Chris Tarrant ‘terrified’ after being thrown in a jail cell in Kenya where inmates called him ‘sweet cheeks’
CHRIS Tarrant has revealed how “terrified” he was after being thrown in a jail cell in Kenya where inmates called him “sweet cheeks”.
The 74-year-old TV star was on the last day of filming his show Extreme Railways in Kenya when armed officers turned up.
Chris Tarrant has revealed he was thrown in jail in Kenya[/caption]Things quickly escalated and before he knew it, the former Who Wants To Be A Millionaire? star and his crew where taken to the local police station
Once they got there, they were thrown in a cell, but were not told what they had done wrong.
Whilst caged, they were taunted by the criminals in the next cell.
Chris told The Mirror: “There were these very large Kenyan men in the other cell leering at us and telling us the things they were going to do to us when we shared their cell that night.”
It happened while he was filming his Channel 5 show, Extreme Railways in Kenya[/caption]He went on: “They kept calling me ‘sweet cheeks’, which I didn’t like. It was bloody scary.
“One of the crew said to me, ‘Do you want to phone a friend?’ I said, ‘f*** off! Not now’. We were genuinely frightened, they were big blokes and you hear of people just disappearing.”
It happened at the end of Chris’s journey on the “Lunatic Line”, so-called because of its cost, which was built by the British across Kenya to the shores of Lake Victoria.
It was a 766-mile trip, which included a stop-off at a notorious spot where, in 1898, 140 workers were eaten by two man-eating lions.
The 74-year-old was left terrified by the ordeal[/caption]Chris explained more about what happened: “I was doing a piece to camera on the last day of filming on the banks of Lake Victoria, and we were surrounded by men in camouflage jackets holding these big guns, saying we didn’t have permission to film there.
“We had all the documents showing we had been granted permission.”
Chris thinks the police feared they were spies trying to film a new warship moored nearby.
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He says: “They asked us to go back to the police station just to sign a piece of paper, saying it was all a misunderstanding. But when we got there they showed us to this bit round the back and then these bars came down. They took our passports and our phones.
“Then, at 4pm, a policeman came and started handing back our passports, saying he was sorry about the misunderstanding. We ran out of the police station, and raced to the airport to catch our flights. It was terrifying.
“It’s a lovely country but, I am not sure I’ll ever go back.”