Name: Lauren Booth

Occupation: Journalist, ex model

Age: 39

Celebrity Supporters: Tony Blair and Cherie Booth

Phobias: Spiders

Special skills: Motivating, enthusiasm, burping

Sister-in-law to the Prime Minister; journalist and mother-of-two, Lauren Booth, is perhaps, on paper, the most well prepared candidate for the jungle, having lived in the Australian outback.

But how will the no-nonsense, adrenalin junkie fare under the spotlight with some characters rather different to herself; and what do Tony and Cherie think of her taking part in the hit show?

“I presume they know,� she quips. “And I am sure Tony will be saying ‘Eat maggots… eat maggots!’�

The outspoken ex-model is no stranger to the Australian wilderness: “I was in Australia 18 years ago with my then boyfriend who is now my husband, Craig. We lived in the outback for two months, travelling around in the back of a battered old car, building fires to eat and all that stuff, living on kangaroo steaks and dried pasta.

“I have been on lots of other adventures; for example, wild fitness in Kenya which was swimming up a river for three hours, training up and down sand dunes. Any silly wacky idea I will go for.�

Half-sister to Cherie Blair and daughter to actor, Tony Booth, Lauren is a self-confessed I’m A Celebrity… addict.

“I love this show so much! It’s like being in the Truman Show - life mirroring art. You can’t believe it – the chance to do that!

On what she thinks she will bring to the team, Lauren says: “I think I will keep morale high and not let small tasks get us down. So, instead of saying ‘Making a fire is a pain’, it will be ‘Let’s make it the biggest best fire we can, let’s boil some water and see if we can make tea out of these leaves’.

The journalist, a vocal opponent of the war in Iraq, who has publicly called for the resignation of her brother-in-law, Tony Blair, has her own views on the I’m A Celebrity… Bushtucker Trials.

“I think they are utterly sadistic evil tasks – and when I meet the trial team I will say ‘You shouldn’t be working in TV, you should be working somewhere like Guantanamo Bay, because you are evil!’â€?

But the true Jungle Jane of the group says she will throw herself into any challenge, no matter how tough: “I will see the trials as a way of getting food for the camp and I intend to get on and do it. It’s a duty to the camp.

“The hardest thing a woman can do is give birth without pain relief. I was shouting out ‘You call this pain? Bring it on!’ I was shouting ‘Come on then!’ The midwife was going ‘Oh my God, we have a live one here’. My husband was crying with laughter. I had that attitude.

Lauren, who has been with husband Craig for 18 years, has been acclimatising herself to the jungle lifestyle over the last month by cutting out sugar and dairy and taking the children to school by bicycle, a 17km round trip every day.

She may have a gung-ho attitude towards most aspects of life, but the mum-of-two [Alexandra, five and Holly, three] who lives with the family in the country, does have a weakness or two; one of the eight-legged variety and the other more recently a problem with wind.

“I am going with genuine goals not to cry and not to run away from spiders! Spiders have always left me fleeing from a room and making a song and dance - I have never been happy about it.

“I’m also slightly worried about burping - I’ve got all windy recently. And all those beans… I did a yoga class once, and my teacher farted on me. She said ‘trapped wind’; I said ‘no it’s free wind!’

“I can manage to be a society girl for two or three hours in the evening and then it all goes a bit Carol Thatcher.�

Courtesy Of ITV