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The Guardian - UK
The Guardian - UK
World
Barbara Ellen

Can Coleen Rooney cut it in the jungle – or is she being underestimated again?

Coleen Rooney, in a broad-brimmed fedora hat, stands hands on hips, smiling slightly, in the jungle
Coleen Rooney prepares to go on I'm a Celebrity … Get Me Out of Here! on 11 November. Photograph: ITV/Rex/Shutterstock

Hearing about Coleen Rooney signing up for the new series of ITV’s I’m a Celebrity … Get Me Out of Here! (launching tonight) was a surprise. It’s such a classic “footballer’s wife” move. One former IACGMOOH campmate is Rebekah Vardy (wife of Jamie, striker for Leicester City), who took part in 2017 – the very woman Rooney defeated in the infamous 2022 Wagatha Christie libel trial.

However Rooney, wife of former England and Manchester United player Wayne, is not a typical footballer’s wife. Self-contained, reserved, something of a working-class queen, the mother of four is the antithesis of the red-carpet “plus one”. She barely did the Wag thing, except at big tournaments, and even then without the designer gusto of others with their Brazilian blow-dries and Gucci heels, rather smiling serenely in the spectator box like a Premier League Eva Perón.

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