Who is Maura Higgins dating? 'We all know who she's talking about' - I'm a Celeb star Maura linked with Strictly star Pete Wicks

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Maura Higgins was secretive around her love interest in tonight’s I’m A Celebrity episode but it is badly kept secret.

Fellow camp mate Dean said that everyone else in the jungle believed they knew who she was romantically linked with, except Reverend Richard Coles.

Maura Higgins has been linked to Strictly Come Dancing star Pete Wicks, but said before she went in the jungle; “I am single at the moment, but honestly no-one is going to fancy me in the jungle. Trust me!”

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On Sunday night’s episode Maura was asked if she was single by Oti Mabuse and answered that she had been “seeing someone since July”.

Reverend Richard Coles then asked her if they were “exclusive”. She said: “I don’t know” but that she had been missing him.

She added that if felt different to previous romances, “but then is it because we’ve known each other for a long time?”

Rev Richard said: “You’d know if he was an asshole or not, by now.”

Maura replied: “Yeah, he’s not an asshole.”

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Love Island may seem a distant memory but Maura and Reverend Richard could be described as the two new I’m A Celebrity bombshells when they entered the jungle late. However, it would seem that love is the last thing Maura Higgins is looking for in the jungle.

Maura Higgins may look like she has it ‘all’ but she has significant a lot of trauma in her life, starting with her childhood. She revealed on relationship expert Paul C Brunson's podcast We Need To Talk that her mum Sharon suffered a breakdown after a bitter split with Maura’s father Seamus.

Maura Higgins revealed that “When the break-up happened, my mum was trying to keep a roof over four kids and herself and we were all in school, it was very, very hard and I remember seeing my mum struggle a lot."

Maura also said: "She had a nervous breakdown, she collapsed in the kitchen in front of all of us and only for my older sister, she was a lot older at the time, she knew to put her on her side and call the ambulance. I don't know why I remember this, but I remember, mammy has a rare blood type and my older sister knew to say that to the paramedics."

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I'm a Celeb's Maura Higgins: From thinking her mum was dead to breakdown, sexual assault and loss of friendI'm a Celeb's Maura Higgins: From thinking her mum was dead to breakdown, sexual assault and loss of friend
I'm a Celeb's Maura Higgins: From thinking her mum was dead to breakdown, sexual assault and loss of friend | Getty Images

As if the incident wasn’t traumatic enough, Maura thought the worst when she saw her mum collapse and said: "And I just remember thinking she's dead. I did not move. I did not help my mum. I was young, I sat crying, like screaming, crying. I didn't know what was going on. So yeah, that was a lot."

Maura has not only experienced trauma in her childhood but had to deal with the loss of her best friend Andrew Rowan who tragically died in 2017 at the age of 26 in a traffic collision in Co Athlone, Ireland. On Paul C Brunson’s podcast We Need To Talk, Maura revealed how she feels a lot of guilt over what happened and said: "For so long I blamed myself for it because when I look back at that day, the day was so crazy.”

She also said: "For so long I blamed myself for it because when I look back at that day, the day was so crazy," she said. "I can't work my head around it. He called me and he'd finished work early, which wasn't really meant to happen. He was like 'I have finished work early, lets grab some food'. I was like 'I can't be f***ed, I am still in my pyjamas I really can't be f***ed'."

Maura also went on to say on the podcast that “I am not as bad as I was with it but I still think 'why didn't I just go with him'. He wouldn't have been on the motorbike, we would have been in his car, we would have got food and maybe the day would have been different."

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Maura Higgins has also spoken about being sexually assaulted by a taxi driver on a night out with friends in Ireland and once again spoke on Paul C Brunson’s show, We Need To Talk, "I fell asleep in the front seat. I had a short dress on and I woke up...I'd had a few too many drinks...and his hand was up my skirt. I never sobered up so quick in all my life." The sexual assault took place after Maura Higgins’ friends who were sitting in the back, had been dropped off. Maura Higgins had been sitting in the passenger seat at the time of the assault.

Maura Higgins revealed on the show that she memorised the taxi driver’s number that was written on the dashboard but said that she was “too scared to say anything.” Despite remembering the taxi driver’s number the next day, Maura did not report the incident because she thought “he knows where I lived and I didn’t want to live in fear alone.”

She didn’t report the incident and regrets it. She said that “I didn’t have my wits about me. I've learnt from it though. That will never happen again. When you go through something like that, you make sure it will never happen again.”

Maura has also spoken about the lows she endured after Love Island and once again spoke about this on the We Need To Talk podcast and said: "Life after Love Island was a very hard time in my life… I was just dropped to the UK. It was like someone just picked me up, dropped me to the UK and I was in the public eye. I had nowhere to live. I had no friends, no family, nobody I could trust.

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"I had a breakdown. I had dark thoughts, very dark thoughts… And it got to a stage where I don't even think I told my mam. I tell my mum everything. I didn't tell her how bad it was… I didn't want to be here anymore. I thought that was going to be the best thing.”

She also revealed that "There was so much expected from me. And because I was there on my own, I was like, ‘I've just got nobody to help’."

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