How Tulisa ‘misplaced her s***’ and vanished: TV insiders reveal who she blames, the way it all went unsuitable and why her TV comeback’s in tatters to KATIE HIND

When the I’m A Celeb evictees gathered for a photograph along with their friends and family on Wednesday, there was one notable absentee – Tulisa Contostavlos.

Fellow campmates, newspaper columnist Jane Moore and Radio 1 DJ Dean McCullough, who had also been booted off the show, had hoped the former N-Dubz singer would join them for a hard-won mini holiday at their five star hotel, the £1,000-a-night JW Marriott on Australia’s Gold Coast.

This Sunday, the three were set to reunite with the remaining contestants for the finale – when the new king or queen of the jungle will be crowned, followed by the wrap party where cast and crew let their hair down.

But that was not to be. As I revealed in the Mail this morning, Tulisa fled Australia in an apparent fit of fury, just hours after her eviction on Monday night.

She didn’t tell her jungle mates, while ITV was sworn to secrecy on divulging her movements.

Tulisa’s disappearance left her new friends from the series worried for her wellbeing. One insider said: ‘She was such a laugh, so much fun – and she seemed in a good place when she arrived on the show.’

She had struck up a friendship with Coronation Street star Alan Halsall, who is still in the jungle, and became a ‘great member of the group’.

But after being evicted, Tulisa ‘lost her s***’, according to one source. When the cameras stopped rolling, I’m told, she looked angry and upset.

Some suggest that this was because she wanted to win – others believe that she simply found her return to the limelight too much.

Tulisa, after all, had spent 11 years in the TV wilderness following her stint as a judge on The X Factor alongside Simon Cowell in 2011 and 2012. Her prime time exile was prompted by an attempted drugs sting by the disgraced Fake Sheik, former News of the World journalist Mazher Mahmood, to whom she allegedly helped supply cocaine. However, her subsequent trial collapsed when Mahmood was found to have altered evidence, fully exonerating Tulisa.

After such a stressful period in her life, it’s little surprise that she was apprehensive about her TV return over a decade later.

Before she entered the jungle, Tulisa, 36, told the Mail: ‘I don’t think I would have been able to do this unless I was feeling in such a strong, content place. So it could only have been now. It couldn’t have been before.’

She admitted to an ‘overwhelming fear’ of going on TV but added: ‘I feel like I’ve been on this kind of healing cycle… since all the c***, since X Factor, since the trial.’

For her, appearing on I’m A Celebrity was meant to ‘complete the cycle’.

The money no doubt helped as well. Tulisa’s deal with ITV, thought to be in excess of £100,000, was orchestrated by YMU – the celebrity talent agency that is home to the likes of Ant and Dec, Claudia Winkleman and Davina McCall.

The agency’s plan to return Tulisa to the TV stratosphere now looks to be in tatters. ‘It it might be a struggle now,’ says one source.

Tulisa turned down the chance to appear on I’m A Celebrity in 2014, with one friend telling me that it would have been a ‘disaster’. Nothing seems to have changed.

How did it all go wrong?

As I revealed yesterday, her quick and furious exit from Australia was sparked by a row with her close friend Michelle McKenna and Michelle’s boyfriend Daniel Johnson, a claim her PR team today insists is not true.

The pair had agreed to look after Tulisa’s social media output while she was in the jungle. They jetted out to Oz and got to stay at the JW Marriott courtesy of ITV. However it seems that’ in Tulisa’s eyes, they were enjoying themselves a little too much.

In one of the Instagram stories they posted from her account, Michelle called to her young daughter watching I’m A Celeb: ‘Look it’s Auntie TT.’

‘It was like something out of Shameless,’ said a source close to Tulisa, referencing the Channel 4 comedy-drama set on a council estate, following a dysfunctional working class family.

‘It was so unprofessional,’ the source said. ‘It’s one thing doing it from her own account, but to do it from Tulisa’s page just didn’t seem right. Your social media following when taking part in a show like I’m A Celeb is so important – and can be the difference between you going out first or second and making it to the final.’

The pair hadn’t seemed to take into account the time difference between the UK and Australia either, posting content in the middle of the night.

‘They got it completely wrong,’ said a source, ‘Who knows, Tulisa might have stayed in if they’d been more on the ball with her social media.’

It seems remiss of Michelle who is no stranger to showbusiness, having been a singer like Tulisa. The two women became friends in the late Noughties, their paths crossing on the pop festival circuit while Michelle was in a Manchester-based urban music band Platnum and Tulisa one third of the chart-topping hip-top trio N-Dubz.

Their bond became so strong that during her TV hiatus, Tulisa moved from London to Congleton in Cheshire, in part to be close to Michelle and Daniel who live in nearby Alderley Edge.

But drama is never far from the trio according to a source who knows them. Indeed, in December 2022, police were called to an N-Dubz concert at the AO Arena in Manchester after Daniel rowed with the venue’s security.

And as one industry insider pointedly says: ‘Television companies really don’t like drama.’

Perhaps aware of this, no sooner had Tulisa’s plane touched down in Manchester today, her PR team were at pains to stress that there had been no row between the star and Michelle.

Still, while it undoubtedly gains column inches, it remains to be seen if Tulisa’s dramatic flight from Oz and her remaining commitments to I’m A Celeb will spook the TV execs who she had hoped would shape her comeback.