After Barry McGuigan tearfully opened up to his I'm A Celebrity campmates about his late daughter Danika 'Nika' McGuigan, he once made some emotional comments about his family life with his wife Sandra.
The 63-year-old boxer left the Australian jungle behind to be reunited with his three sons Shane, Jake and Blane and grandchildren, some of whom live at his home in Dargate. The family's unique living arrangement came about after Nika passed away in 2019 from bowel cancer aged 33, just five weeks after being diagnosed.
© Getty"They have saved us," the doting grandfather said about his grandkids during an interview with the MailOnline. "We have seven of them now. When we lost Nika, her older brother Blain and his wife moved in with us, bringing their three kids, too. Having grandkids makes you get up in the morning, even if you don’t want to.
© Matthew McNulty"When you reach the stage of thinking, 'What is the point?', you think of the responsibility to them, so you get up. They don’t give you a choice."
He admitted Nika is never far from his mind as he reflected on his time in the jungle.
© Niall Carson - PA Images"Our daughter Nika would have been laughing her head off at the sight of me in the jungle, too. Her brothers have that same sense of humour, and I can see it coming through in the grandchildren."
Barry's heartfelt comments
Barry has been open about dealing with grief in the years since his daughter died. He said to Belfast Live in 2021: "It’s been shocking. I’ll never recover from it. My life will go on, but I’ll never be the same because family means everything to me."
In the same interview, he also touched upon Nika's "tough" childhood, which included being diagnosed with acute lymphoid leukaemia aged 11.
Barry reflected on his beloved daughter's health with his I'm A Celebrity campmates.
"She had leukaemia when I was making the movie The Boxer with Daniel Day-Lewis, three weeks from the end I had to leave because she'd been diagnosed with leukaemia, they thought she wasn't going to get better but she fought back and she won it.
"She had two years of chemo, she was good, she came back."
