Coleen Rooney was the last woman standing in the jungle and came second in the series, narrowly losing out to McFly star Danny Jones. She speaking exclusively to the Mirror about her time on the show

With her quiet confidence and stoic resilience, she appeared on the face of it to practically breeze through to the I’m a Celebrity final.

But Coleen Rooney has revealed for the first time how she secretly questioned her place on the show after just one week – because she missed her family too much.

Speaking to the Mirror after narrowly losing out to Danny Jones, she says how she sobbed after just a few days after being reminded of Wayne and her sons whose faces were emblazoned on her pillow.

“In that first week, I did wake up one morning and I looked at the pillow and I saw on it obviously Wayne and the kids, and I had a little cry and I thought I don’t know whether I can go all this way,” she says. But she says she “soon snapped out it” by getting stuck into her chores instead – namely the washing up.

“I went off and did the washing up and collected the wood and did whatever I had to do,” she says. “I just got on with it.” She says the first few days were also tough as she worried she wasn’t a big enough personality like some of the other campmates, and too quiet.

Coleen Rooney won the hearts of the nation during her time on I’m A Celebrity ( 
Image:
Tim Merry/Staff Photographer)

The Scouse star tells the Mirror’s Tom Bryant all about her jungle experience ( 
Image:
Tim Merry/Staff Photographer)
“In the first week I just thought I can’t see me going all the way because I was just me,” she says. “We had loads of personalities in there who were great and I got on with, but they were performers and I felt like I was, at times, just sat there thinking, ‘what do I bring?’

“It wasn’t uncomfortable. They made it comfortable. It was just me sitting back and looking at that camp and thinking I was more quieter than everyone else. But obviously people enjoyed it and wanted me to stay in there longer and see a bit more of me. I don’t know why but they did.”

She also says it quickly dawned on her that she had signed up for the show without properly giving it enough consideration She says: “I think my head before I went in was just to get everything sorted for the kids and get everything done for Christmas. I wanted to get out of here so I could just enjoy it. But then I didn’t actually think about going in. It wasn’t until I was in there that I thought, ‘what have I signed myself up for? What am I doing in here?’”

Coleen – who says she got terrible headaches after detoxing from caffeine and sugar – said the first few days were “tough before it started getting better.” But she adds: “As it got better, the weather got worse. And then that was tough.”

The weather was the worst in the show’s history with the camp battered by endless storms. “There was one night where we got all got woken up in the early hours in the morning to go into the Bush Telegraph because of a storm” she says. “I was asleep in there, Alan was asleep. You think this isn’t what we thought the jungle would be.”

Coleen formed a special bond with her campmates ( 
Image:
Tim Merry/Staff Photographer)
Viewers watched with tears in their eyes as she was reunited with mum Colette, and her two boys Kit, eight, and Cass, six, in camp. Coleen was seen sobbing in her mum’s arms in what she says was a rare show of emotion. “I do snap myself out of things really quickly, and I’m not a crier, bur when my mum came in that really surprised me,” she says.

“You know, when I think back to that moment, it was like someone had told me someone had died. And I don’t think I’ve been shocked more than that in my whole life. That is the biggest shock I’ve ever had.” Saying goodbye to her mum again was tough – and it reminded her of the isolation when she was in America for Wayne’s job

“I was like ‘you’re here now, I’m not going to let you leave.’ My mum said ‘do you feel like you are in America now?’ When I was in America, I was homesick and whenever we got together, we didn’t want to leave. And the only other time she said that to me was during COVID, when we couldn’t see each other.”

Seeing her `boys, she says, gave her the “urge to then battle through the next few days” to the final. After coming out of the jungle, the first thing she did was phone home, where Wayne and the elder boys Kai, 15, Klay, 11, had thrown a family party to celebrate her in the final.

And she laughed as she said her two eldest had given themselves the day off school yesterday (Mon) as it was such a late night. “I spoke to Wayne as soon as he got in the car,” she says. “They all had a gathering in the house and watched it together. Wayne and my two older ones were at home as it harder for them to come out to school.

Coleen’s two youngest sons were there to meet her as she left camp on Sunday night ( 
Image:
Tim Merry/Staff Photographer)“The little ones, obviously it’s easier. The (two eldest) did say they weren’t going to school tomorrow because their mum was in the final. I am not sure what the school has to say about that but obviously they haven’t gone all the way to Australia so maybe they do deserve a day off.”

She said she was moved by Wayne’s reaction. “He just said how proud he was. In the letter I got in camp, he said he’s never missed me as much and I can understand that, because we’ve been apart for weeks and weeks on end, but we speak a number of times a day. We FaceTime. So to not have that communication has been tough and not knowing or keeping up to date on the kids’ school and football. I’m so involved in all that back home that was hard.”

Coleen also laughed after learning that he had been mobilising his millions of followers to try and get her to do trials. After one plea on social media, she was voted the next day to do a trial She added: “So I heard but you know what? I’m so glad he did, because I was desperate to do a trial. And at that time, I thought, What’s the point in coming here if I’m not doing any trials?

After one trial, a cockroach got stuck in her ear. “I could just feel it going round, and I could see people’s faces, and they were like: ‘that’s not right’ But I didn’t panic, and they squirted the water up there and it was all ok,” she says.

Viewers, as well as her campmates, were also impressed by her willingness to muck in and do chores. But Coleen says that’s part of everyday life for her and she’s always got stuck in. “I might not have camped that much but I used to clean chalets at Pontins when I was younger,” she says. “ I don’t mind getting my hands dirty, that doesn’t bother me. I’ve got four boys.”