The Claire Sweeney I’m A Celebrity move would take one of soap’s most familiar faces from the cobbles to the campfire, with the Coronation Street star named among the 12 reported campmates for the 2026 series. The Sun revealed the reported line-up, according to Hello Rayo on 6 November, and Capital Xtra also lists the 55-year-old actress among those heading to Australia.
As with every name on the list, the casting is reported, not confirmed: ITV has yet to officially announce any campmates. The show returns on Monday 16 November at 9pm on ITV1, hosted by Ant and Dec, for around three weeks in Murwillumbah, Australia.
Soap royalty heads to camp
Sweeney is best known for playing Lindsey Corkhill in Channel 4’s Brookside from 1991 until the soap ended in 2003, and more recently Cassie Plummer in Coronation Street, a role she joined in 2023. She already has a family link to the jungle: her on-screen son Alan Halsall, who plays Tyrone Dobbs in Coronation Street, appeared on I’m A Celebrity in 2024, so she will arrive knowing exactly what camp life involves.
Beyond soap, her career has spanned the West End, where she played Roxie Hart in Chicago, a touring run as Miss Adelaide in Guys and Dolls, and a debut album, Claire, which reached number 15 in the UK Albums Chart in 2002. She was a panellist on Loose Women between 2003 and 2005 and presented 60 Minute Makeover from 2004 to 2006.
A career of reality firsts
If Sweeney enters the jungle, she will be no reality novice. She was a housemate on the very first series of Celebrity Big Brother in 2001, finishing as runner-up, and competed on the first series of Strictly Come Dancing in 2004. In 2024 she took part in the sixteenth series of Dancing on Ice, where she was third to be eliminated.
That history matters. The jungle rewards contestants who know how to live on camera without losing themselves, and Sweeney has been doing exactly that for more than two decades. Her Scouse warmth and quick wit made her a Brookside favourite, and campmates tend to lean on exactly that kind of steady, funny presence when the rice and beans run low and the trials get grim.
What she brings to camp
Born Claire Jayne Sweeney on 17 April 1971 in Walton, Liverpool, she trained at the Elliott-Clarke Theatre School and the Italia Conti Academy of Theatre Arts, and worked weekends in her father’s butcher’s shop in Toxteth. She has a son, Jaxon, born in 2014, and supports Claire House Children’s Hospice and the Children’s Liver Disease Foundation.
She also arrives with a poignant recent memory: her friend, boxer Ricky Hatton, with whom she competed on Dancing on Ice in 2024, died in 2025. The jungle is often where celebrities show the public who they really are. For Sweeney, three weeks in camp could be the role that reminds a new generation why she has lasted so long.
