I’m a Celeb 2023: Winner, Full Line-Up, Elimination Order and Final Results

Sam Thompson won I’m a Celebrity… Get Me Out of Here! 2023, crowned King of the Jungle on 10 December 2023 with 56.64 per cent of the final vote, ahead of boxer Tony Bellew on 43.36 per cent. Nigel Farage finished third and Josie Gibson fourth. The series, the show’s twenty-third, ran across 22 episodes from 19 November to 10 December 2023 on ITV1, hosted by Ant McPartlin and Declan Donnelly from the permanent camp near Murwillumbah in New South Wales.

Two further series have aired since, so this is the settled record rather than a running commentary. The 2023 run matters more now than it did at the time for two reasons. The £1.5 million paid to Farage, then the largest fee in the programme’s history, became the subject of contested reporting in 2026 about where the money actually went. And Sam Thompson turned a win into a presenting career on the show’s own spin-off. What follows is the complete retrospective: the corrected finishing order with elimination days, the exact vote shares, the ratings, what every campmate has done since, how the format has changed in the three years since, and where to watch the series back.

I’m a Celeb 2023 at a Glance

The Full 2023 Line-Up and Finishing Order

Twelve celebrities entered camp across the run. The order below is the confirmed final result, with elimination days, and it is worth checking against other write-ups: several published line-up tables get the middle of the order wrong, particularly the sequence of Frankie Dettori and Nella Rose, and of Nick Pickard and Danielle Harold.

How the Final Was Won

The final three were Sam Thompson, Tony Bellew and Nigel Farage. Farage went first, having taken 25.78 per cent at the three-way stage, leaving a head-to-head between the reality television personality and the boxer. Thompson took the title with 56.64 per cent to Bellew’s 43.36 per cent, a margin of roughly thirteen points rather than the near-dead-heat some coverage suggested at the time.

The result was not a surprise by the closing week, but it was not obvious at the start either. Thompson entered as the campmate least likely to be taken seriously and finished as the one viewers had most invested in. His openness about living with ADHD, his relentless enthusiasm and, above all, his unlikely bond with Bellew turned him into the series’ emotional centre. Bellew, a hard man by reputation, was repeatedly reduced to tears by Thompson and became one of the run’s most quoted campmates as a result.

That friendship carried the series in a way producers could never have engineered. The two are physically, generationally and temperamentally unalike, and viewers responded to a relationship that felt entirely unmanufactured in a format that is otherwise heavily produced. Compare the margins since: Danny Jones beat Coleen Rooney 55.21 to 44.79 in 2024, almost exactly the same split, which suggests a structural pattern in how the final two vote divides rather than anything specific to 2023.

Week by Week: How Series 23 Unfolded

The day numbers below follow the show’s own count, with day 1 on launch night, 19 November 2023. Putting the key moments in sequence makes it easier to see how the public mood shifted from curiosity about Farage to investment in Thompson and Bellew.

The pattern is typical of the format. The first fortnight is driven by trial votes and arrivals, so personalities are formed in the edit before a single person is voted out. By the time the public starts saving favourites in week three, the outcome is often already taking shape, which is why the 2023 winner looked inevitable in hindsight but not on launch night.

Why Sam Thompson Won: Five Factors

Reality show results are easy to explain after the fact, but Thompson’s win followed a recognisable pattern that applies well beyond 2023. If you are trying to understand why viewers vote the way they do on I’m a Celebrity, these are the factors that mattered.

1. Low expectations, high delivery. He arrived with less status than a world champion boxer or a party leader, so every act of courage in a trial read as a pleasant surprise rather than something expected of him.
2. A visible storyline. His openness about ADHD gave viewers a reason to root for him and a frame for his chaotic energy, turning what could have been irritating into something endearing.
3. The partnership with Bellew. Viewers who liked Bellew were inclined to like Thompson too, and the friendship meant the two rarely split the same audience in a damaging way until the very last vote.
4. No feud on his record. The series’ main row did not involve him. Campmates who stay out of camp conflict tend to keep broad support across very different voter groups.
5. A younger, digital fanbase. His podcast and social media following gave him a base of engaged viewers who were comfortable voting through the app, an advantage that has only grown since paid voting was removed.

