Vernon Kay's first kiss was as an 18-year-old at Wigan Pier, he tells I'm a Celebrity camp mates

The former Orrell St John Rigby College student is now one of the 12 camp mates taking part in the latest series of I'm a Celebrity...Get Me Out Of Here!, and Monday night's episode saw the contestants discussing their various first romantic entanglements.

But while several admitted that their first passionate embraces had been in their early teens, 46-year-old ex-model Vernon surprised his audience by saying his first had only been at the age of 18.

And he said it had been at Wigan Pier and that it had been an inexperienced, sloppy affair, at which he rotated his head like a washing machine drum.

Whether this clinch was at the darkened water's edge overlooking the Leeds and Liverpool Canal during a quiet moment with a date or an encounter in the famous Wigan Pier night club, with eardrum-shatteringly loud dance music as a backdrop was not clear, but it raised a big laugh with his new friends at Gwrych Castle in North Wales.

Podcast host Giovanna Fletcher said hers happened just before she went to secondary school after her friend told her she couldn’t go without having kissed a boy, and so she offered up her boyfriend to her.

She said her husband Tom Fletcher “will be OK with me sharing my first story – it happened two years before I met him”.

“If we’d have met a little bit sooner it would have been with him,” she added.

Meanwhile dancer AJ Pritchard and soap star Jessica Plummer had to navigate a series of pitch black rooms and tunnels during the latest trial.

The pair were tasked with finding their way around the darkened course in search of stars in an effort to earn meals for the camp.

The pair got six stars out of a possible 12 after working together to gather the tokens.

The pair entered the course separately but only had one bag to collect the stars between them, so they had to find each other and work together.

After the trial, actress Plummer said she felt “gutted and disappointed” with their efforts.

She later added: “I feel like I don’t deserve to eat tonight.”

She was consoled by fellow actress Beverley Callard and podcast host Giovanna Fletcher who said that she and Pritchard had done their best.

Pritchard also labelled the challenge as “frustrating”.

Fletcher and athlete Sir Mo Farah also cooked the group’s dinner of hare while the rest of the group looked on.

Fletcher said: “There’s definitely some micromanagement going on and when you’re in that situation you have to see it as people trying to be helpful rather than just sticking their oar in.”

I’m A Celebrity… Get Me Out Of Here! continues on ITV.

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