I'm A Celeb star hints which contestant will win - and five tips for surviving jungle

It's been 20 years since squeaky-voiced Joe Pasquale befriended two emus, lay submerged in rats during one of the most gruesome ever Bushtucker trials and won I’m A Celebrity Get Me Out Of Here.

The trip to Australia changed his life forever and made him the fearless, adrenaline-loving comedian that he is today.

Now, as ITV gears up for the new series, starting on November 17, Joe, 63, recalls: “I was asked if I wanted to do the show and I said, ‘not really. 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 this book - Feel The Fear and 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.

“If I look at something and think ‘I’m scared of that,’ I’ll make sure I do it. It’s another reason I enjoy 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.

“For me, it’s about not wanting to curl up and die and learning new things.

“I’d be an astronaut if I could!”.

First gracing our TV screens as runner-up on the hit 1987 talent show New Faces, Joe has since learnt to box, obtained his pilot's licence, written horror books and completed an Open University degree in Geo [Earth] sciences.

Last week, he passed his motorbike test and became a fully-licensed petrolhead - buying himself a Scrambler Triumph 400X.

“I passed my motorbike test. I bought a motorbike and just thought, ‘I don’t want to sit there getting old and fat and decrepit’” he says.

“People say, ‘oh you’re going to kill yourself,’ but I love it. I love the danger and the fear and I love being in control of it. 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!”

As well as enjoying challenges, Joe takes his health very seriously. He doesn’t drink or smoke and hits the gym when he can - also swearing by the health benefits of cold showers or baths, which he takes in an old beer barrel at his 16th century home near Thetford in Norfolk.

He reveals: “A friend who’s really into cold showers talked me into getting a barrel in the garden - an old beer barrel!

“If I’m touring and staying in a hotel with a bath I might ask the hotel bar for some ice to put in it. It's great for energy."

This steely determination definitely helped him to become King of the Jungle 20 years ago and he recognises the same qualities in former boxer-turned boxing promoter Barry McGuigan, who he tips to win this year’s show.

Joe, who also won last year’s I’m A Celebrity - The Masked Singer special, dressed as an Australian ‘dunny’, says: “I would put money on Barry McGuigan.

“He’s a nice bloke, but most of all he has discipline in his life. You have to keep control of your emotions out there, whether it be anger or frustration with other people.

“Barry will be used to hunger. Over years with his training schedule he would have had to do extreme diets, because you have to be a certain weight when you're boxing.”

Joe’s advice to other campmates - including WAG Coleen Rooney, musician Danny Jones and Strictly star Oti Mabuse - is this: “Everyone eats as much as they can leading up to it, but I did the opposite. I’d say get used to eating less and less before you go in.

“With the luxury item, you get some people bringing a pillow with their kid’s face or a hairbrush, something like that, but the only thing they need to take is a fold-up chair.

“After a day of sitting on a log around the campsite your back starts hurting.

“You’ve also got to be yourself. You can’t put on an act for weeks.”

It’s unlikely Joe will get much time to catch up on this year’s jungle antics, though, as the funnyman rarely sits still.

Currently in the middle of his comedy tour, ‘The New Normal - 40 Years Of Cack,’ when that finishes in a few weeks he’s straight into panto - performing alongside singer Alexandra Burke in Jack and the Beanstalk at London’s New Wimbledon Theatre.

A big family man, with 11 grandchildren and two ex-wives, one of his five grown-up children is former Hollyoaks actor Joe Tracini, who recently talked about living with borderline personality disorder in the Channel 4 documentary Me And The Voice Inside My Head.

But he won’t be with them all at Christmas. He explains: “I’ll be sleeping most of Christmas Day. I’ll have one of those stick-in-the-microwave Christmas dinners.

“It sounds a bit bar humbug, but I have to rest because I’ll be knackered for the next shows otherwise.”

Earlier this year, he performed alongside pals Bradley Walsh, Brian Conley and Shane Ritchie at The London Palladium and the foursome will tour for a month from next April.

Joe, who has also appeared on BBC shows including Celebrity Mastermind and Celebrity Chase, and is a regular contributor on Channel 4’s The Last Leg, admits that his hectic schedule leaves little time 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!” he jokes.

“Very accident prone” by his own admission, last year he impaled himself with a set of moose antlers at the end of a gig in Skegness.

And last time he performed in Jack and The Beanstalk in 2004 at Birmingham Hippodrome,, right after I’m A Celebrity, he says: “I had to do a forward roll on stage. A week into the run I mistimed it and went down on my shoulder, dislocating it and breaking a collarbone.

“Because I’d just won the jungle, I was like Elvis - the show was sold out every night! The stage manager came to me in the interval. I was sweating and crying, rolling on the floor. He had tears in his eyes. He begged me to keep doing it.

“I got myself checked over and was told I needed an operation and three months to recover. I said, ‘I can’t, I’ve got panto.’

“I went back to the theatre and spoke to the manager and he introduced me to a physio for the Royal Ballet who was also a former physio for the England rugby team.

“He said he could help. So, every day before the show, he strapped my shoulder into place because I’d torn all the ligaments and he got me through the next six weeks. It was incredible - I didn’t think I was going to last a day!”.

The show must go in, is clearly a mantra Joe takes very seriously.

Always looking forwards, not backwards, he adds: “People say you’ve got more to lose when you get olde,r but you’ve actually got less, because you have more days behind you than in front. So, don’t listen to the voices inside your head that say you can’t do things and just do them!”

• To watch Joe in panto click here