Associate Editor Tom Bryant is given a tour of the I’m A Celebrity camp – and is wowed by the efforts to make the jungle accessible for Ade Adepitan.
20:03, 12 Nov 2026
Walking up from the creek to the top of the jungle is lung-busting stuff. I was out of breath by time i’d made it to my hammock yesterday.
I can certainly understand why the campmates always kick off when they’re lumbered with the washing up at the bottom. Now imagine having to negotiate that same hill on crutches.
That’s the challenge facing Ade Adepitan when he enters the I’m A Celebrity jungle this weekend. And fair play to both him and ITV for the extraordinary lengths they’ve gone to in making it possible.
Bosses have spent months working out how to accommodate the Paralympian’s needs without compromising the look and feel of the jungle. And having seen the results for myself, I reckon they’ve cracked it.
You could wander around the camp for hours without noticing many of the changes. Everything has been so cleverly blended into the surroundings that it barely registers. Even the stairlift has been camouflaged with greenery to make it look like part of the jungle.
As for that punishing hill, resting points have been introduced along the way, while the steps have been subtly levelled to give Ade a firmer grip. But underestimate him at your peril.
This is a man who once crawled up a volcano in Nicaragua after a gruelling 220-mile trek across Central America to the Pacific coast for a TV show. Insiders tell me his upper-body strength is astonishing, and I’m delighted that bosses are confident he’ll be able to tackle the vast majority of this year’s challenges.
There is something genuinely uplifting about the effort that has gone into making this happen. Not least the message it sends to disabled boys and girls watching at home.
And perhaps nobody understands the significance of it better than Ade himself.
“Words like ‘honour’ and ‘privilege’ are ones I feel, but I don’t think they sum it up enough,” he said. “For me, this is a moment in time. Even if I go out in the first week, I will always be remembered as the person in a wheelchair.”