MARTINA NAVRATILOVA

Find out more about this year's contestants...

Age: 52
Occupation: Former tennis champion
Celebrity supporters: Mark Foster
Phobias: Heights, caves and spiders
Special Skills: Hand/eye coordination and telling good jokes
She says: “Of course I’m competitive – nobody goes on the court saying I want to lose.”

Former tennis champion Martina Navratilova is geared up for her trip to the jungle and says she won’t stand for it if she hears other campmates whining.

Martina says she is a very competitive person and will tell people exactly what she thinks of them and will get annoyed if they don’t listen.

She says: “Of course I’m competitive – nobody goes on the court saying I want to lose.

“Nobody that goes on this show says, ‘Oh, I want to be out of there after the first week and just watch it you know from the hotel the rest of the time’. We all want to stay on.

“It’s when you’re not trying and you have a lousy attitude or you’re a whiner. It’s like, ‘Come on, let’s go’. So that would annoy me. But if people are trying I would always try to help them out and definitely you know bring them up so that everybody wins.

“People annoy me by not listening when they ask you a question and they don’t listen to the answer and then they have to ask you again.

“I think we meet so many new people on the tour, in my life, lifestyle that I’m kind of used to being in a new environment. But of course this will be very close. I mean you will be in close quarters with nine strangers.

“Even if I do recognise some of them, you still don’t know who they are as people. They’ll probably know me but they don’t know really what I’m about either. So it’s going to be interesting.

“I think people that get on my nerves are ignorant people you know. But I don’t think we’ll have that because we’ll all be celebrities of one sort or another. Ignorance is what I don’t deal with very well and bad manners.

“But you know because of who I am I can’t really tell somebody, ‘Hey you’re really an idiot you know’. You still try to be nice and educate people. ‘No, you really should not be interrupting me while I’m eating my meal. I will be happy to give my autograph after the meal’ and they’ll say, ‘Well, we’re leaving now’. Say, ‘Well, I’m still eating so you’re going to have to wait for that autograph’.

“But that’s about the extent of it. So if somebody’s a real ass out there, just try to deal with it. Hopefully that won’t be the case.”

Having said this, Martina says that she is joining I’m A Celebrity Get Me Out Of Here for a challenge and does hope to make friends and be a team player.