Jermaine Pennant spurred on by directors as he was 'battering' Matt Hancock
Slamming his fists into Matt Hancock’s head over and over again, Jermaine Pennant knew without doubt that he had the nation behind him.
“I was told to just swing,” reveals Jermaine. “I was just thinking, ‘Everyone hates him, don’t lose’. That’s all I cared about.” The brutal scenes on C4’s Celebrity SAS: Who Dares Wins shocked viewers as the ex premier league footballer was challenged to spar violently with the former health secretary turned reality show wannabe.
In the military training exercise, called milling, the special forces instructors told Jermaine and Matt, who broke his own lockdown rules during the pandemic, to aggressively punch each other. The 40-year-old football star says: “I was just thinking, please not Gareth Thomas. When they called Matt’s number, inside was a bit of a smile.
“One because it wasn’t Gareth and also because I thought ‘I’ve got the nation behind me now’. There was a little bit more pressure as I put the gloves and hat on. It was really draining just swinging constantly for a minute and it probably wasn’t the best fight I’ve ever had, but it got the job done. I won and that was the main target, so the nation knows that he lost.
Jermaine Pennant is the latest star to leave Celeb SAS: Who Dares Wins (Ch4)“There’s a point that wasn’t shown on TV where literally Matt was almost bent over and I was constantly tapping him out on his head. The DS’s (Directing Staff) were shouting ‘get him down’ and I was just battering him. Afterwards, because I’m a lover not a fighter, I just patted him on the back and said ‘Ah mate, are you all right?’ because you’ve got to live with these guys. He just said ‘Yeah, yeah I’m fine’ and that was it.”
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Jermaine adds: “I had no issue with him going in. We all make mistakes, it’s just how you handle those mistakes. If you show remorse, people can forgive. I don’t know this guy, but we worked together as a team, the rest is on him.” Jermaine endured several gruelling tasks on the show, which sees 16 famous faces become SAS recruits in the sweltering Vietnam jungle.
He reveals that the task shown on screens on Sunday, which saw his dramatic exit from the show, was his scariest challenge. It saw the recruits forced to carry 20kg of weights and their backpack up a hill in intense jungle heat. “It was absolutely roasting,” says Jermaine, “and some people really weren’t pulling their weight which meant others had to do extra lifting. I pushed my body to the absolute limit.
Jermaine was made to fight ex-Tory Health Secretary Matt Hancock (Pete Dadds/ Channel 4)“We got heat exhaustion and the doctor said it was too dangerous to continue. If my body temperature rose again, it could be deadly. I felt gutted and the day after I left I broke down. I called my partner and I was crying. I felt like I’d failed.”
As a former professional athlete, he believed he’d have an advantage going into the show, which also stars Melinda Messenger, Gareth Gates and Michelle Heaton, but was shocked by the cruel and harsh conditions that took a toll on his body. The former Liverpool and Arsenal winger says: “I’d be lying if I said I didn’t think I’d have a little bit of an advantage. During pre season training I’d do a lot of cardio, gym and core work, running up hills, running down hills. I thought it would be like that.
“But even having that in your arsenal, having that in your weaponry, it still wasn’t enough. The DSs are just so rude, they do not care what obscenities they are shouting at you, how much they belittle you. They will say anything and everything to get some sort of reaction, whether it’s good or bad. If it’s bad, then you get punished ever more. You’ve got to keep your mouth shut and just take it on the chin.
Jermaine got the better of Hancock in the fight (Pete Dadds/ Channel 4)“Almost every day your body is saying ‘You just can’t do this anymore’. There weren’t many highs, just constant lows. You’ve just got to find the courage to dig deep. Every single hour, every beasting, every challenge was tough.”
Jermaine was “absolutely petrified” by a challenge to traverse two parallel bars 50ft up in the air and another terrifying moment was the tear gas training in a gas chamber. He recalls: “They pulled a fast one, telling us to take our masks off. Then I took a deep breath and my lungs were on flames.
“My best challenge was murder ball because I excelled in that. You had to get a ball to the other side while everyone was running, charging in mud up to your ankles, trying to get the ball from you. You feel like you’re drowning, like you’re suffocating while someone is hitting you rugby-style in the ribs. It is brutal.”
The Nottingham-born Talksport pundit says he found it exhausting to live like special forces recruits. He says: “I struggled to sleep. I had to live in just two pieces of clothing that were soaking and stinking for every minute of the day.
“I was eating boiled rice and boiled chicken and cabbage for lunch, for dinner, and a boiled egg for breakfast. After day three I started to reject the food, my guts were heaving, like I was going to throw up. At one stage I couldn’t lift my feet off the floor, I was so exhausted. I was scraping them along the floor like a zombie, like a lost soul.”
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Hancock was a controversial addition to the show (Channel 4)When he left the show he couldn’t eat properly, although he said he lost weight and came back with “a gift of some abs”. He says: “I was standing in the hotel room after my shower thinking ‘Oh where did they come from?’ I sent a selfie to my partner and she gave me the thumbs up.”
It was his partner, Ex On The Beach star Jess Impiazzi, who convinced him to go on the show, saying it would make him a new man - and she wasn’t wrong. Jermaine, who has a 13-year-old son Trey, has spoken out about his childhood traumas with a drug addict dad, a mother who abandoned him, as well as his own life-changing diagnosis of ADHD.
But he reveals the show has helped him let go of his past.
He reveals: “It’s all been weighing me down my whole life, it’s been a burden. It’s defined my life and career and I’ve made mistakes and bad decisions and caused havoc, not thinking about the consequences. But I got really emotional and let out a lot of demons. There are no hiding places when you’re feeling vulnerable. I was skin-bare, broken down, so I spoke out and moved on and forgave.
“I learned not to be ashamed to tell the story, rather than keeping all the pain in and using it as an excuse. Having emotion and crying is not a bad thing. I learned that I don’t have to be embarrassed about what I’ve been through. I just literally released all my armour, all my shield, all the pretending behind the facade. All that went and I can finally just be me.”
Celebrity SAS: Who Dares Wins, continues Sundays, C4, 9pm.
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