – one of the most popular winners ever.
Again, he’s a brand built on a big personality Wayne doesn’t quite have and has a following so fiercely loyal he’s almost a dead cert for the final already.
Chloe Burrows, meanwhile is a hugely popular Love Island star who has maintained a massively successful brand through her likability.
So rarely do genuine stars come off the back of the ITV2 dating series but Chloe is one of them – and rightly so.
She was absolutely hilarious on the romance reality show – which isn’t exactly renowned for choosing contestants with a sense of humour.
Chloe is self-deprecating, friendly and, having met her, I can confirm she is every bit as personable and open in real life as she is on her social media, where she boasts almost 2 million followers on Instagram alone.
And then there’s Leigh Francis, who has been mildly ‘cancelled’ on television after Bo’ Selecta was rewatched through a new lens following the Black Lives Matter protests and his brand of uncomfortable and often confrontational sense of humour fell out of fashion.
We’ve hardly seen the real man behind the characters. Francis has spent his career quite literally hidden behind the ghoulish masks of Craig David or Mel B on Bo’ Selecta and then the outlandish presenter Keith Lemon on Celebrity Juice.
I’ve interviewed Leigh and found him to be one of the most memorably lovely stars I’ve met. Perhaps that was a facade for a journalist, but I can usually see through that.
I think after keeping his true personality away from the public, he might find they’ve never loved him more when they get to really see it.
Leigh is third in the betting to leave Australia with the crown, but I’m not paying much attention to that.
Because while Wayne Rooney is the favourite to win this series already, there are a number of stars I think stand a greater chance of winning than him.
And one, Joanna, might find herself with national treasure status of her own.
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