Tombola hosts I’m A Celebrity…Get Me Out of Here! event in London

The event was to honour the bingo brand’s seventh year sponsoring the show and to chat with previous campmates and celebrities.

Ex campmates from I’m A Celebrity… Get Me Out of Here! including Kings and Queen of the Jungle Phil Tufnell, Joe Swash and Vicky Pattison, attended the event to try out the ‘Critter Challenge’.

What I didn’t expect, was to take part in the trial myself.

The ‘Critter Challenge’ is done through a polygraph when you’re asked various fear-provoking questions, and then you put your hand in a mysterious box which you cannot see inside.

As soon as I sat in the chair, I was asked to stay as still as possible, and I soon enough felt my lip quivering, palms sweating, and asked myself, “what am I doing”.

The questions consisted of, “are you afraid of spiders”, and “have you ever felt a spider crawl on your face?”.

At this point, I am totally regretting stepping foot in the event, hosted at Outernet London.

Soon enough, my quivering hands were headed for the intensely mysterious box, however my brain kept pulling them back into my lap.

Then I realised, if Vicky Pattison can do it, why can’t I.

I plucked up the courage, switched the brain off and put my left hand in the box, which was when I felt something jump onto my hand – so I scream, very, very loud.

Immediately, I thought a giant tarantula was crawling on my hand, and I couldn’t get the image out of my head.

Despite this, I kept my hand in the box and prayed to god that it wouldn’t crawl up and onto my legs.

After a few minutes – which felt like hours – the team slowly lifted the box to show what was really on my hand, and I couldn’t believe it.

Nothing.

All it was, was a vibration technique with the sensation of creepy crawlies on your hand.

But my torture doesn’t end here – the guy doing the polygraph thought it was a great idea to bark in my ear, which obviously made me jump as if I was in the Australian jungle.

Despite feeling relieved that spiders weren’t crawling on my hand, the experience was very intense and has solidified that I would not last one second on I’m A Celeb.

Prior to my experience, celebs Joe Swash, Phil Tufnell, Scarlette Douglas and Vicky Pattison carried out the challenge.

Data from the event found that Vicky had a 54 per cent increase from her base when asked if she had a fear of spiders.

Meanwhile, twenty years after his I’m A Celebrity…Get Me Out Of Here! win, Phil Tufnell remained calm, with his sweat gland activity and blood pressure only raising 9 per cent.

However, Phil Tufnell had a 61 per cent increase in his blood pressure when asked if he had a fear of spiders.    Vicky also had a similarly strong reaction to the idea of a spider crawling on her face, with a 20 per cent increase in sweat gland activity.

Last year’s contestant Scarlette Douglas only had a 1 per cent increase, while Joe Swash a 5 per cent increase.   

Hosted by tombola, the Critter Challenge event also celebrated the launch of the new ‘Bug Match’ game, which is free to play and offers players the chance to win up to £1,000.

Users can play the game throughout the duration of I’m A Celebrity... Get Me Out Of Here! where there are 500,000 prizes to be won.

Recent consumer research by tombola also discovered over three quarters of the UK (86 per cent) claim to be scared of bugs with tarantulas (32 per cent), wasps (27 per cent) and cockroaches (26 per cent) coming in as the top three most feared bugs.