Richard Madeley has returned to Good Morning Britain and opened up about why he was forced to quit I’m A Celebrity... Get Me Out Of Here! after becoming unwell.

The 63-year-old presenter last appeared on the breakfast show on November 3, when he had told his colleagues that he was “off to eat things” and would be back after Christmas.

His time on I’m A Celebrity was cut short however after needing to go to hospital for what he believes was “dehydration”.

Due to the show’s strict healthy and safety regulations however, it meant he had broken the Covid-19 bubble so couldn’t return to the set at Gwrych Castle in Wales.

Speaking to co-hosts Ben Shephard, 46, and Susanna Reid, 50, he explained: “If it wasn’t for Covid, I would’ve been out of that camp for maybe a total of two hours, having all these checks, the results came back in and I was absolutely fine. I would’ve been back by half past 10 in the morning.”

Recalling the moment he first became unwell, he said: “I think what happened to me was I got dehydrated. I think that’s all it was, but dehydration - if anyone has ever suffered from it - is actually quite disturbing.

“Basically, I think I’d been up for about 20 hours the day before and the one before that. We were having very, very long days and sleeping quite late. We don’t have watches in there. I don’t think I got to bed before four, four thirty in the morning and I knew I was feeling thirsty.

“I’m quite bad at remembering to drink water and I got into my sleeping bag and it was freezing and I thought, ‘Ah, I haven’t had a big drink for a while, oh, I’ll do it when I wake up,’ and the next thing I knew, I was sitting there babbling.

He continued: “I woke up, I didn’t know where I was, what was going on and I could hardly swing a sentence together. As it turned out, it was harmless. I went to the hospital, everything was normal, my bloods and all the rest of it. I got a 100 per cent clean bill of health.

“They were happy for me to go back in. I had a cup of tea, a drink of water and I was back on the rails.

“But ITV has a proper duty of care and if you have someone sitting in that castle, talking nonsense at four thirty in the morning - that’s typically me anyway - they have to check it out.”

He said he soon realised that he had broken the Covid bubble and wouldn’t be able to rejoin the other campmates including Naughty Boy, Frankie Bridge and David Ginola, leaving him “gutted”.

Show bosses told him they had been “wracking our brains,” but couldn’t find a way for him to go back in.

“So here I am! I should be in there, but here I am,” he concluded.

Asked whether he would want to go back on the show again in future, he teased: “Never say never!”

However only if the show was to return to Australia and he feels he has “done” Wales.