Hollyoaks actor Owen Warner was living an existence not entirely dissimilar from the gruelling experience on I'm A Celebrity… Get Me Out Of Here!, which will air a mammoth movie-length final Sunday night, before shooting to fame.
The 23 year old star was once struggling on "40p chicken in a tin" for his meals and partying too hard at university.
Even his mum tried to convince him to stop going out and drinking so much, having regular sit-down chats with him.
But it wasn't until his agent broke the happy news he'd bagged the role of Romeo Nightingale on Hollyoaks in 2018 that things started to change for the star.
Already "deep" into his bank overdraft during his final week of university in Nottingham, where the actor was studying film production, Owen has now reflected on how quickly life changed.
"There were a few call backs [for Hollyoaks]," the actor recalled. "In the first one [audition] I thought I'd f***ed it. I used to speak so fast, and I went in [said the lines quickly] and left.
"And I was like, 'S**t, that's over. I've ruined that chance.' But then I got a call back and then I was waiting for a call.
"I was at uni. It sounds dirty now but I used to have these tins, you put them in the microwave, like chicken. It cost like 40p," the star continued. "I'd have Aldi boil in a bag rice, boil some of that in a bag and whack a tin in the microwave. Maybe I put in a bowl first?"
Owen went on to say his cooking skills were so minimal he didn't even realise the importance of defrosting chicken from the freezer before cooking it.
"When I first joined uni no one told me I had to defrost chicken first before I cooked it," he said. "I was chatting to my mates about making food and I was like, 'Yeah, I get the chicken out of the freezer and whack it in the pan,' and they were like, 'Wait, wait, wait. From frozen? What do you mean?' From the first month of uni I was eating chicken from frozen.
"So I was in my halls, I had my chicken in a tin, I sat down and I saw my agent calling me, I answered it and she said, 'I just want to say I'm really, really sorry … but you're going to have to free up some time because you've got it.'
"I was like, 'F**k off,' and she was like, 'You're on speaker in the office.' In the space of a month I got signed by my agency and then I got Hollyoaks," Owen added.
The actor has become known as the hungriest campmate in the jungle this year, regularly complaining about his food cravings and being one of the only stars not fazed by the unusual meat and fish morsels handed down in the food basket.
It also comes as Matt Hancock, 44, left his campmates incredibly unimpressed during Monday night's instalment, as he forgot he was supposed to be checking a pot of boiling rice for breakfast.
Unfortunately, the food burned and the celebrities had to chuck out an entire bag of rice.
A Place In The Sun presenter Scarlette Douglas, 35, had started off the pan for the group, which 44 year old former Health Secretary Matt was supposed to be keeping an eye on.
While the incident created an awkward morning for the group, Owen was one of the only campmates still willing to eat one of the burned portions of rice.
Comedian Seann Walsh, 36, explained in the Bush Telegraph: "Matt did a bit of an ‘oopsie’ with the cooking and forgot that the rice was being cooked.
“I don’t remember there being so many problems with the cooking when Charlene was here. I think this restaurant’s gone downhill. Sorry Matt."
“We rescued the situation, we got half a pan of rice. Basically we lost one packet of rice. All is well," the MP himself later insisted.
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