Christine in demand

Christine Hamilton

THE jungle VIP has gone from lioness to pussycat, claws intact still a feisty feline but purring instead of roaring.

After her appearance on I'm a Celebrity Get Me Out of Here, Christine Hamilton is now very much in demand.

"At last people got the chance to see the real me," she explains.

As battleaxe metamorphosed into mother hen, millions took the wife of disgraced former Conservative MP Neil Hamilton to their hearts.

"No one who knows me was surprised. I didn't alter. I'm exactly the same as I've always been.

"The only thing that has changed is people's perception of me."

No one knew that the woman described as the Hyacinth Bucket of British politics, who steadfastly supported her husband through sleaze and cash-for-questions allegations and subsequent bankruptcy, could have foreseen her meteoric rise to superstar status.

Tara Palmer-Tomkinson, Tony Blackburn, Uri Geller, and particularly Nigel Benn the boxer with whom she had the dramatic screen bust-up part of the unlikeliest celebrity line-up producers could have dreamed up, are not Christine's idea of dream companions.

"No, I wouldn't choose to spend any amount of time with them again," she said.

"I am simply staggered by the level of interest, particularly among those who would not normally watch that sort of rubbish TV.

"I can't imagine why, it must have been compulsive."

She says she has kissed and made up with Nigel, and the reunion was a fun night.

It's all behind her now and the phone hasn't stopped ringing since she got back.

She was supposed to be a battleaxe, but has redefined the role to reflect the change in image.

"I've always been caring, strong, firm and fun,' she stresses.

"I have a great sense of humour and am the eternal optimist.

"My glass is always half full and never half empty. I'm sensitive too. I actually do hurt"

Initially, she wasn't particularly enthusiastic about the whole I'm A Celebrity Get Me Out of Here idea.

"I'd been asked to stand in to present a radio broadcast and I don't break arrangements.

"Besides, I had all sorts of other problems around Neil's bankruptcy, the house to sell to pay our legal fees.

"Anyway, the radio station said I must do I'm A Celebrity Get Me Out of Here, so I did. And loved it. The whole thing was tremendously liberating.

"I could have put the whole bloody team on the bonfire at times, but the physical things like going for water and keeping the fire burning were wonderful.

"I'm an action girl, quite happy to flop into bed, fully clothed, unwashed and without make-up."

Christine Hamilton has survived a string of nightmare scenarios which would have crushed and destroyed lesser characters.

She has unwaveringly stood by her man while the cash-for-questions row raged, and the subsequent court hearings when Neil tried to clear his name against accusations that he accepted envelopes stuffed with cash from Harrods boss Mohamed al-Fayed.

Neil bankrupted himself in the process and she made an unenviable name for herself. 'Wife from hell' and 'battling lioness' were the kinder descriptions.

Reporters stalking her soon-to-be-sold smart Cheshire home heard the shrill refrain: 'Get those greasy reptiles off the church daffodils,' and 'go get proper jobs'.

And then there were the unfounded sex allegations, one of the worst knocks so far, "ghastly, grotesque and humiliating".

"We have had some truly awful times, but we are survivors, totally dependent on each other," she explains.

The great matching of Neil and Christine Hamilton was not exactly made in heaven, but at a Conservative student gathering in Yorkshire.

"I saw him across the room and thought, 'that'll do for the weekend'. It was lust at first sight."

He actually 'did' for three years, before she unceremoniously dumped him at Dixieland Palace, in Morecambe.

Christine spent the next five years sowing her wild oats in Westminster.

She was the vivacious young blonde graduate working in the Commons, taken on by colourful moustachioed MP Sir Gerald Nabarro, who said her mind compensated for lack of secretarial skills.

Neil was working on his second degree at Aberystwyth but, during a trip to London for bar exams, persuaded his ex to meet him for dinner. The rest is history.

"We've lived in each other's pockets ever since," smiles Christine.

The highly-charged chemistry between them is electric and Neil is neither surprised by nor resentful about her new-found fame.

Taking Neil out to Australia for I'm a Celebrity Get Me Out of Here had been a stipulation and it didn't matter he was holed up in a top hotel keeping a diary for the Mail on Sunday, while she sweated it out in the jungle.

She also took a biro and notebook as her 'luxuries'.

"Tony Blackburn took a mirror and razor and hid a comb in his shoe," she explained. "Tara used a fork for her hair. I didn't bother."

It has been said Christine looked better au naturel, minus make-up and salon-styled hair.

But she's back as the blazing siren, Botox treatment successfully shedding years from a once strained face.

She's the lady in red.

It has always been red, right down to handbag, purse, glasses, mobile phone and diary. Presumably, the M & S undies too, although she's not saying.

"I dress entirely in M & S. I hate shopping and grab everything I need in one fell swoop."

Set to work on her autobiography, Neil points out Christine's life story will not make best-seller status as there will be no shopping or sex.

"How do you know?" she challenges, tartly.

She is looking forward to a bright future in entertainment.

"It's a much less artificial world than politics, where you get paid for making people laugh," she said.

She has written the definitive Book of British Battleaxes and, with a tinge of regret, admits she will always be saddled with the title.

"I'd much rather be remembered as the woman with balls, but I suppose that is what battleaxes are, women with balls."

15:53 Thursday 2nd January 2003

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