What has Barry McGuigan said about his daughter in the jungle?
Former world boxing champion Barry McGuigan with his late daughter Danika
PA Archive
In a heart-breaking conversation, McGuigan told his fellow I’m A Celeb stars how Danika was diagnosed with leukaemia while he was working on the Daniel Day-Lewis movie The Boxer.
“Three weeks from the end, I had to leave [filming] because she’d been diagnosed with leukaemia,” said the Northern Irishman, best known for winning the WBA featherweight title in 1985. “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.”
Devastatingly, the actress was then diagnosed with cancer again.
“[She] never got to see the opening of it,” McGuigan said. “Stage 4 bowel cancer, five weeks, five weeks she died.”
As well as appearing in numerous films such as Wildfire, which premiered in 2020, Danika appeared in the BBC Three comedy Can’t Cope, Won’t Cope.
Who are Barry McGuigan’s other family members?
Danika was one of four children McGuigan had with his wife Sandra — including sons Shane, Jake and Blain.
The childhood sweethearts married in December 1981 and their relationship was hugely significant because McGuigan is a Catholic and Sandra has a Protestant background.
Danika (centre) with her three brothers and parents at a CLIC fundraising ball in 2023 to raise money for children with cancer or leukaemia
PA
Reflecting on their relationship, which started during The Troubles, McGuigan said in 2008: “I remember feeling a responsibility to create a harmonious situation: I wasn’t going to cause any more trouble and strife.”
What do his sons do now?
All three of McGuigan’s sons have followed him into boxing. Shane, 36, is a trainer who has worked with renowned fighters such as David Haye and Carl Frampton. He has two young sons of his own.
Shane thanked his dad’s campmates for their support on Monday, writing on Instagram: “Thank you to all the other campmates supporting dad. We appreciate it immensely.”
Shane and Jake, 32 — known for his work with the McGuigan family’s boxing promotion company, Cyclone Promotions, which manages several fighters — appeared in the 2024 BBC documentary Stable: The Boxing Game. This chronicled life in the McGuigans’ boxing stable.
Blain, 31, also works for Cyclone Promotions. He focuses on its business, overseeing various aspects of the company’s operations, including event organisation and promotion.
Blain stays out of the public eye and is less involved in the media than some of his family members.