Irish boxing legend Barry McGuigan has settled into life on I’m A Celebrity… Get Me Out of Here! but is set for a surprise when a new campmate he has a personal connection to arrives on the show.
McGuigan is appearing on the ITV show alongside the likes of McFly singer Danny Jones and Strictly Come Dancing professional Oti Mabuse, as well as WAG and TV personality Coleen Rooney. The group have bonded over their shared terror of trials and creepy crawlies, while the boxer had his campmates and viewers in tears as he opened up about the death of his daughter on the show.
But their camp is set to get even bigger as two new arrivals jet in, with writer, presenter and priest Rev. Richard Coles and Love Island star Maura Higgins ready to join the cast on Thursday.
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And while McGuigan himself may not even remember it, he has a personal connection to the latter as his son Shane previously dated Higgins having met at a boxing match.
The 33-year-old presenter and model hails from Ballymahon in Ireland and before finishing as a finalist on Love Island in 2019, worked as a ring girl in professional boxing.
Her first meeting with 36-year-old boxing trainer Shane came when she was on ring card duty for the David Haye vs Tony Bellew rematch in 2018, which he was covering for a radio show.
The couple then enjoyed somewhat of a whirlwind romance, dating briefly before calling it quits due to them living between Ireland and London. However, they are reportedly still friends.
Higgins finished fourth in her series of Love Island, having partnered with dancer Curtis Pritchard. She has gone on to enjoy a successful career in TV presenting and modelling, while she has also launched clothing collections with the likes of Boohoo.com and Ann Summers.
Shane, meanwhile, has worked with the likes of Haye and George Groves and is one of four children that McGuigan senior and his wife Sandra have shared, as well as sons Jake and Blain and their late daughter Danika.
Known as ‘Nika’, Danika died aged just 33 in July 2019, one month after being diagnosed with colon cancer. She had been diagnosed with acute lymphoid leukaemia when she was just 11 years old, undergoing two years of treatment, but recovered to become an actress and star alongside Hollywood actors including Rooney Mara and Jack Reynor.
However, her cancer returned and her life was tragically cut short, leaving McGuigan and the rest of her family “devastated”. The former British and European champion boxer opened up about how the tragedy has affected him soon after arriving in the I’m A Celebrity jungle and was overcome with emotion as he burst into tears talking about his daughter.
“It was hard for weeks in the hospital, just watching, shocking,” he said as he spoke about Danika’s second bout of cancer, before adding that she had “pains in her tummy but she was making a movie. She put it off and went to the doctor, called us all in. Stage 4 bowel cancer, 5 weeks, 5 weeks she died.”