None of these factors guarantees a win on its own, but the combination is strikingly similar to what carried Danny Jones in 2024: likeable, unthreatening, involved in camp life and free of controversy.

Nigel Farage: The £1.5 Million Signing, and What Happened to the Money

The booking that dominated the pre-series coverage was Nigel Farage, reported to have been paid around £1.5 million, comfortably the highest fee ever handed to an I’m a Celebrity contestant. The signing drew formal complaints to Ofcom before the series had even begun, and ITV defended it on the basis that the format has always featured political figures.

What actually happened in camp confounded some expectations. Farage did the trials without complaint, was polite to campmates who disagreed with him sharply, and had extended on-camera debates about Brexit and immigration with Fred Sirieix and Nella Rose that ITV broadcast rather than edited around. Ant and Dec ribbed him mercilessly in their links. He finished third, ahead of several better-liked campmates, which itself became a talking point about the show’s voting base.

The fee has had a longer afterlife than the series. In 2026, during scrutiny of Farage’s financial disclosures, his spokesperson said he had paid for a house with the approximately £1.5 million he earned from the programme. The Financial Times reported that corporate accounts for Farage’s personal media company appeared to show those earnings sitting in the company’s account rather than being spent in that way. Farage resigned his Clacton seat in July 2026 amid investigations into undeclared gifts and won the resulting by-election on 13 August 2026 with 63.3 per cent of the vote. Three years on, the jungle fee is no longer a light entertainment footnote.

The Nella Rose and Fred Sirieix Row

The series’ most contentious moment came early, when Fred Sirieix made a remark about being old enough to be Nella Rose’s father. Rose, who had lost both of her parents, took profound offence and the disagreement escalated over several episodes, drawing in other campmates and generating substantial press coverage and viewer complaints.

The row was uncomfortable rather than entertaining, and it illustrated something the format rarely acknowledges: campmates are sleep-deprived, underfed and confined with strangers whose frames of reference may be entirely different from their own. Rose left on day 16 and Sirieix on day 17, back to back, which the edit did little to disguise.

The Two Medical Withdrawals

Both late arrivals had difficult series. Grace Dent, the food critic, entered alongside Frankie Dettori and withdrew on medical grounds on 27 November 2023, after nine days in camp, later speaking about how severely the lack of food and sleep had affected her. Jamie Lynn Spears left on medical grounds on day 11, having struggled visibly with homesickness as well.

Two withdrawals in one series is unusual but not unprecedented. Under the show’s rules, a celebrity who leaves on medical advice is not eliminated by public vote, and the pair were placed twelfth and eleventh respectively rather than taking a position in the voted-out sequence.

The 2023 Bushtucker Trials

Series 23 used the trial architecture that has since been amended: nightly public votes deciding who faced a challenge, with stars won determining how many meals camp received, and no cap on how often one person could be chosen.

• Eating trials. The traditional stomach-turning menu of fermented plum, animal parts and live insects. Josie Gibson and Nigel Farage both took multiple turns.
• Enclosed-space trials. Coffins, tunnels and burrows filled with snakes, rats, spiders and cockroaches, designed to target claustrophobia as much as squeamishness.
• Height and water trials. Suspended platforms and submerged tanks combining vertigo with time pressure.
• Celebrity Cyclone. The penultimate-week staple, in which campmates scale a water-blasted ramp carrying letter boards. It remains the format’s most affectionately regarded set piece and 2023’s edition was no exception.
• Final-day trials. The last three each faced an individual challenge, including the traditional final eating trial, before the winner was announced.

Trial selection was driven by public vote, which is why certain campmates ended up doing far more than others. Josie Gibson in particular was sent out repeatedly, becoming the series’ de facto workhorse and building considerable goodwill in the process. That imbalance is exactly what ITV moved to fix two years later, and the 2023 series is one of the last that shows the old mechanic running unchecked.

What Camp Life Is Actually Like

The production reality behind the format is more structured than the broadcast suggests, and knowing it makes the series easier to read.

