Shipwrecked’s gay contestants Beth Spiby, Chris Jammer and Kush Khanna share their coming out stories
Shipwrecked’s gay contestants Beth Spiby, Chris Jammer and Kush Khanna share their coming out stories.
Shipwrecked‘s gay contestants Beth Spiby, Chris Jammer and Kush Khanna are opening up about their coming out stories with PinkNews.
Channel 4’s rebooted Shipwrecked returned with nine castaways split into two tribes, the Sharks and Tigers, to battle out for a £50,000 cash prize. Among them are three gay contestants, Spiby, Jammer and Khanna.
They spoke to PinkNews about their experiences coming out.
Watch the Shipwrecked coming out stories below:
Speaking to PinkNews, Tiger contestant and Cambridge University graduate Jammer said he struggled with accepting his sexuality growing up.
“I kind of realised that I had known since I was really young, but I always kind of tried to put it off, and deny, deny, deny,” explained Jammer.
He said that, because his dad is a Nigerian Christian, his sexuality sent him into a “mad, psycho depression.”
Jammer added: “I had to get to a stage where I was ready for him to disown me and kick me out of the house, rather than me coming off and being this unhappy.”
Heartwarmingly, Jammer said that, after coming out to his dad in a letter just before he went to university, his father sent him a text saying: “Chris, I love you, you’re my son.”
Shipwrecked finished on February 15, with the Tigers taking home the crown.
“Everyone saw me as this masculine guy,” says gay Shipwrecked contestant Chris Jammer
Jammer added that he initially it “took me a while” to be open about his sexuality because “everyone saw me as this masculine guy.”
However, while attending Cambridge University, Jammer said he started to feel comfortable with his sexuality.
“Everyone was really open to it there,” he explained.
For rival Shark contestant Spiby, who earns a living by web-camming for men, she suspected that she was a lesbian as a child.
“I’d always had conversations with myself, saying ‘you’re a lesbian you,'” she explained.
“Because I had these interactions with males, but I didn’t have the same connections that everyone else had.”
She said that at first she didn’t “really open myself up to the prospect of fancying a female.”
She said one of her earliest attractions to a woman was for pop star Jessie J, when she felt a “fanny flutter.”
The star said she eventually came out to her mum, after going to Magaluf one year, who had a really positive reaction.
Shipwrecked gay contestants reveal their coming out stories
Spiby explained: “She was like: ‘Why are you crying? Beth I knew you were gay since you bought the Stacey Solomon poster at X Factor and stuck it on your wall.'”
Fellow Shark contestant Khanna didn’t realise that he was gay until his late teens.
“I used to be madly in love with girls, but I never really used to date anyone,” he explained.
Khanna added that he became concerned because “nothing would happen down there,” to the extent that he Googled erectile dysfunction.
“It was actually mentally quite scarring,” he explained.
However, at the age of 19, Kush “suddenly” realised he liked guys, and took a trip to London to visit G-A-Y in Soho.
“A guy just kisses me, and then suddenly all these feelings start coming up.
“I’m like: ‘Oh my god, I’ve missed this for 19 years of my life.'”
