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Since emerging as king of the jungle on 2004’s I’m A Celebrity, comedian and actor Joe Pasquale has embraced his daredevil side and embraced trying new things – including skydiving and riding a motorbike
It’s easy to see squeaky-voiced Joe Pasquale as a figure of fun, but the comedian’s jokey exterior is actually hiding a determined, fearless adrenaline junkie.
He has never been the same since braving I’m A Celebrity…Get Me Out of Here and emerging as king of the jungle. And as ITV gears up for the new series, starting on November 17, Joe, 63, recalls his initial reluctance to head Down Under in 2004.
He says: “I said it’s not for me but I didn’t have a gig so I thought, what’s the worst that can happen? On the way to Australia I read a book, Feel The Fear & Do It Anyway. It changed my life. After that I jumped out of a plane. I thought, if I can do that, what else can I do? It was definitely a life-changing moment.” He faced plenty of trials, including collecting flags from a helicopter rope ladder and being submerged in a tank full of rats. He also made friends with two emus.
He says: “If I think I’m scared of that, I’ll make sure I do it. It’s another reason for doing stand-up. It still scares me every time, but I enjoy that feeling you get. It’s the same feeling you get when you’re doing a parachute jump – when I feel the most alive.”
Joe’s still keen to learn new things and says: “I’d be an astronaut if I could.” Since the jungle, the star, a runner-up on TV talent show New Faces in 1987, has learnt to box, got a pilot’s licence, written horror books and done an Open University degree in Geo [Earth] sciences.
Last week, he passed his motorbike test and bought a Scrambler Triumph 400X. He says: “People say, ‘oh you’re going to kill yourself,’ but I love it. I love the danger, the fear and being in control of it. I don’t want to sit there getting old and fat and decrepit. You have to connect 100% when you’re on a motorbike. You are so exposed and in the moment. People are so lackadaisical in the car.”
Joe takes his health as seriously as his thrills. He does not drink or smoke, goes to the gym when he can and swears by cold showers or baths, which he takes in an old beer barrel at his 16th century home near Thetford, Norfolk.
This steely determination helped him win I’m A Celeb and he sees the same qualities in former world champion boxer and promoter Barry McGuigan, 63. Tipping Barry to win this series, Joe says: “He’s a nice bloke but, most of all, he has discipline. You must control your emotions out there, whether it be anger or frustration.
“Barry will be used to hunger, with his training schedule he would have had to do extreme diets.” Joe has more tips for the campmates, who include WAG Coleen Rooney, 38, Mc Fly’s musician Danny Jones, 38, and Strictly star Oti Mabuse, 34. He suggests they get used to eating less before they go into the jungle and take a fold-up chair as their luxury item, as their backs will start hurting sitting on a log around the campsite.
And it is no use pretending to be someone else. He says: “You’ve also got to be yourself. You can’t put on an act for weeks.” But it is unlikely Joe, winner of last year’s The Masked Singer: I’m A Celebrity dressed as an Aussie “dunny”, will have time to see how they cope.
After his comedy tour, The New Normal – 40 Years Of Cack, he’s straight into panto, with X Factor ’s Alexandra Burke, in Jack and the Beanstalk at London’s New Wimbledon Theatre. He is so busy he will not be with his big family over Christmas – he has five grown-up children, 11 grandkids and two ex-wives.
One of his five children is ex-Hollyoaks actor Joe Tracini, 36, who recently made a Channel 4 documentary , Me And The Voice Inside My Head, about living with borderline personality disorder. Joe says: “I’ll sleep most of Christmas Day and have a stick-in-the-microwave Christmas dinner. It sounds a bit bah humbug, but I have to rest because I’ll be knackered for the next shows otherwise.”
This year, he performed with pals Bradley Walsh, Brian Conley and Shane Richie at The London Palladium. The foursome will tour for a month from April. Joe has also appeared on Celebrity Mastermind and Celebrity Chase and is a regular on Channel 4’s The Last Leg.
He admits has little time left for romance. “I’m not that interested in dating. I think I’m at that age where I quite enjoy my own company and I fart a lot.”
And, worryingly for such a thrill seeker, he admits to being very accident prone. Last year he impaled himself on a set of moose antlers at a gig in Skegness, Lincs. Last time he was in Jack and The Beanstalk he mistimed a forward roll on stage and dislocated his shoulder and broke a collarbone. He says: “I’d just won the jungle, I was like Elvis – the show was sold out every night.”
Joe needed an operation and three months to recover but the Birmingham Hippodrome panto had six weeks to run. Luckily, the physio for the Royal Ballet was to hand and strapped him up before each performance.
Clearly Joe believes the show must go on and says: “Don’t listen to the voices in your head that say you can’t do things, just do them.”
