As she prepares for her first one-woman show, Jodie Rimmer talks to Joanna Wane about why it’s time for women to start acting their age. In the end, it was radio DJ Athena Angelou’s superior bicep power that left Jodie Rimmer undone. But by the time the (then) 45-year-old actor was bumped from Celebrity Treasure Island on day 12, after losing a challenge to the much younger Angelou, she’d made her point.
Nobody puts Jodie in a corner. “The people I hang out with know my value, but they just looked right through me,” she says, of a buff 2019 line-up that included rower Eric Murray and boxer Shane Cameron. “And I didn’t like that at all.
” After knocking out Matty McLean – who went on to win the Fans v Faves edition last year – nailing a memory game and outwitting Murray in a heated leadership challenge, she was finally eliminated to finish around the middle of the pack. As she headed home from the remote location in Fiji’s Manamuca Islands, it wasn’t just her two young kids Rimmer was desperate to see. “I was like, ‘Oh, my God.
I need a steak and a gin and tonic, ASAP! So, yeah, it was a real hoot.” Looking back now, five years on, she doesn’t regret the experience. Two of her teammates, musician Ladi6 and Bachelorette Lily McManus , have become good friends.
But it was a sharp reminder, she says, of how middle-aged women are seen – or not seen at all. Only former rugby league star Gary “The Wiz” Freeman had more years on the clock than she.
