I’m A Celeb’s Ant and Dec have finally addressed their longstanding beef with Kelly Brook

I’m A Celebrity’s Ant and Dec finally addressed their long-rumoured beef with Kelly Brook, even if it was in the form of a joke.

While chatting with Joel Dommett and Kemi Rodgers on I’m A Celebrity… Extra Camp about this year’s questionable camp meals, Ant joked that the dishes all looked “rancid”, pointing out that the ingredients weren’t difficult to use if cooked properly. Kemi teased that his comment might be aimed at the camp chefs, Kelly Brook and Martin Kemp.

Credit: ITV

That’s when Dec said: “Yeah, Ant, what’s your problem with Kelly Brook?!”

Ant instantly replied : “Don’t you start! I don’t have a problem with Kelly Brook, thank you!”

It was the first time either of them have publicly acknowledged the long-circulating claims of tension between them and Kelly, and people immediately clocked the reference.

So… why was there supposed beef in the first place?

It all traces back to Britain’s Got Talent 2009, when Kelly Brook joined the panel for just two days before being abruptly axed.

Dec later described the experience in Ant and Dec’s 2010 memoir Ooh! What a Lovely Pair, saying Kelly appeared nervous backstage, so he reassured her. According to him, she then turned to him and asked: “And what do you do on the show?”

Dec wrote that Simon Cowell looked stunned, responding “Kelly, you have seen the show, haven’t you?”, to which she allegedly replied, “Yeah… well, bits.”

Most Read

The actual reason Glinda can suddenly do magic in the ending of Wicked: For Good, spelled out

We FINALLY have juicy details about Rebecca and Bailey’s post-MAFS split – it sounds hella messy

Exactly what YouTuber Jack Doherty has been arrested for, and how long he faces in prison

Dec added that the only other person who’d ever asked him that question was the Queen. He and Ant also admitted in the book that they didn’t understand why Kelly had been added to the panel at all: “No one could give us a good reason why Kelly was on board… Simon, without talking to anyone, had decided it was a good idea. We didn’t agree.”

What Kelly Brook has said since

Kelly has previously given a very different version of events. In a past interview with the Standard, she claimed she was told by ITV staff that she had “upset Ant and Dec”, and suggested this contributed to her being removed from the show.

She said: “There was nothing I could do in this country after Britain’s Got Talent… Ant and Dec had never been anything but pleasant to my face, but clearly, they didn’t want me on the show.”

She said she would have loved to stay on the panel and believed she was “working out” well.

Credit: ITV

A close friend of Kelly’s told the Daily Mail: “Kelly might be all smiles, but underneath, she is a tough, tough woman who doesn’t take well to being crossed.

“She thinks Ant and Dec sneered at her for being a Page three girl; they didn’t think she had any talent.”

They added that Kelly is “a down-to-earth working-class girl” who “hates snobby behaviour”.

For more reality TV gossip, like The Tab Entertainment on Facebook. 

Featured image credit: Instagram/@antanddec, ITV