Broadcaster Rylan Clark has urged viewers of I’m a Celebrity… Get Me Out of Here! not to post negative comments about the appearance of one of this year’s contestants, Tulisa Contostavlos.
As the new series began on Sunday, Clark backed the singer for success on the show, sharing a picture of her online.
“Also before people start going for appearance, Tulisa has been through a lot health wise the last few years so let’s not make [bad] jokes about her on twitter yeah,” he added.
The 36-year-old N-Dubz star recently told So Wrong It’s Right podcaster Olivia Attwood that she had “only fillers” in her face to “balance out the symmetry” of her face after having Bell’s palsy.
Bell’s palsy is a type of paralysis that temporarily affects the ability to control the facial muscles.
Tulisa is in the celebrity jungle alongside the likes of Coleen Rooney, McFly star Danny Jones and Love Island’s Maura Higgins.
Some derogatory comments on social media during the show’s debut on Sunday suggested she looked markedly different to how she looked several years ago.
Tulisa was a judge on The X Factor in 2012 when Rylan finished fourth as a contestant.
She hadn’t had “any surgery until recently… only fillers”, she told Atwood, despite speculation in the press to the contrary.
She said she first started getting the injectables after the Bell’s palsy several years back had left her face inflamed and swollen, making her a recluse.
“I had a massive burst of inflammation and it went down but my whole face dropped,” she said. “I couldn’t move it, my face remained like that for seven months, I didn’t go out, I just hid in the house.
“That was very stressful and my face still wasn’t right so I started getting fillers to balance out the symmetry,” she added.
She described the process of trying to restore facial symmetry as a “vicious cycle”.
The British singer first shot to fame as part of the hip-hop trio N-Dubz in the 2000s.
The Londoner later went solo with hits like Young and Sight of You, and went on to become a judge on The X Factor in 2011 and 2012.
On being announced as a contestant on I’m a Celeb, she said the show would be a chance for people to get to know the “real” her, adding: “I am not the person that people perceived me to be.”
The show kicked off in Australia on Sunday evening with hosts Anthony McPartlin and Declan Donnelly, promising Tulisa, Coleen Rooney et al would be “thrown in the deep end”.
With reference to Rooney’s high-profile libel trial with Rebekah Vardy and the programme’s Bushtucker trials, Donnelly joked: “It will be nice for Coleen to face a trial that doesn’t involve Rebekah Vardy.”
To determine the order in which they would skydive from helicopters, the celebrities were told to drink cocktails of blended bull penis and fish eyes with a garnish made from vomit fruit.
