Freddy Brazier bought drugs with Celebrity Race Across the World budget
Freddy Brazier and his dad, Jeff Brazier, finished third on BBC's Celebrity Race Across the World in 2024.
Freddy Brazier bought drugs with his budget on Celebrity Race Across the World in 2024.
The 22-year-old, whose mum, Jade Goody, died of cervical cancer in March 2009 aged 27, “mentally wasn’t in the right place” to take part with his 47-year-old dad, presenter Jeff Brazier, and struggled as filming the BBC show, where teams compete in a mammoth trek with little cash, coincided with Mother’s Day.
And Freddy has now admitted spending some of his and Jeff’s strict budget, intended to help cover travel, food and accommodation, on cannabis in Brazil, which he smoked on the beach after climbing out of a hotel window on Mother’s Day.
On the latest episode of The Terry Stone Connection podcast, Freddy said: "It come at a bad time, to be honest. Like the week before the master interviews, I’d had quite an extreme episode, and I calmed down by the time of the interviews.
"But I think I’d come down from Birmingham. I was seeing a girl from Birmingham at the time, and I had smoked up there the night before the master interviews like a d******* after promising my dad I wasn’t going to come there being high.
"But I lied, turned up there no sleep. Knackered. And I think I must have had bags under my eyes, because the amount of f****** makeup they put on me was a joke.
“I almost forced myself to do it. I weren’t in the place mentally, and when I knew that we were going to be filming over Mother’s Day as well, I was like, ‘Oh f***, s***, I’m going to have cameras in my face. I want to be alone.’”
On Mother’s Day, he remembered swimming in the sea and watching the sunset, which he described as “really lovely”, before Freddy “climbed out the hotel window that same night” and went to the beach to buy some cannabis.
He explained: "I remember the hotel lobby man saying, ‘This isn’t the safest area.’
"I was like, ‘I’m OK, I’m OK,’ and I’ve gone to the beach, and we’d seen these people before; they were couples, and they make bracelets.
“And they bought me a beer, and I’ve taken some money out of the budget we were given, and I’ve went and bought myself a three-five of weed in Brazil on Mother’s Day, and smoked it with these two bracelet makers on the beach while looking at the stars.”
Freddy acknowledged the move was “very selfish” and that it could have ruined their chances of doing well on Celebrity Race Across the World, which he described as a “beautiful” experience.
DJ Scott Mills, 53, and his husband, Sam Vaughan, finished first, with Ted Lasso actor Kola Bokinni, 34, and his cousin Mary Ellen Moriarty in second, and Freddy and Jeff in third, following their 12,500 kilometres race from Belem, Northern Brazil to Frutillar, Southern Chile.
Freddy said: “I was very selfish. And looking back and reflecting as I’m speaking, I was very selfish to do so because that could have cost us the show.”
Explaining the need to smoke cannabis, he continued: “But I feel like I needed that joint, honest to God, I felt like I needed that joint, otherwise I was getting kicked off the show anyways because I wasn’t in the greatest headspace, and I didn’t want to be filmed on Mother’s Day.”
Last year, Freddy said he has “been smoking since I was 12”, which had been a “bad coping mechanism that turned into an addiction”.
He has also been open about his mental health struggles, previously revealing that he had been sectioned after experiencing manic episodes.
Freddy sought rehabilitation treatment, but he later said he did not need rehab, but “a holiday with a good group of boys or a retreat”.
