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Coleen Rooney has been opening up about her love of the outdoors as she prepares to embark on her biggest challenge yet in the I’m A Celebrity camp
Coleen Rooney used to enjoy camping as a youngster – even sleeping under canvas on a green in the middle of a Liverpool estate so she could hang out with friends as a teenager.
The TV presenter, fashion designer and wife of football star Wayne, has landed in the Australian jungle as the big name signing of I’m A Celebrity…Get Me Out Of Here. But it won’t be her first time camping under the stars or making do in cramped conditions.
Looking back Coleen recalled in her book: “Some of my friends and I went through a phase of camping out overnight. The thing is, I never let on to my parents that I was outdoors all night under canvas; instead, I told them I was staying at a friend’s place.
“We had some nerve back then. One of our friends lived on a close built around a green; sometimes we’d set up our tents there. The funny thing was that the friend whose house it was wasn’t even allowed to go with us. She’d have to go up to bed, face like thunder, while we were all camping on the grass in front of her house having a whale of a time.”
The night consisted of music and chat until the early hours with drinks and snacks bought from a local petrol station. As well as the camping, Coleen enjoyed many family holidays in a small caravan in Kirby after her dad saw the potential for weekend’s away.
In Coleen The Autobiography, she wrote: “We visited my mum’s cousin’s caravan one weekend, and Dad spotted one for sale on the same site, so bought it on impulse. Situated in the town of West Kirby, it was pretty basic, but some of my best childhood memories are the time we spent there.”
The caravan was 40 minutes from the family home and had “zero mod cons” according to Coleen. Like in the jungle where she will have to use the dunny, there was no proper toilet, just a portable one the adults dubbed “the piss pot”.
The used the caravan for six years but by then it had holes in it and it was no longer fit for the site, being sold by Coleen’s dad for £50 in scrap. The basics of the jungle camp will therefore not be completely new to Coleen, even if the type of terrain differs massively from Kirby.
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