Shirley Ballas on being hunted by Bear Grylls: "I had a scorpion in my trousers!"

"They were all so young! I was the eldest one there," the 64-year-old says. "I mean, Danny Cipriani is this strapping rugby player… My worry was that I wouldn't be able to hold up my end of the deal because I'm older and I'm not as strong. But I put myself into it 100 per cent. And actually, I think I did relatively well."

The challenges of Celebrity Bear Hunt are all about survival – making shelters, tying knots, keeping hydrated (yes, drinking wee is involved), evasion and escape as the wannabe survival experts go head to head with Bear Grylls. But as Ballas points out, "Bear believes there’s an action hero in all of us," and so there’s a fair dollop of self-improvement in this Bear Hunt, too.

"Bear's whole credo is that you can find things within yourself in survival that you maybe didn't know were there," she says. "Putting yourself in situations that you could never, ever imagine yourself being in and working as a team. So if you're not a team player, you're in a bit in trouble."

And Ballas considers herself a team player. "I'm that kid from a housing estate. I can just fit in. I don't need you to look after me – I'm not an old lady yet. And I didn't go in there with any airs and graces. You know, I'm not that type of person," she says of diva-like behaviour. "We had a few of them, but I wasn't that person."

Fellow contestant Boris Becker, who joined Bear Hunt after a stint in prison for bankruptcy fraud, was one of the good guys, she says. "We were like Mum and Dad for the group. I fell in love with that man. Just a lovely human being."

She stresses that in the jungle, sometimes a more mature person’s considered approach won the day: "Working things out, thinking and sometimes taking your time a little bit was important. Staying focused on the job, not being impulsive or getting sidetracked or chatting."

In spite of having made a career as a choreographer – essentially, giving directions to other people – Ballas says that in real life she’s a follower, not a bolshy sergeant major. "I like to be told what to do. I'm always on time. I'm orderly. I'm organised. On this I didn't miss one deadline. [Another contestant] Big Zuu was the chef and I was the bottle-washer and kept the kitchen clean."

If that makes Bear Hunt sound like domestic bliss, Ballas is quick to point out that it was no cakewalk. There were the critters, for a start. "I don’t do spiders. I don't do red ants. I mean, they showed us these trees that, if you brushed up against them, the ants that live on them would just climb on you, and scratch and itch you to death – which happened to a couple of people."

And as if attack ants weren’t enough, at the end of each team task, those who Grylls deemed to have underperformed were put in a Bear Pit. This was a 50-acre tract of scrub and savannah packed full of trip wires, snare traps and cages, from which the contestants had to escape before Bear hunted them down.

"Terrifying," Ballas remembers. "It’s complete jeopardy. You have to find these little arrows to help you find your way out, and all the time you know he’s lurking there, waiting to capture you."

Her approach was to turn every challenge into a dance. "Every single task I did was like a piece of art or a piece of choreography. If it’s a bridge that's got slats missing, do I do a jump over it? Which is the best angle to go at it? How can I do that gracefully? Everything I did, I stayed focused."

And while she won't say how she did in the final reckoning, she does say that in her own mind she won just by agreeing to go on the show in the first place. "When I look back now, to be honest I think it’s another person that went in there and not me. I mean, who in their right mind would do this?"

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Celebrity Bear Hunt comes to Netflix on Wednesday 5th February 2025.

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