I’M A Celeb runner-up Coleen Rooney says she considered quitting in the first week as she sobbed over her kids in camp.
In scenes not shown on TV, she cried when looking at her luxury item – a pillow with a picture of her four sons and footie legend husband Wayne.
But her strong-minded nature set in and helped her battle through to Sunday’s final, when she lost out to McFly‘s Danny Jones by just over ten per cent of the 10million votes cast.
Coleen, 38, said yesterday: “In that first week, I did wake up one morning and obviously I’d been given the pillow that I was sleeping on.
“I looked and I’d seen Wayne and the kids, and I had a little cry and thought, ‘I don’t know whether I can go all this way’. And that was only week one.
“But then I soon snapped out of it and went and done the washing up, and collected the wood and did whatever I had to do and it was fine. I got on with it.”
She added: “I’m quite strong-minded.
“Even though I’m quiet, I battle through things.
“I just think, ‘Come on Coleen, you’ve said you’ll do it, so just do it’. I do snap myself out of things really quickly.”
Coleen was in floods of tears again when her two youngest lads, eight-year-old Kit and Cass, six, surprised her in the Aussie camp last week with her mum Colette McLoughlin, 62.
But Plymouth Argyle boss Wayne was cheering her on from home amid his hectic fixture list, while her eldest lads – Kai, 15, and Klay, 11 – also stayed in Cheshire.
She rang Man United and England great Wazza, 39, in the car immediately after leaving the jungle.
Coleen said: “As soon as I came out I phoned home. They all had a gathering in the house and watched it together.
“Wayne just said how proud he was. In the letter (from home) I got, he said he’s never missed me as much – and I can understand that because we’ve not spoke.
“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, it’s been tough.
“Not keeping up to date on the kids’ school and football… I’m so involved in all that back home. That was hard.”
Doting mum Coleen burst into tears when she hugged Kit and Cass in camp last Friday, having been apart from them for almost four weeks.
In Sunday’s final, she was again reunited with the boys, plus Colette and her dad Tony.
She added: “Obviously my mum, dad and the two younger kids were there, then Wayne and my two older ones at home. It was harder for them to come out of school.
“They’re older, it’s more serious – so we took the decision to keep them in school. The little ones, obviously it’s easier. They’ve brought work away with them.
“They did say they weren’t going to school tomorrow because their mum was in the final.
“I don’t know what school’s going to say about that but, you know, obviously they haven’t come all the way to Australia so maybe they do deserve a day off.”
Here's every star who has been crowned King or Queen of the Jungle to date:
There was also an All Star series in South Africa in 2023, which was won by Myleene Klass.
