
Love Island hunk and new dad Adam Collard reveals his motivation for proving himself on gruelling Celebrity SAS: Who Dares Wins
The reality star, 29, who recently became a father after welcoming his first child with partner Laura Woods, is among the celebrities competing on the seventh season of the gruelling Channel 4 show.
Now, Adam has admitted that he felt he had something to prove by taking on the physical challenge as he was a 'shy and overweight' child.
'I had a chip on my shoulder,' Adam said, as he explained to Daily Mail that no one at his school would have believed he'd be capable of such a feat.
Asked what convinced him to apply, he said: 'I think with I was an overweight kid, I was very shy, I had no self confidence.
'And I think that the little bit of a chip on the shoulder that I always have is, I think if anyone went to school with me, they would never have expected I would have been the fitness guy, or the one who is going to pass physical challenges or something like that.'
'I'll be honest like, it motivates us every single day in life, owning gyms, being a kind of fitness entrepreneur.'
He added: 'I think I changed a lot when I was 16/17, and that was because of the earlier years of just having a pretty cr***y time, to be honest.
'I think going into something like that and being like that SAS boy and doing all the challenges and stuff like that, I think it's went full circle.'
Adam also revealed how the show prepared him for fatherhood, namely how the sleepless nights and interrogation.
'The one thing that prepared us was interrogation,' Adam said. 'You've got crying babies in your ears for about 12 hours more. So that was great. So we always have a laugh about that in the house.
'But generally, I think lack of sleep, lack of sleep was good as well.'
Adam went on to say that he unexpectedly formed close bonds on SAS with X Factor star Lucy Spraggan and Drag UK's Bimini Bon Boulash.
He said: 'The brother sister relationship, what you see with Lucy Spraggan.
'Also friendships with Bimini [Bon Boulash] which never would have happened if I'm totally honest because we're in totally different circles, totally different socio economic, everything, different places. And they told me loads about the LGBTQ community.
'Like, I've got to be honest, people in Newcastle are five years behind everything like that.'
Celebrity SAS was thrown into chaos as Rebecca Loos gave up her very first challenge before Louie Spence and Hannah Spearritt walked from the show.
Series seven of the beloved Channel 4 show kicked off on Sunday night as 14 famous faces were put through their paces.
Chief instructor Billy Billingham and his team Jason Fox, Rudy Reyes and Chris Oliver also returned to our screens to put the celebrities through it.
Celebrities taking part include Adam, Lucy, Bimini, former glamour model Rebecca Loos, Tasha Ghouri, Harry Clark, Michaella McCollum.
For their first extraction challenge, the celebrities were forced to throw themselves into freezing cold water before swimming a checkpoint.
They had an allocated time to reach that point, where they'd be collected by a nearby boat.
However, for model Rebecca Loos, the first challenge already proved too much for her as she gave up midway through.
Rebecca, 48, could be seen swimming towards the checkpoint before stopping dead in the water, remaining to float as the DS' watched on.
Meanwhile, S Club 7 star Hannah Spearritt handed in her badge when it came to the Hostage Rescue mission.
It came just 30 minutes into the new series, where Hannah had said in her introductory VT how 'wouldn't give up so easily'.
In a major shock for viewers, Louie Spence also threw in the towel before the end of the first episode.
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