GK Barry's necklace on I'm A Celeb features a coded message to the outside world
If you've been obsessively watching I'm A Celeb (and if you're like us, you'll go ITV1, ITV2, Jungle Club) you can't fail to have noticed GK Barry's eye-catching necklace, which shows a word in a squiggly handwriting typeface. The only problem is, unless you have a TV the size of a wall and with ultra-high definition, it's been very hard for viewers to make out what it says.
The piece of jewellery - which she wears at all times, even when tackling some trials - does in fact feature just the word Eyelashes. That's a codename used by the star to refer to her girlfriend, England footballer Ella Rutherford, and was coined in the early days of their dating.
GK's stint in the jungle, where she's starring alongside Coleen Rooney and Danny Jones, is the longest the pair have ever spent apart so it doubles as a reminder to Ella that the YouTuber is thinking of her.
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GK, 25, used the codename Eyelashes, a reference to Ella's long lash extensions, when she announced on her Saving Grace podcast that she was in a relationship. She said: “Big news everyone. Big news. No one’s died, but I am in love. I’m off the market.
"I’m not gonna say who it is but I’m gonna give her a nickname called Eyelashes. So whenever I talk about Eyelashes, I’m talking about the love of my life.”
The move was intended to allow GK, whose real name is Grace, to talk about her girlfriend without people knowing who she was. However, fans quickly figured out that she was in a relationship with the Ipswich Town striker.
She added: “I said on my last podcast, I want a woman with calves, I want a woman that does football and she came to me like a dream. I am obsessed, I feel like I’ve been missing out. I went very wrong with men. I don’t like men anymore I will never go back to a man again god forbid. I feel like I’ve got a spring in my step and I’m glowing. It’s the lesbian glow."
GK - whose real name is Grace Keeling - has spoken in the jungle about her partner and coming out to her parents. Talking to Jane Moore and Dean McCullough, she said: “It was by accident I found Ella, through a mutual friend and then I really liked her the first day I met her but I’d never told my parents.
“I’d mentioned, ‘Oh I’m just going to see my friend Ella’ or ‘I’m staying round Ella’s’ so they’d heard her name." But when her parents asked one day who Ella was, her replied: "Oh. she’s my girlfriend.” She added to her campmates: "They just love her, they never had an issue with it.”
Explaining how they met on her podcast, she said: "I saw her Instagram and I thought 'hello'. I followed her and she followed me. She messaged me and we've never moved out."
Ella confirmed their relationship in August this year, when she wished Grace a happy birthday along with a string of photos of the couple and the words: "Happy Birthday babe, I love you more and more every day."
So that Ella won’t miss her too much, Grace left a life size cut out of herself behind at home. Speaking before she headed to the jungle, she said: "When you are missing home and all you want is your comfort people, then that will be hard if they are not there. But my girlfriend is also very excited for me and thinks I will do really well. I have got her a cardboard cut out of me so it's not weird when I am away."
