I’m A Celebrity’s Russell Watson opens up about brain tumour battle

Russell Watson opens up about battling a brain tumour in tonight’s I’m A Celebrity.

In tonight’s episode, the celebrities were sat talking and AJ Pritchard asked Russell what was the best placed he’d performed in, Russell revealed it was the Vatican.

Russell added: “They said it was a private audience with the Pope but later on I found out there was about 500 million people watching.”

Talking in the Telegraph, AJ said: “Some of Russell’s stories are unbelievable, he performed for the Pope at the Vatican.”

Ruthie Henshall then asked Russell about his brain tumour. Russell said that he’d had two brain tumours: “The second one was the ‘one’, the first wasn’t life threatening, it was painful and I nearly lost my vision.

“The second one was holy s***, I went home, went to bed and didn’t wake up because of a haemorrhage.

“My assistant found me, called the paramedics and I knew I was in trouble because the paramedic kept saying ‘stay with us, stay with us’. We got to the hospital and they operated.

“One of the most emotional things after I came out of intensive care was this bloke came up to me and said ‘nice to see you’re doing well Mr Watson’ and I realised it was ‘stay with us, stay with us’”.

Vernon Kay asked Russell if he’d seen the light as is sometimes claimed and Russell replied ‘big time’.

Russell said: “I was in the MIR scanner and I could see this long strip of light, like when you’re a kid and you used to keep your bedroom door open.

“It was a light strip and I was thinking if I go to that door I’m out of here and the pain stops and I’m away and all I could think about was my children and slowly slowly whilst thinking about my children the clatter clatter of the MRI came back and I thought I’m going to beat this.”

Elsewhere tonight, Hollie Arnold MBC spoke about her sporting medals, Shane was impressed with all her achievements and joked that he’d won sexiest soap male three years in a row.

Shane added he never won Rear of the Year but Russell chipped in and said he did in 2009 while Vernon said he’d been nominated for best rear but didn’t win.

I’m A Celebrity continues nightly on ITV.