Who Dares Wins was disgusting ...but I loved it

Ashes hero Graeme Swann was shocked how tough the celebrity SAS show was but he wanted to prove that he is no quitter

- By Jamie Roberts

Graeme fights ex Aussie cricket ace Brad Hodge on Celebrity Who Dares

GRAEME Swann says he went on SAS Who Dares Wins to prove he is no quitter after a bitter end to his cricket career.

But the England great, 46, admits he found the Channel 4 challenge much tougher than he expected.

"It was way harder than I thought," he says. "I honestly thought because it's television, I thought it'd be a bit watered down for what you see and a bit dramatised. It really isn't. It is brutal.

"I think Ben Cohen at one point said to me, this is disgusting. And that is a great adjective. It was disgusting.

"Like there's some of those things you have to do and some of the cr*p you have to crawl through and swim through and put your body through.

"It was way harder than I thought. I've got so much respect for those guys, for the actual guys. It was mind-numbingly hard."

But he adds: "Well, actually, I loved it. One of the reasons I wanted to do it, I've got three kids and I wanted to show them that, hey, I'm not a quitter, that I'll never give in, unless it's for the good of everyone.

"And I wanted to test myself, to see if I was mentally strong enough, because I'm 46... this is probably as fit as I've been, but it is not an old man's game, special forces stuff."