There are many labels used to define Deni Hines: she’s a talented singer, a passionate human being, a lover of Pomeranians, but mostly, she’s a Virgo.
When faced with a messy, untenable, and uncomfortable (both physically and emotionally) situation, she did what Virgos do best: Make a plan, get organised, and get out.
Deni Hines was one of the first celebrities revealed to be taking part in the 2026 season of I’m a Celebrity Get Me Out of Here! She lasted two weeks (or seven episodes) before her patience (and her bowels) gave up.
“That’s why I didn’t want to stay,” she says over a Zoom call from Thailand. “The whole time in camp was four weeks, and I’d already got to two weeks, and I didn’t want to get to three weeks. I didn’t want to get to four weeks.”
That’s time without a bowel movement. After not being able to make a bowel movement and having clashes with some of the celebrities, she had enough.
“I’m very healthy, I’m very regular, and I’m not your average 55-year-old,” the singer says. “And I listen to my body.”
“It was two things. It was psychological; I just could not use that long drop. I am a Virgo, I have to feel comfortable, and sitting on a wooden seat, shooting into a black garbage bin, really just did a work for me.
“And I love a bum gun too, girl. I do love a bum gun.”
“I said I’d rather dig a hole in the jungle and sh*t in that hole.”
But being in a national park in the South African jungle, that was impossible.
We spoke the day after the episode aired when she said the famous eight (arguable nine) words: “I’m a celebrity, get me out of here, please.”
“There was something that happened to me on the last day of camp when I was lying on my camp bed, and we’d been there for two weeks, and I hadn’t heard any planes go over, and I heard a jet. And I said, that’s a sign, I’m out of here.”
After not being able to make a bowel movement and having clashes with some of the celebrities, she had enough.
Now, Deni has had a few months to readjust to life outside of the jungle.
“I’ve been back for a while. I got back in late November,” she says. The first thing she did? Have a delicious feed.
“My first night back home, my husband and I went out to dinner, and I had a meal. I was like, oh my God, real food.”
No rice and beans anymore!
“A hot shower, a real toilet, a bed, a pillow. I mean, we had a pillow, but my latex pillow.”
When the celebrities are in the jungle, they are literally in a jungle. We saw on one episode, baboons near the camp and in another, a Mozambique spitting cobra.
“They’ve got some really deadly snakes there, like some killers,” for example, that spitting cobra.
“There are guards that keep all the animals away and chase the baboons out. We had monkeys come into camp once, but they saw us and then freaked.”
“That’s why they have thermal cameras at nighttime so that they can see if any animals or snakes come into camp at night. And why they tell us to leave our boot on the end of the bed so that they can’t get into our boots at night.”
Even the wood is dangerous.
“They would cut the wood for us and leave it because a lot of the trees there are toxic when you burn them. So, they said, don’t collect your own wood.”
This wasn’t Deni’s first rodeo in camping, but it’s been a minute.
“I probably haven’t camped since I was about 10. I’m 55 now.”
But next time, she wants to do it in style.
“I’ve told my husband I’d like to go back to South Africa, but we can do it in a hotel now.”
And even her agent got the memo:
“I said to my agent, can the next thing you get me, can I have like real food and a real toilet, please?”
The bare minimum I reply; that’s the bar.
“I have no problems cleaning the toilet. We just had to take a bucket to the toilet guys, and then they’d give us a clean bucket. But I just couldn’t, couldn’t do it, girl. And my mum said, ‘Deni, you’ve always been a tidy girl.’ Yeah, I have, Mum. I couldn’t do it. And I actually thought, before I went into the jungle, I was like, “bags not cleaning toilets” after a night of rice and beans.” Because she thought it would lead to lots of excrement in the toilet bin. However, all the fibre was too much for the camp.
“So much, but then I don’t think we were getting that much food that I think my body was just trying to hold on to any nutrients it could.”
The other reason she wanted to leave was her clashes with her fellow celebrities. She and MAFS’s Cyrell Paule openly clashed, and even she and comedian Nath Valvo had words.
“I don’t know this generation. I haven’t lived in Australia for eight years, and I don’t know this generation of 30-year-olds. And as Luke [Bateman] said, you know, I’m surrounded by snowflakes. I don’t know because in Asia, life’s too hard to be soft. You have to be hard because life is hard here. But when you’re comfortable, when everything’s cool, you can be soft.”
“I don’t hang out with 30-year-olds. I don’t have kids. I’ve got three Pomeranians. It was interesting for me because Luke sitting down with me was really, he took me aside one morning, and I was like, thank you, Luke, thank you, because I am on Struggle Street buying property here.”
I’m A Celebrity aired that conversation in the same episode when Deni left. Both she and Luke came to the conversation with open hearts and minds willing to listen to one another. An exchange that’s not often given a lot of airtime nowadays.
“Nath and I had a great talk, too, which was good. Look, I can be a c*nt with you if you’re a c*nt to me, but I’m also a person. I sensed that Nathan was having issues. So, I was like, “Can I chat with you for a minute?” So, we sat down and had a good chat. And the same thing with Luke. We were the first two to wake up in the morning. And he’s like, “Can I have a chat with you, Deni?” I’m like, sure, Luke, let’s chat. And when he sat down, and he was just explaining it to me, I was like, thanks, man, because I don’t have kids. I don’t hang out with 30-year-olds. Or 20-year-old people, without matter.”
The kids she does have are, of course, her two cats and three Pomeranians, one of whom she brings to the video camera so I can meet him.
“They’re all musicians because I’m a singer. So, we’ve got Smokey Robinson, Smokey. We’ve got Otis, Otis Redding. And we’ve got Maceo, Maceo Parker, James Brown.”