• Food. The base ration is rice and beans, supplemented only by meals won in trials. Weight loss over three weeks is significant and is medically monitored.
• Luxury items. Each celebrity brings one approved personal item, which is why so much emotional weight attaches to family photographs.
• Medical supervision. A medical team is permanently on site, and the show’s psychologists assess contestants before, during and after filming. Two medical withdrawals inside eleven days in 2023 is a reminder that this is not decoration.
• No contact. Phones, watches and outside news are removed entirely. Campmates learn nothing about how they are being received until they leave.
• Crew scale. Several hundred production staff work on the series, with a camp rigged with fixed cameras running continuously and an editing operation turning that into a nightly hour.
• Animals. Creatures used in trials are handled under Australian animal welfare supervision, a point ITV has had to defend publicly on several occasions.

Ratings and Reception

Series 23 performed strongly for ITV. The launch drew 10.24 million viewers, the final 8.43 million, and the series averaged 8.36 million across its 22 episodes, putting it among the most-watched entertainment programming of the autumn schedule alongside Strictly Come Dancing.

With two further series to compare against, 2023 now reads as the start of a gently declining but remarkably stable run.

The launch figure has barely moved in three years, which is unusual for any long-running format in a fragmenting television market, and the finals of all three series were the most-watched programme on British television on the day they aired. Critical response in 2023 was mixed on the Farage booking and warm on the cast chemistry. The consensus at the time, which has held up, was that a potentially divisive series was rescued by the Thompson and Bellew dynamic and by an unusually generous group of campmates.

Where the 2023 Cast Are Now

Updated to September 2026. The gap between the winner’s trajectory and everyone else’s is wider than usual for this show.

What Has Happened to the Show Since 2023

Anyone returning to series 23 now is watching a slightly different programme from the one currently on air. Three things have changed materially.

Two More Kings of the Jungle

Series 24 ran from 17 November to 8 December 2024 with twelve campmates including Coleen Rooney, Oti Mabuse, Tulisa, Alan Halsall, Barry McGuigan, GK Barry, Jane Moore, Melvin Odoom and Dean McCullough, with Maura Higgins and the Reverend Richard Coles entering as late arrivals. McFly’s Danny Jones won with 55.21 per cent, Rooney was runner-up on 44.79 per cent and Coles third.

Series 25 ran from 16 November to 7 December 2025 with Aitch, Alex Scott, Eddie Kadi, Jack Osbourne, Kelly Brook, Martin Kemp, Ruby Wax, Shona McGarty and Lisa Riley, joined on day four by Tom Read Wilson and Vogue Williams. The streamer and content creator Angryginge won, with Read Wilson runner-up and McGarty third, making it the second time in three years that the title went to someone from digital or reality media rather than from sport, music or drama.

The Voting and Trial Rules Changed

Ahead of the 2025 series, ITV discontinued premium-rate phone and text voting entirely in favour of free app and online voting. Series 23 is therefore one of the last runs in which viewers could pay to vote, which matters when comparing results across years: the 2023 electorate was partly self-selected by willingness to spend money, and the 2025 one was not.

A second change directly addresses what happened to Josie Gibson. From 2025, the same celebrity cannot be voted to do a Bushtucker Trial on more than two consecutive days. Live trials also returned in 2025 after a five-year absence, and the Dingo Dollar challenge was rebuilt around Kiosk Kev in an ice cream van.

The Franchise Expanded

I’m a Celebrity… Unpacked, the companion show, was revived in 2024 after four years off air, with Sam Thompson among its presenters. ITV confirmed in April 2025 that the South Africa all-stars spin-off would return for a second series in 2026. A further spin-off, The Wild Frontier, has been developed for the format’s twenty-fifth anniversary and is reported to pair first-time contestants, either celebrity duos or a famous name with a friend or relative, in the Callaghan Valley in British Columbia rather than the Australian bush. Ant and Dec signed a new three-year ITV contract in December 2025, which keeps them in the role through the twenty-eighth series in 2028.

