Pete Wicks reveals The Island bosses wanted him to quit following ‘terrifying moment a shark bit his hand’ as he speaks for the first time about the horror

The Towie hunk says he’ll never forget the horror of the shark’s mouth “tightening” around his hand while speaking for the first time about the “terrifying” ordeal.

Producers of the Bear Grylls series were keen to have him removed from The Island after his broken finger “bent like a banana” – but Pete refused to give up, telling The Sun: “There was no way I was leaving unless it was in a body bag.”

He explained: “They wanted to take me off The Island but I don’t give up on anything. I didn’t want to go.

“I broke my fingers and bent up like a banana and swelled up but on the island there’s not much you can do about it.

“My finger is still bent now and I don’t have much feeling in it – but I know that’s my fault for not leaving when they wanted me to. I wanted to prove I could do it no matter what.


“That was probably to my detriment because I’ve now got a weak pinkie.”

Pete was taking part on the Channel 4 show which sees celebrities fend for themselves on an uninhabited Pacific isle.

He came close to losing his life while out fishing for his camp mates – only to discover a shark had entered his net.

Reliving the moment he said: "It got quite serious quite quickly by the fact that I was trying to tread water with a shark attached to my hand that was trying to pull me back under and we were both caught up in this net.

“I could not get this shark off my hand for love or money; we ended up wrestling for a bit.

“Then after about three or four minutes of being in the water and going up and down I started getting a bit panicky because I lost the feeling in my finger, I thought my finger had gone.

“I thought ‘s***, what am I going to do?’ then the pain kicked in. The worst part of it was the clamping. It was like being in a vice; I could feel it tightening and tightening around my hand.”

Thankfully Pete lived to tell the tale when Olympic champ James Cracknell managed to cut him free from the net – but with the shark still attached to his hand.

He said: “I remembered watching the National Geographic and how to get sharks to let go, you poke it in the eye, so I did that and it ended up releasing my hand.

“I was so angry at myself that it happened. I put myself in that position where I've been bitten by a shark and actually it was just a big blunder.”

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