It’s Maceo she brings to the camera, the most recent pup she’s adopted from Hero Pom in Thailand.
“He can see himself on the camera. He’s like, what the hell?”
“When we lived in Australia, we had big dogs, but we’re in a condo and you can’t have big dogs. And one day Daniel and I were walking and we passed two people who had Pomeranians and that’s when Daniel was like, ooh.”
After they adopted Maceo, Deni posted a sweet photo of the three of them at Hero Pom surrounded by Pomeranians that have been adopted.
“They’re all the dogs that they’ve sold around the world on the back wall.”
They’re going to stick with the five furry children; otherwise, she and Daniel will have to expand the condo.
“Three is enough,” she says. “I love animals. I don’t eat them.”
This, of course, was her superpower in I’m A Celebrity. Before the first eating challenge, Deni was going around camp calling herself the “Bug B*tch”. So, when Nath had to pick who would go into the challenge, she was an obvious choice. Either he would call her bluff, or she would blow us away. Which she absolutely did. Casually chomping on crickets like it was her favourite snack.
“I went on that show knowing that I was going to take on every challenge they gave me because challenge means food. Challenge means stars.”
“If you know anybody who’s ever asked to do this show, make sure they say they’re a vegetarian or they’re going to eat some rank sht. I watched Rebecca eat a brain last night. I’m like, fck no. Hell to the no. [Dyson’s] ox ball smelled so bad. As soon as he took a bite…it was rancid. Flies were landing on it. I was leaning back because it was disgusting. And he was vomiting. Poor guy was vomiting and chewing at the same time.”
It was really not pleasant. If you want to see it for yourself, the episodes are available to stream on 10Play!
But she lent some of her steadfastness to her fellow campmates in that trial. Offering verbal support to Dyson and Matt as they choked down some not-so-tasty critters. But also, came around and held Mia Fevola as she attempted to eat an honestly horrendous-looking bull penis.
“I was like, come on, me, we got this. I’ve got time for some of them, more time than others, some of them…”
The other people added to her frustration, and ultimately, she hit her limit.
“I hit my wall. There were too many people for me. Like, if we started to have an elimination and some of the voices started to go, then I could have been a little happier in camp.”
Coincidentally, in the very next episode, celebrities started the eliminations.
“There was just so much going on. I spend a lot of time by myself in my own company, in my own space, listening to music, or doing whatever. And I’m not usually surrounded by so much chatter.”
“And I couldn’t shut it down. I couldn’t put headphones in. The only way I could escape was to sit on the bridge.”
She did try to keep it together, but the fact remained that the rest of the celebrities were annoying her, and she says maybe even playing it up for the camera.
“People were trying to pull focus all the time. Just trying to have that conversation that’s going to be aired on the show. And I’m not like that. I’m in my 50s. I’m not like that.”
The conversations that Deni did have that were shown were of her having what seemed to be genuine conversations or giving life advice, like when she sat down with Matt Zukowski. He shared that he started his relationship with his now-ex-wife by messaging her on Instagram. Their marriage only lasted a few months.
“I think I said it would’ve taken longer to get divorced than it would have taken to get married.”
His ex, Tammy Hembrow, tried to follow her on TikTok, but Deni isn’t inviting any potential drama into her peaceful existence.
“I’ve blocked her.”
Deni and her husband Daniel have found a peaceful stronghold in Thailand. One free from fame or being bothered by strangers. It was the “lifestyle” that brought her there.
“We got caught in the rain on our honeymoon, and I said it would be so nice if we lived here. And then we went back to Sydney. And then Daniel said to me about two months later, what do you think about moving to Thailand? I said, f*ck me, let’s do it. And we did.”
Nine years later, they are still happy with zero plans to move back.
“I don’t want to sell a kidney for a coffee.”
“My mum was here last week, and I really loved it because she was just so relaxed here because nobody knows who she is. She could just be her and just exist. And I was like, Mum, I love you being here, and you relax. And I said, that’s why I love living here, because nobody knows who I am here. Nobody asks me about my mother here. Unless I bump into an Australian, which I try not to do that often.”
“But I love it for that. And it’s just a great place to live. Like, there are too many rules in Australia.”
But even though it was a difficult run for her in the jungle, she is happy she went on the show.
“I don’t regret i; I had a ball then. And, I love being in the jungle. Like, I loved sleeping in the jungle. I loved cooking in the jungle.”
But more than that, she loved being in the country.
“I love going to Africa because it’s where I’m the majority for once in my life. You know what I mean? I was telling all the white people that talk to me in public, do not blow my cover.”
“I’m an undercover brother in Africa, you know.”
And her favourite part about being in the jungle: The sound guy.
“So, every morning, when we got to bed at night, we’d have to take our mics off, right, and leave them at the end of the bed. And then every morning there’d be a sound guy who would come in and change the batteries. An African man. And he would stand behind my bed, and he was the only person who had cologne on. And I would look at him and go, oh my God, you smell something. Thank you. Oh, he smells so good.”
The other favourite thing: Her Maasai Blanket. This gorgeous blanket was Deni’s luxury item.
“Very practical, mate.”
And it was. It was a reminder of home and kept you warm when you’re outside and exposed to the elements.
So now Deni has done I’m A Celebrity, The Celebrity Apprentice, Masked Singer and Dancing with the Stars. What’s the next one for Deni Hines?
“Can’t tell you that, but you must check in April…”
However, she has a new album which she will be recording in Japan this year and will be there in March and April to do two shows in Tokyo.
“If you ever come to Thailand, you’d better find me.” Don’t threaten me with a good time Deni!
Catch up on episodes of I’m A Celebrity Get Me Out of Here! on 10play.
