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 pa.
