THE Circle’s Billy Dawson revealed he has no idea what classic TV show Gladiators is after coming face to face with its star Hunter during last night’s brutal blocking.
The 19-year-old fell victim to Hunter, real name James Crossley, in the secret Assassin challenge.
Having been born years after the 90s’ show’s heyday, Billy failed to recognise the famous face he’d been battling it out with.
In an exclusive interview with The Celeb Report, Billy said: “[It was] more fright than anything. Where does his body end? [laughs] There was a man mountain coming at me.
“I have no idea what Gladiators is. That sounds so bad. When my mum was watching she was like ‘that’s Hunter from Gladiators. I was like ‘what? Who?’ It was just before my time. When I first met him it was just a massive bloke who wanted to kill me with his two guard dogs.”
Hunter, who played the game as NHS nurse Gemma, was tasked with convincing the other contestants to block a player he had secretly chosen to target.
He set his sights on Billy and successfully completed the challenge – narrowly avoiding being blocked himself.
Most of the contestants were convinced Billy was in fact Billy’s mum – but a football chat with Andy at the 11th hour left both him and Manrika unsure that was the case.
While his time on the show was cut short, Billy has no regrets or any negative feelings towards Hunter.
He said: “If you’re told do this or you’ll get blocked, you’re going to do whatever you can. No hard feelings whatsoever. He wouldn’t have done the way he did without a plan. I feel he’s got a trick up his sleeve.”
And what did his mum think about being brought into the fray?
He said: “She thought it was quite funny. They showed me saying my mum ain’t cool and ain’t got banter and all this. She messaged me and said ‘how dare you say this about me’. I was like ‘it’s for TV mum’.
“She loved it. In real life we are quite different so it’s weird people think we’re the same people on the telly.
With the assassination thing she was like ‘why you pick Billy?’ and all this. She understands it’s a game show really. She gets it.”
Billy is now rooting for Vithun to win as he settles in to watch the Channel 4 show like the rest of us.
The Circle continues tonight, 10pm on Channel 4.
