Michaella McCollum says being ordered to strip off in prison helped her on Celeb SAS

Celebrity SAS: Who Dares Winsstar Michaella McCollum has admitted that her time spent in prison left her "desensitised". She was previously jailed for her part in a £1million cocaine-smuggling operation, which saw her spend three years in a Peruvian prison.

Michaella, 31, claims that being forced to strip by prison guards meant she had no issues was she was told to shed her clothes for the gruelling endurance show. Viewers will see her ordered to change into a boilersuit on the final episode of the series before contestants are put through 14 hours of mental and physical torture designed to align with what real SAS soldiers have to endure before they are selected.

Michaella, 31, said: “Interrogation on SAS felt very similarto the experience and things that I had to do in Peru. It began with this guy who was like, ‘Strip all your clothes off’. Being forced to strip as a woman, that’s so humiliating.

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“But I realised that I was so desensitised to being told to take your clothes off by a guard, because I’d been through that so many times in Peru. So when it happened in SAS I didn’t react. I guess I was programmed for so many years, that’s just what you do."

Speaking to The Sun, Michaella added that even though she was on her period at the time, it didn't make her think twice.

She continued, “The day that was filmed, it was my time of the month, but I did it without thinking.

"When I was in prison you can’t show emotion, it’s just not beneficial. So a lot of the time you have to try to keep yourself composed and not react, not scream and not challenge."

She concluded, “I had the experience of that to learn from — to just sit and listen, don’t react.”

Michaella - from Tyrone, Northern Ireland, was 19 years old when she was arrested with her friend Melissa Reid at Jorge Chavez International Airport, Lima, in 2013 as they tried to smuggle 12kg of cocaine.

The pair became known as the Peru Two after being photographed being arrested by customs officers in the busy airport. At first they tried to claim they had been coerced into what they were doing by an armed gang, but eventually they pleaded guilty.

Michaella explained how she had been high, using drugs at a party in Ibiza, when she was offered £5,000 to “go on a trip”. She has admitted it was the “worst decision” of her life. She and Melissa were sentenced to six years and eight months in the Ancon 2 prison.

They were released in 2016 having served three years of the sentence and Michaella wrote a book about her experience as well as appearing in a BBC. She took on a degree in business management in order to rebuild her life and now lives in Spain with her seven-year-old twin boys Rafael and Rio.

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