Celebrity SAS star reveals the show's ‘greatest ever escape' went unaired and left Ant Middleton fuming
The Channel 4 show is not for the fainthearted and sees 14 famous faces trying to keep up with almost impossible tasks.
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Celebrity SAS sees former Special Forces members put the celebrity contestants through their paces in an intense training camp.
Ant, who was axed from the UK's SAS: Who Dares Wins in 2021, was well known for his tough persona on the show.
Now a former celebrity contestant has spilled the beans on an unaired scene that infuriated Ant so much he inflicted a harsh punishment on him.
Rugby ace Sam Burgess took part in the Australian version of Celebrity SAS: Who Dares Wins two years ago, which Ant joined after he was axed from the UK show.
The sportsman revealed that he was told he performed the "best escape they had ever seen on the show", but how it was never aired
Spilling the beans, Sam told The Overlap and Betfair's Stick to Cricket show: 'When I did Celebrity SAS, it was a 15-day course. 20 start and only a few finish it.
"By day 12, you're sleep deprived, food deprived, freezing. They'd taught us: if you're captured, try to escape - transport is your best chance.
'We get ambushed, hooded, zip-tied, thrown in stress positions. After two hours, we're loaded into a minibus.
"I pop my restraints, peek under the hood and I see one driver, one cameraman, one soldier, no guns. I think I can take these guys."
Celebrity SAS star axed after 'lying and cheating' on show - as another quits
Continuing, he said: 'I waited for my moment, ripped the soldier's comms off, threw his phone out, choked the driver, 'Pull the f***ing van over now.' He's silent, so I start tugging the wheel.
"Told another contestant to pull the handbrake and take the keys. We screech to a stop, throw them out, and I drive off with the others.
'We're free - driving around for 40 minutes - I even thought about going to KFC. Eventually I spot a pub, pull in. Fifteen minutes later, we are surrounded by cars."
He the said that Ant wan't happy about his actions, and bestowed a harsh punishment on him.
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"Ant Middleton gets on the bus, they absolutely flog us for 12 hours - tied up, thrown in shipping containers," Sam revealed.
"Two contestants quit. None of it ever aired, but they told me it was the best escape they'd had.'
Ant spent years fighting for his country during his military career in the Marines and the Paras.
He was chief instructor on SAS: Who Dares Wins before he was sacked after a series of blunders.
One included a tweet about the Black Lives Matter movement.
There was a social media backlash in June 2020 after Ant posted a video of violence at anti-racism protests in London.
He tweeted: 'The extreme left against the extreme right.
"BLM and EDL are not welcome on our streets, absolute scum.
"What a great example you are to your future generation. Bravo."
The same month, Channel 4 set out a "new and clear commitment" to being an anti-racist organisation and said Ant's tweet 'in no way represent the views of Channel 4'.
Discussing what happened for him to lose his job, he told The James Smith podcast: 'Witch hunt? I never thought that existed until the latest shenanigans with SAS UK.
'Ultimately people can see through it and know I was pushed before I could jump.'
Speaking about the BLM tweet, Ant also defended himself at the time, telling The Sun: 'If you have half a brain cell you will realise what I was talking about.
'It was the protesters fighting and violence and rioting in broad daylight. Everything I fought for abroad to stop happening on our shores.'
Meanwhile, the latest series of the UK's Celebrity SAS has been full of drama.
In the first episode, two stars quit, before Love Islanders Chloe Burrows and Tasha Ghouri followed suit in the second instalment.
While none of the celebrities handed in their armbands in the latest episode there was still a double exit.
The Traitors star Harry Clark was given his marching orders by the furious staff.
It came after they noticed he was cutting corners and not pulling his weight.
His actions seemed to contribute to former footballer's Adebayo 'The Beast' Akinfenwa's decision to quit, after he shouldered much of the weight of the dinghy Harry's team was trying to transport in a race.
With his bad knee flaring up, Adebayo ran out of steam due to the pain and was forced to withdraw when he couldn't continue.
Celebrity SAS: Who Dares Wins 2025
S Club singer Hannah Spearitt
Dancer and TV star Louie Spence
Love Island star and podcaster Chloe Burrows
Love Island and Strictly star Tasha Ghouri
Former footballer Troy Deeney
Peru Two drug mule turned author and influencer Michealla McCollum
Rapper and ex-Loose Women star Lady Leshurr
Love Island lothario Adam Collard
TV & media personality Rebecca Loos
Ex Footballer Adebayo 'The Beast' Akinfenwa
Drag Race UK winner Bimini Bon Boulash
Pro boxer Conor Benn
The X Factor star Lucy Spraggan
The Traitors winner Harry Clark
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What Stamp does so well is to underplay the character of General Zod (in stark contrast to Michael Shannon in Man of Steel), giving him a curiously detached attitude to humanity that makes the comic-book villain seem just as inimitable a Stamp character as anyone else that he played before or afterwards. He acts everyone else – even Gene Hackman – off the screen. 4. The Adventures of Priscilla, Queen of the Desert (1994) Stamp expressed a certain degree of hesitation over playing the trans character Bernadette in the camp, outrageous comedy Priscilla, not because of any latent homophobia but because, touchingly, he was unsure that he was the right actor for a role that was miles away from anything that he had ever done before. The director Stephan Elliott's belief that the English thespian would do a magnificent job in the central part of Bernadette was swiftly vindicated. While his co-stars Guy Pearce and Hugo Weaving camp it up to high heaven – as the picture demands – as a pair of drag queens, Stamp's still, often very affecting performance counts as one of this fine actor's very best. It was once hoped that he would reprise the role in a sequel, but alas events have terminally intervened on that score. 5. The Limey (1999) Stamp appeared in two outstanding gangster pictures as a mature actor, this and Stephen Frears' masterly, enigmatic The Hit. Either could have appeared on this brief list, but while The Hit perhaps belongs ultimately to John Hurt, there is no doubt that in Soderbergh's full-throated homage to Sixties crime cinema, Stamp is the USP throughout. There were undeniably times in the Eighties and Nineties – and beyond – where it felt as if the actor was simply bestowing off-the-peg gravitas to projects that barely deserved him. But here, he was allowed to channel far more profound emotions, and his performance as a scrappy avenging angel, by times tender, feral and primal, has to rank as one of his very greatest.
