A body language expert has chucked in her two pence over Kelly Brook's entrance into the I'm A Celeb jungle last night, off the back of rumours of a feud between the star and hosts Ant and Dec.
The model has headed Down Under as this year’s series of I’m A Celebrity… Get Me Out of Here! has kicked off in full swing.
But fans were anticipating a bit of awkwardness when she came face-to-face with hosts Ant and Dec following their ‘bitter fallout’ well over a decade ago. That came about after Brook was allegedly fired from her role as a judge on Britain’s Got Talent.
And as fans watched the first episode of the hit ITV show last night, some slowly began to remember the three had history as one wrote on X: “Do people realise Kelly Brook & Ant and Dec have serious beef with each other?”
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I mean, there's got to be some irony straight off that as when the star jumped from the chopper, she shouted: "Ant and Dec I'm coming for you!"
And Judi James for Covers.com explained that Brook’s arrival during last night’s episode gave ‘pure panto’ as she circled above the hosts and pointed down to announce them ‘like an avenging star from Wicked'.
“Ant and Dec's reply from the ground was a 'Come on Kelly' followed by some knowing cackles. Kelly gave the impression of being an early dominant figure in her group, running to meet the other celebs as they landed with her arms outstretched, screaming in a ritual of friendship that actually mimed an attack,” the body language expert claimed to the Express.
James said that Brook seemed to ‘hover around the back of the group’ when Ant and Dec welcomed them all to I'm A Celeb as she claimed: “There was no close-up meet and greet between them, but Kelly did perform three gestures that could have signalled a desire to wield superior power.”
The expert went on to allege that Brook had a ‘confident hair-preen gesture’ and put her hand on her hip ‘in a partial splay’ which can be seen as a ‘warning to potential rivals’.
“Then there was another hair preen with both hands that created a double pit-bare gesture, hinting another desire to assert confidence and dominance,” she added.
After Brook lost the first challenge for the Getaway Car while listening to the hosts ‘laughing about her lovely clothes being ruined’, the expert said her competitive streak was ‘deflated’ as she voiced feeling ‘like a loser’.
Kelly Brook’s ‘bitter fallout’ with Ant and Dec
In 2009, Brook was appointed as a judge on BGT but left within just a few days as Simon Cowell explained that the format wasn’t working as well.
But the radio host went on to say, per The Sun: “The people at ITV were telling me that I had upset Ant and Dec and that was it.
"I would love to have stayed on the show. I really felt it was working out. Ant and Dec had never been anything but pleasant to my face, but clearly, they didn’t want me on the show."
Brook added: “Their egos are such that they were saying to themselves: 'How dare she think she can come on to our show?', and since then they’ve been very vocal about their displeasure at me being there."
And in the 2009 memoir Ooh! What a Lovely Pair: Our Story, Dec addressed her brief stint on the talent show. He recalled her first day on set as he wrote: “Kelly looked nervous, so I told her it was going to be great fun and to just relax and enjoy it.
"She nodded, then looked at me and said, 'And what do you do on the show?'
"I looked at Simon, who was sitting next to me. He turned to Kelly and said, 'Kelly, you have seen the show, haven’t you?' To which she replied, 'Yeah… well, bits'."
He added: “ I don’t want to sound like an egomaniac, but the last person who said, ‘And what do you do?’ was the Queen when I met her at the party for ITV’s fiftieth anniversary."
I'm A Celeb continues tonight at 9pm on ITV1 and ITVX.
Topics: Im A Celebrity, Ant and Dec, TV and Film, Celebrity, ITV
Jess Battison