Rodney Marsh is a retired footballer who played for Fulham, Queens Park Rangers, Manchester City, the Tampa Bay Rowdies and the England National side. He is now a media broadcaster and a pundit on the game.

Rodney was famously fired from Sky Sports in 2005 for to his outspoken views but he believes that he’s just being honest and will be honest with fellow celebrities in the jungle.

‘If you ask me a question and you don’t want to know the answer, don’t ask me a question. I’ll just tell it like it is. What you get with Rodney Marsh is honesty.

“It’s my point of view. Gerard Houllier, the Liverpool manager, once said ‘it’s not what Rodney says it’s how he says it,’ so I guess that’s how it is.”

Rodney has been training in the gym regularly in preparation for going into the jungle. He’s not afraid of anything physical but he is afraid of spending time with other celebrities;

“I think it might be a tinderbox with me. If someone starts talking complete bollocks for a long time I might have to say something. If you’re round the camp fire and you’ve got nothing to do and you’re bullshitting and mucking around and if somebody said, ‘what do you think about the new fashion shoes?’ I just couldn’t be part of that conversation.”

However, being a footballer, Rodney is used to being a team player and he has certain skills that he believes will be beneficial to the camp.

“I think I have loads of special skills that would help me on this. I have motivation, I have application, I can apply myself to situations, determination, I am very determined but my biggest skill is improvisation. If something is going wrong I’ll put it right which would be very useful in this situation.”

He likes to work as a team but is concerned other members might not be team players. He believes he’ll help other members of the camp that aren’t quite as strong as him.

“You find out quickly where the strengths are and where the weaknesses are and that’s my upbringing in football as well. You look at the strong, you look at the weak and you look at the in between and you find out where your wrong fits within that community.

“I think that the mix of the people dictates the moods and always being a team player, being a footballer and being part of a team, it’s very easy for you to adapt to other people.”

Sleeping on a camp bed is not a worry for Rodney. He grew up in the East End of London and didn’t have a bed until he was eleven years old.

“I grew up in the East End and slept in a corner on the floor. And when I did, it was on a palliasse, what they use today to work out in gyms, what all the yuppies use to work out. That was my bed in the corner of one room. I had a very hard upbringing so I don’t think I’m going to be too bothered about sleeping on the floor for two weeks when I did for eleven years.”

Rodney is a fan of the show already and has celebrity friends that have already taken part before – Neil ‘Razor’ Ruddock and Alex Best.

“They all say the same thing – it’s much harder than you think it is.”

He’s going to miss keeping fit so plans to create a gym for himself in the jungle by using logs as weights. He describes himself as ‘complex’ and believes viewers will be quite surprised by him.

“When they see me in this environment people will recognise that I’m much more complicated than what they actually see on television or radio. There’s another side to me that people haven’t seen. What I mean is that if people say something to me and I’m not winding you up then you can take it to the bank.”

Fellow jungle mates will learn that Rodney is very spiritual and believes in regression.

“There’s going to be a lot of things that will come out if I’m put in the environment and I decide to come forth then I think people could find it very interesting.

“People are going to find out stuff about me that might surprise them, in particular my love of Shakespeare and art. I’m also very well read in mind games.”

Rodney describes himself as a bull: “Stubborn, single-minded, don’t like to take a step backwards. I would like to think I was a cheetah but I am actually a bull. Bull mentality. Strong. I think I’m a strong person.”

What does concern Rodney is his mental ability to sabotage himself.

“Whenever things are going great for me, I find a way to do something that’s going to completely fucking upset everything. I’ve always been that way. When things are going great, in a friend’s relationship, in business, professionally, I’ll always find a way to sabotage so I can put it right.”

He’s hoping that a celebrity jungle mate might be Jenni Falconer.

“She would be the perfect woman to be in the jungle with – very athletic!”