My stint on I’m A Celeb paid for our extension – it is the jungle room

Edwina Currie, 77, is an author and one of Westminster’s most colourful alumna, writes Angela Epstein. The MP for South Derbyshire from 1983 to 1997, Liverpool-born Currie served as a minister under Margaret Thatcher. 

But her career came to an abrupt end in 1988 when, as Parliamentary Under-Secretary of State for Health, she issued a warning about salmonella in British eggs and resigned. Married twice – her second husband, John Jones, died of cancer in 2020 – Edwina has two children and two grandchildren and lives in Derbyshire.

What did your parents teach you about money?

To be careful with it. There wasn’t much around in a devastated Liverpool after the Second World War. My dad was a tailor and mum was a housewife. Dad sadly died of a heart attack in 1975 at the age of 65, leaving £400. We children encouraged mum to go to work – not least to help with the grieving process. She worked until the age of 75, doing the filing for a firm of solicitors.

Edwina Currie reads from a mock Daily Mail to promote her bestselling book, A Parliamentary Affair, in 1994

Have you ever struggled to make ends meet?

It wasn’t easy in the early years of my first marriage. Ray [her first husband] was a chartered accountant; we were living in Birmingham with two small children and had a mortgage that was drowning us. We’d bought a three-bedroom house on the Bournville estate with a big garden, fruit trees and roses.

I set myself an ambitious target of earning £1,000 a year by taking in students from Birmingham University. The deal was that they could have a room at a reduced rent if they would babysit for us one night a week.

I was also tutoring for the Open University.

What is the most expensive thing you bought for fun?

I was in Dublin on tour in 1994 for my bestselling book A Parliamentary Affair when I stumbled on a little jewellery shop with a 1930s Rolex in the window. It felt like a pat on the back for a lot of hard work. It was also fun to buy a Tesla – it costs hardly anything to run but repairs are expensive.

What is the biggest money mistake you have made?

Buying venture capital trusts (VCTs) – they are good to buy and almost impossible to sell. When they fall and they have no value they don’t pay you anything. I lost about £20,000 about 20 years ago which was a hell of a blow.

Edwina featured on I’m A Celebrity where she says she was paid a five-figure sum ‘in return for three weeks of pleasant weather in a beautiful country, sitting in the shade of a tree canopy with rather nice people’

The best money decision you have made?

Once I stopped being a minister and started writing books and they were successful I decided to create a pension fund. I started when I was 50 and paid into it until I was 75, after which my accountant said ‘stop and start drawing from it’.

I have a Ukrainian family who have been staying with me for more than two years and recently I took them to Barcelona with it. I also took them to Croatia as a birthday present for one of the boys. He loves the band Imagine Dragons and we all went to this amazing open-air concert.

How many properties do you own?

I have two. There’s my home, which is a 400-year-old, three-bedroom cottage in Derbyshire. And, as a result of my writing, I’m a shareholder in a company which owns a house in the next village which is rented out. Once it is vacant I hope my Ukrainian guests will make a home there.

The family fled from Donbas to Odessa in 2014 and, when the second invasion happened two years ago, they fled to Moldova and I learned about them through a friend. John had just passed away from a long battle with cancer and I thought, well, I’ve got the room. If they can put up with me, I can put up with them. And it has been lovely. What’s more, my grandmother was born in Ukraine.

I used to be a bigger ‘landlord’; at one stage I bought a flat in Liverpool for my mum and told her the rent was £1 a year and a good chicken dinner. At least that meant I could keep an eye on her!

Have you ever been paid silly money?

I was paid a five-figure sum for going on I’m A Celebrity – in return for three weeks of pleasant weather in a beautiful country, sitting in the shade of a tree canopy with rather nice people.

When I came back from Australia, the money was burning a hole in my pocket so we spent it on converting our garage into an extension. Before doing this, when we had parties at home in our little cottage, people would be standing on top of each other! I call the extension the jungle room. It has a mural with exotic animals such as birds of paradise, bush babies and 23 types of critters.

If you were Chancellor, what would you do?

Run away I think. No, seriously, trying to balance competing demands of more money needed for, say, the health service, improving roads and developing nuclear power with cutting taxes is a very tricky thing.

I would recognise that we need international investment and that means we need to be welcoming to foreigners – and not penalise Non Doms, which I think is a huge shot in the foot.

Do you donate any money to charity?

Blythe House Hospice Care (blythehousehospice.org.uk) in Derbyshire is such an important charity. When John was suffering with cancer he didn’t go into a hospice – the charity runs hospice care at home. This was invaluable since he was ill during lockdown. Had John gone into hospital we would not have been able to visit him. I appealed to Blythe House who arranged carers, a hospital bed at home and a visit from a consultant palliative care doctor. John died in November 2020 aged 79.

What is your number one financial priority?

It’s the same as my parents’: to pay the bills. I’m still that young lass in devastated Liverpool hearing my mum worrying about paying the bills. If I can’t afford to do something, I don’t do it. It’s the safest way to live.