Anatomy of an I’m A Celebrity Winner: Northern-born and female campmates now most popular contestants

The anatomy of an I’m A Celebrity… Get Me Out Of Here! King or Queen has completely changed when comparing the birthplace and gender of previous winners, according to research from William Hill.

The opening 11 years of the popular show was characterised by male contestants from the south-east, notably the likes of Tony Blackburn, Phil Tufnell and Joe Swash, who charmed campmates and voters alike with their cheeky personality and behaviour.

The sea of white dots in the left graphic congregated in and around London illustrates this perfectly – I’m A Celebrity voters clearly had a type of campmate they preferred to keep in the jungle – whilst representation from the north was relatively sparse in the initial seasons of the show:

A whopping eight of the first 11 winning contestants were born in the south-east (five male, two female), with just two winning campmates born in the north of the United Kingdom – Warrington’s Kerry Katona in 2004 and Oldham’s Christopher Biggins in 2007. Very similar figures can be applied to the male and female breakdown of the show’s initial victors, with eight males wearing the jungle crown in the show’s first 11 seasons.

However, as the graphic illustrates, the gender balance and birthplace balance has shifted in recent years, with northern contestants and female campmates experiencing much more success than they did in the preliminary years of the show.

Whilst London and the south east was still the hometown of four of the 11 winning contestants, a notable introduction to the map is the trio of pink dots in the north-east of England – namely Vicky Pattison in 2015, Scarlett Moffat in 2016 and Jill Scott in the most recent series, all three originating from Newcastle or Durham.

Whilst female contestants only won three of the opening 11 seasons, that figure rises to seven in the past 11 series since 2012 – including six of the last eight. Eastenders’ Charlie Brooks became just the second female winner in a seven-year period between 2005 and 2012 and seemingly started the trend of female dominance in the past decade.

Another notable trend is how out of favour southern male winners are these days, especially given their dominance in the early years of the show. The single white dot in the south-east region belongs to Harry Redknapp when he sat on the jungle throne in 2018, with the only other three male victors in the last 11 years originating from Stockport (Danny Miller), Blackburn (Carl Fogarty) and Ireland (Kian Egan).