Obviously I know the contestants are perfectly safe during the trials, but do you think anyone (bar possibly Dean Gaffney) has actually been afraid?
Kendra, in my mind is acting, and i think most people over the years have been

what about eh Queens butler, he was shaking like he'd just been told he had a week to live?

Gillian McKeith was so afraid she became pregnant and fainted

His task is one of my all time favourites. I think some camp mates tried to up the anti after that.

I don't think Dean Gaffney was at all afraid. IMO he'd watched the Paul Burrell trial, seen the interest it generated and copied it.

Natalie Appleton. I really don't think she was acting, her reactions were quite painful to watch imo. Why she went in there I'll never understand!

Tell that to Fatima Whitbread who ended up with a cockroach lodger in her nasal passage!

I think Kendra's cocktail shaker task fear was 100% genuine. And I don't blame her one bit.

I think there is a difference between someone being afraid and being repulsed. You can know in your head that you are not going to be hurt, but if something freaks you out - whether it's bugs or snakes or having gunk dumped on you - then it freaks you out and makes you shake, squeal, etc. There is a lot of middle ground between believing someone really thinks they're going to be hurt and that someone is acting their response. It's like I'm not phobic about spiders, but if a spider scuttles in the corner of my eye, I will flinch and probably yell, but I'm not really frightened of them, and once I'm over the shock I'm fine about the spider being there. It's like an instinctive response you can't control. I think the most believable reaction for most things is that you'd struggle to do some of these disgusting things the first time but then you'd adjust and be OK as the trial went on. But some people are genuinely phobic and won't adjust.

I have a phobia of snakes, and the ammount of times that people on the show claim to have a phobia of something, then put their hand in a tank containing said animal just baffles me.
Sinita claimed to have a phobia of snakes, yet managed to wind a bangle the whole way down a snake.

I agree with this.

I do think the word 'phobia' is banded about willy nilly, when in reality people really just mean they have a slight fear of something.

A phobia can ruin your life, and someone with a real phobia of any of the creepy crawlies they use on this show would most likely never even want to set foot in the jungle, let alone stay there for three weeks and face their phobias day after day in a trial!

Must be tough for you what with the streets of Britain being awash with snakes

Its completely irrational, which is the whole point of a phobia. Worse still, i live in ireland, so the only chance ill see one is in a zoo or a pet shop

I cant look at a photograph of a snake, so how people claim to have a phobia of snakes, then put their hand in a tank with them is beyond me

I wonder where it all comes from?

I'm not scared of snakes or other reptiles, nor rats etc but I'd have to really, really concentrate iyswim to deal with large spiders.

I think you are probably right. I have managed to train myself to deal with the odd house spider, despite feeling horrified by them at first.

I think nadia was genuinely upset by the rats this year. You have to take on board that she was ravenous and exhausted before the task started, that it lasted all night, and that there was absolutely no way of protecting herself from them, eg by climbing onto something. I really felt for her, standing for six hours clutching her hood round her face.

I'm the same with spiders. I can deal with them with a piece of cardboard and a glass, but they do make me shiver when they move inside the glass, or if I suddenly come across one. Cockroaches on my person have the same effect - I went into my apartment in Spain with a huge one on my shoulder(unbeknowingly) and it suddenly flew across the room and it had the same effect of sending a shiver through my body.

I wouldn't have been able to do the trial that Kendra did in the shaker, nor any which involved tipping cockroaches all over me.

I thought Simon Webbe was genuinely scared when he did a water trial some years back.

Also, I think it's one thing to not mind cockroaches, for instance, but another to have them crawling all over your face and in your clothes

Ruth Ellis was not too keen on her trial and as it turns out she was dead right about it.