Using 2023 to Predict Future Winners

Each new series brings a fresh round of betting odds and pundit predictions, and many of them repeat the same mistakes. Series 23 is a useful test case because the most famous name, the best-paid name and the eventual winner were three different people. Before backing a favourite in a future series, run through this checklist:

• Ignore the fee and the fame. Farage was the biggest booking in the show’s history and still finished third. Name recognition gets a campmate noticed in week one; it does not win the final.
• Watch who does the jobs. Campmates who cook, clean and volunteer for trials without complaint build steady support. Josie Gibson’s repeated trials did her reputation no harm at all.
• Look for a friendship, not a feud. The Thompson and Bellew pairing lifted both men. Campmates at the centre of rows, however justified they feel, rarely go deep into the final week.
• Check the online following. With voting now free through the app, a campmate with a young, engaged digital audience has a structural edge, as the 2024 and 2025 results also suggest.
• Be wary of early withdrawals and late arrivals. Late entrants have less screen time to build a story, and two of 2023’s three earliest exits were the late arrivals.

No checklist predicts every result, and the show is designed to surprise. But the 2023 series shows that viewers reward warmth and effort over status, and that pattern has held in the two series since.

The Best Moments to Rewatch

If you want the highlights without all twenty-two episodes, these are the moments that defined the series and explain its result:

1. Launch night, for first impressions and the reaction to Farage walking into camp.
2. The week-one Sirieix and Nella Rose episodes, which show how quickly camp tension can build under hunger and fatigue.
3. Any of Josie Gibson’s trials, which explain the goodwill she carried to fourth place.
4. The Celebrity Cyclone, still the format’s most loved set piece.
5. The final, including the last eating trial and the Thompson and Bellew reaction to the result.

How to Watch I’m a Celeb 2023 Now

The full series remains available on ITVX in the UK, free to stream with advertising, alongside the companion show and the unseen-footage compilations. You will need a UK IP address, and a TV licence is not required for on-demand ITVX content, only for live broadcast.

Episodes are catalogued by series, so search the programme title and select series 23 rather than relying on the most recent series shown by default, which since December 2025 has been series 25. The launch episode, the Nella Rose and Fred Sirieix episodes in week one, the Celebrity Cyclone and the final are the five to start with if you do not want to watch all twenty-two instalments.

How 2023 Fits Into the Show’s History

Series 23 sits in the run of post-pandemic series that returned the programme to Australia after two years in Gwrych Castle in North Wales. It is remembered for three things: the most expensive contestant ever booked, an unexpectedly moving male friendship, and a winner from reality television rather than from sport, music or soap opera.

That last point looked like an outlier in 2023 and looks like a trend now. Thompson’s win was followed by Danny Jones, a musician with a strong social media presence, and then by Angryginge, a streamer whose audience is almost entirely online. The show’s centre of gravity has moved towards contestants who arrive with a digital following, which is exactly the constituency the free app vote rewards.

Historically, the format rewards campmates who are generous with others and who do the unpleasant jobs without complaint. Sam Thompson won on exactly that basis, as Georgia Toffolo, Harry Redknapp and Jill Scott had before him. Viewers reliably vote for the person they would most want in camp with them, not the most famous name on the call sheet. Farage, the biggest booking in the show’s history, finished third; the man from Made in Chelsea won.

If you are working through the back catalogue of British reality television, our rundown of the cast of Celebrity Big Brother covers the format’s closest rival, and our profile of Josie Gibson’s net worth follows the 2023 fourth-place finisher from her Big Brother win to daytime television. For more on the ITV entertainment stable that produced Ant and Dec, see our guide to Stephen Mulhern’s TV shows.

How the Voting Actually Worked in 2023

Two separate votes ran in parallel across the series and viewers frequently conflate them. In the first fortnight the public voted for who should do the next Bushtucker Trial, which is why unpopular or newly arrived campmates were hammered with challenges. From roughly the halfway point the mechanic flipped and the public voted for who they wanted to save, with the campmate receiving fewest votes leaving that night.

ITV publishes the final vote percentages after the series concludes but withholds all interim figures, which is why speculation about who was leading runs unchecked for three weeks. The released 2023 figures confirmed what the closing episodes suggested: Thompson’s 56.64 per cent was a decisive lead built over the last few days, not a narrow escape.

