Celebrity SAS: Who Dares Wins champion Troy Deeney has said he’s given up alcohol and begun therapy for his anger after the reality competition changed his “whole life”.
The former Watford striker, 37, emerged the winner of the military training show alongside X Factor star Lucy Spraggan and Peru Two member Michaella McCollum on Monday (25 August).
Deeney, who wept after triumphing, said the tears he shed on the programme marked the second time he’d cried since his father, Paul Anthony Burke, died aged 47 from cancer in 2012.
The former professional footballer said the emotions came from a mixture of “exhaustion, tiredness” and “a sense of pride”, adding he’d been “lost” and “confused” before taking part in the show.
“I’ve stopped drinking, I’m getting therapy for my anger, I just feel different,” he told The Sun.
He said he is still “working daily” to become the version of himself that he wants to be.
In 2012, Deeney was arrested and jailed for 10 months after taking part in an attack on a group of students outside a nightclub in Birmingham that left one man with a broken jaw.
He told The Standard in 2017 that he’d “enjoyed every minute” of his three months reduced sentence in prison as it provided him with time to reflect on his life and changed him as a person.
“It was horrible, the food was terrible, the clothes are terrible, the living was terrible but I enjoyed every minute of it because it made me go, ‘get a pen and paper, write this is what has to be done, this is what I have to do,’” he said of the list he made shortly after being incarcerated.
Meanwhile, McCollum said she couldn’t believe she’d won the reality programme alongside Spraggan and Deeney – and said they were all “traumatised” by their experience on the show.
She also revealed they were handed a Milky Bar after their triumph.
