Nigel Havers has said appearing on I'm A Celebrity was 'a terrible error' and he wanted to 'murder' his 'irritating co-star Lembit Opik.   

The actor, 74, who played conman Lewis Archer in Coronation Street, joined the ex politician, 61, in the Australian jungle back in 2010, but quit after just nine days. 

Reflecting on his short-lived stint on the show, Nigel appeared on Lorraine Kelly's on Saga’s Experience is Everything podcast and said he mistakenly agreed to do the show, having not ever seen it. 

He said: 'I’d made a terrible error of agreeing to do a show having not seen it. It turned out that it was a stupid thing to do.'

During his time in the jungle, Nigel grew increasingly frustrated with Lembit, who he said constantly talked 'rubbish' in camp. 

He said: 'The other thing was I wanted to kill someone in the camp. And I got to the stage when I would have killed him. 

'I found him incredibly irritating, and there was nowhere to go away from him. I would sleep at night working up ways to kill him.

'And then I thought I’d end up in court on a murder charge, and I couldn’t really say, "Look, it wasn’t me", because there are 38 cameras on you, so I had to get the hell out of there. To this day, he can’t understand why I hate him.'

Nigel added: 'The camp wasn’t all bad. I did like one guy there, Shaun Ryder. I really liked him, so he saved my life for a bit.'

Nigel dramatically quit I'm A Celebrity, hours after complaining to producers about treatment of contestants.

He finally left camp, after he was seen objecting to the Kangaroo Court task, which saw camp members given electric shocks if they failed in the special trial.

Nigel was seen fuming: 'I'm not up for it, I don’t do electric shocks so I’m leaving. I cannot waste another second of my life. I will probably do something drastic like probably go.

'If you are gaining something, that’s a fantastic thing. But if you’re not gaining something...'

He said another reason he had decided to quit the show was because he didn't want his wife to see him 'in prison'.

Nigel had also been complaining about the lack of intelligent conversation between campmates, calling many of the discussion topics 'inane'.

Saying: 'There has been non-stop chat, never a pause ever. I'm 59 and I don't want to waste it sitting around talking absolute b******s.'