Richard Madeley explains mystery illness that forced him to leave I'm A Celebrity

29 November 2021, 10:18 | Updated: 29 November 2021, 10:21

By Naomi Bartram

@naomibartram

I'm A Celebrity's Richard Madeley has said he was 'incoherent' with dehydration after falling ill in the castle.

Richard Madeley has revealed why he was forced to leave I’m a Celebrity... Get Me Out of Here! last week.

The Good Morning Britain presenter announced on Thursday that he would not be able to continue on the show after he was rushed to hospital.

65-year-old Richard has now opened up about why he had to be removed from the castle to be seen by medical professionals.

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Speaking on GMB, Richard said: “I think what happened to me was I got dehydrated. I think that’s all it was. But dehydration, if anyone’s ever suffered from it, is actually quite disturbing.

“Basically, I think I’d been up for about 20 hours the day before, and the day before that we were having very long days and sleeping quite late, and we don’t have watches in there but I don’t think I got to bed until about 4, 4.30 in the morning.

“I knew I was feeling thirsty and I’m quite bad at remembering to drink actually, drink water, and as I actually snuggled into my sleeping bag, it was freezing, I thought, ‘Ah, I haven’t had a big drink in a while, I’ll do it when I wake up.’"

He continued: “And the next thing I knew I was sitting there babbling, I was talking nonsense... I basically woke up I didn’t know where I was, what was going and I could hardly string a sentence together, you know as it turned out, it was harmless, there was nothing wrong.

“I went to the hospital, had all the tests you can imagine... got a 100 per cent clean bill of health and they were happy for me to go back in...”

While Richard previously said he was disappointed not to be able to continue because he broke the Covid bubble, he thanked ITV for having a “proper duty of care”.

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This comes after the rest of the Castle campmates had to be removed from the set over the weekend due to extreme weather caused by Storm Arwen.

The live shows on both Saturday and Sunday had to be cancelled because the production base at Gwrych Castle in North Wales suffered significant technical damage during the storm.

It is not yet known whether I’m A Celebrity will be back on tonight (Monday 29).