Free voting via the ITV app ran alongside paid telephone and text voting in 2023, with a cap on votes per method. That paid route no longer exists, having been scrapped before the 2025 series, so 2023 belongs to the last phase of the format in which money and votes were connected at all. The shift towards free app voting has measurably changed the format’s demographics, moving influence towards younger viewers, and it is a plausible part of why a reality television personality beat a boxer and a politician.

Common Mistakes in Write-Ups of the 2023 Series

Because so many recaps were written live, several errors still circulate. If you are checking a fact for a quiz, an article or an argument, these are the ones to watch for.

Records and Statistics From Series 23

• Winning margin. 56.64 per cent to 43.36 per cent, a gap of 13.28 points, almost identical to the 2024 final’s 55.21 to 44.79.
• Most-used campmate. Josie Gibson was among the most frequently selected contestants of the run, a pattern that historically correlates with a strong finish rather than a weak one, and one the 2025 rule change now limits.
• Oldest and youngest. Nigel Farage, then 59, was the oldest campmate; Nella Rose, in her mid-twenties, the youngest.
• Two medical withdrawals in one series. Uncommon, and both inside the first eleven days.
• Twenty-two episodes across three weeks, with the final broadcast as an extended edition and a Coming Out special following on 13 December.
• Highest launch audience of the last three series. 10.24 million, narrowly ahead of 2025’s 10.21 million and 2024’s 10.07 million.

Bottom Line on I’m a Celeb 2023

If you only remember three things about series 23, make them these: Sam Thompson won with 56.64 per cent, Nigel Farage’s reported £1.5 million fee made him the most expensive booking in the show’s history and finished him third, and the Thompson and Bellew friendship is the reason the series is still discussed. For a rewatch, start with the launch, the week-one episodes, the Celebrity Cyclone and the final on ITVX. For an argument about who deserved to win, check the finishing order and vote shares above before trusting a recap written on the night.

The series also marks a turning point for the format itself. It was one of the last runs with paid phone voting, one of the last before the two-consecutive-days limit on trials, and the first in a sequence of winners from reality television and online media rather than sport, music or soap. Anyone comparing results across years should keep those changes in mind, because the electorate and the rules that produced Sam Thompson’s win are not quite the same as the ones in place for the series that followed.

Frequently Asked Questions

Who won I’m a Celeb 2023?

Sam Thompson won the 2023 series and was crowned King of the Jungle on 10 December 2023. The Made in Chelsea star beat former world champion boxer Tony Bellew in the final head-to-head vote, taking 56.64 per cent of the public vote to Bellew’s 43.36 per cent.

Who was in the I’m a Celeb 2023 line-up?

The original ten campmates were Sam Thompson, Tony Bellew, Nigel Farage, Josie Gibson, Nick Pickard, Marvin Humes, Danielle Harold, Fred Sirieix, Nella Rose and Jamie Lynn Spears. Grace Dent and Frankie Dettori entered later as late arrivals, bringing the total to twelve.

What was the elimination order in 2023?

Frankie Dettori was the first voted out on day 15, followed by Nella Rose on day 16, Fred Sirieix on day 17, Nick Pickard on day 18, Danielle Harold on day 19, Marvin Humes on day 20, Josie Gibson on day 21 and Nigel Farage on day 22. Grace Dent and Jamie Lynn Spears had already withdrawn on medical grounds on days 9 and 11.

How much was Nigel Farage paid for I’m a Celebrity?

Reports at the time put his fee at around £1.5 million, which would make it the largest ever paid to a contestant on the programme. ITV did not confirm the figure but did not dispute the widespread reporting either. In 2026 his spokesperson said he had bought a house with the money, while the Financial Times reported that accounts for his personal media company appeared to show the earnings remaining in the company. He finished third in the series.

Why did Grace Dent and Jamie Lynn Spears leave the jungle?

Both withdrew on medical grounds, Dent on 27 November 2023 after nine days and Spears on day 11. Grace Dent later described how severely the combination of hunger and sleep deprivation had affected her. Under the show’s rules, contestants who leave on medical advice are not eliminated by public vote; they were placed twelfth and eleventh respectively.

Can I still watch I’m a Celeb 2023?

Yes. The complete series 23 is available on ITVX in the UK, free to stream with advertising, along with the companion show. Search for the programme and select series 23 specifically, as the platform defaults to the most recent series.