Tulisa Contostavlos was 'having a breakdown' when she left I'm A Celebrity... camp

Tulisa Contostavlos returned to the UK as soon as she left the 'I'm A Celebrity... Get Me Out Of Here!' camp because she felt like she was having a "breakdown".

The 36-year-old star explained she jetted out of Australia and missed the final after being voted out of the ITV reality show because she needed time away to "process" her gruelling stint in the jungle.

She told Paul C. Brunson on his 'We Need To Talk' podcast: "I did what I signed up for, but I came out, I processed, I was feeling the way I was feeling...

"In this current age that we live in, it's like, ‘You want me to be there out of principle? When I'm having a breakdown right now? I need to go home and process this. If other people are not having the same experience as me, they haven't had the same experiences in the past and they're all current people that are doing radios or they're on television. This is very much the norm for them’. This, for me, was a psychological experiment, for myself.

"ITV were brilliant and supported me knowing what I needed to do for myself."

And during her time in camp, Tulisa was secretly stricken by anxiety attacks and struggled to sleep.

She said: "Some of the things you didn't see, I had night terrors for the first four days. I was waking up out of my sleep, and I was having anxiety attacks. Those parts, not everyone knows, so it wasn't completely smooth sailing for me at all, but I have a great poker face.

"I really can turn it on and especially when I'm faced with adversity. The last thing I wanted to do was go in there and be the hot mess...

"I mean, I did cry on the VT at one point, but I definitely had an anxiety attack off-camera, because I went to the smoking area to do it and even then, I didn't want them to know that I was having an anxiety attack, so I was trying to bring down my heart rate, literally through my nose...

"I wanted to leave that day. I was like, ‘I can't do this but it's not what I came here for. I came here to stick it out and do whatever I have to do’. "

The former 'X Factor' judge coped in camp by spending long stints of time on her own.

She said: "I am a massive introvert. I was really getting a little bit overwhelmed in there, so I was probably the least around in camp.

"I would go and remove myself and go for walks or go and hide in the dunny. I spent 90% of my time alone. The agoraphobia and being alone for so long, I got super overwhelmed being around so many people.

"They could see that, and they were really understanding about that. They had jokes like, ‘She’s gone to the Airbnb. She'll be back.’ You know, they're like, What are you doing? I'm like, ‘Bro, I've just been staring at a palm tree. I just needed a minute'."