Coleen Rooney admits she ‘barely sees’ Wayne as he solely comes dwelling ‘a few times per week’ and divulges her mum will take care of their youngsters whereas she’s on I’m a Celeb – as she attracts a line underneath Rebekah Vardy saga

As one of the most glamorous contestants to be heading into the jungle for this year’s I’m A Celebrity…Get Me Out Of Here, Coleen Rooney is hotly tipped to take the crown – as well as letting slip a few WAG-related secrets.

But despite facing up to a month away from her husband, former England captain Wayne Rooney, and their four young sons, Coleen Rooney has admitted the couple are already distanced – and ‘barely see each other’ – as he juggles his new job with family life.

The WAG, who tonight makes her debut on the hit ITV show, says since Wayne started managing Championship football side Plymouth Argyle in May their ‘time together is limited’ and they largely only see each other on Sundays.

Speaking to The Mail on Sunday after flying to Australia last week, 38-year-old Coleen described the toll the 260-mile distance between them is taking, with Wayne living most of the week in Salcombe, Devon – a five-hour drive from the family’s mansion in Cheshire.

But she says that just before leaving for her stint in the jungle, they managed to enjoy a ‘nice family day’ last weekend, having dinner together and attending their 11-year-old son Klay’s football tournament.

‘Wayne comes back once a week, sometimes twice, depending on the fixtures,’ Coleen explains.

‘Usually, he has Sunday off so he might come home. What’s good about the championship is that a lot of games are closer to me, closer to home, up in the North. So he’ll come home on a Saturday evening and spend Sunday with us, depending on what the boys have got on.

‘Time together is limited, more so than ever now because of the travelling and stuff.’

And while Coleen is 10,000 miles away filming the series with former X Factor judge and N-Dubz singer Tulisa Contostavlos and boxer Barry McGuigan – in a deal said to be worth an eye-watering £1.5million – Wayne will remain in Devon. It is Coleen’s mum Colette who will look after the boys.

But Wayne is ‘supportive’ of her decision to go, she says, and he was the last person she rang before her mobile phone was confiscated. ‘I just checked on everything. And then before that I spoke to my mum because she’s looking after the kids as well as Wayne. ‘So it was just, ‘good luck’ – and I just wanted to see if the kids got off to school okay.’

Coleen, who is famous for her love of designer fashion and once fronted a £3 million campaign for George at Asda, has won plaudits for her down-to-earth attitude and dedication to good causes.

She began her presenting career in May 2006 when she appeared alongside Sir Trevor McDonald in a programme about genetic disorder Rett Syndrome, a condition which causes severe disability and which affected her adopted younger sister Rosie, who died aged 14 in 2013. After that, Coleen went on to present her own series, Coleen’s Real Women, which saw her labelled the nation’s favourite girl next door where she sought out ‘real women’, rather than models, to front high-profile advertising campaigns.

ITV bosses have long recognised her appeal, and are said to have been pursuing her for years to appear on I’m A Celebrity, but she has repeatedly turned down their offers to focus on her children.

But now her youngest son, Cass, is six, she finally feels ready to take on the ‘challenge’ – and to ‘do something for me’.

‘It’s something that I will never ever do again in my lifetime,’ Coleen says. ‘It’s a one-off adventure. We are so caught up in busy lives and with devices, and I just feel like now’s the time I could go and do something for myself because I feel like I’m always a mum, a wife.

‘It’s the perfect show. You are taking yourself away from a world where you’re constantly doing things, to a world where it’s back to basics and you’ve got to fend just for yourself and look after yourself.’

Although she realises she’ll be out of her ‘comfort zone’ she also sees it as an opportunity for ordinary television viewers to ‘see me for me’. She explains: ‘This show is going to be the most I’ve ever been exposed. Everyone has opinions of people in the public eye.’

Many of those opinions were formed during the very public spat Coleen endured with fellow WAG Rebekah Vardy – which ended in a £1.8 million court case.

It began when Coleen put a widely-shared post on Instagram which accused Rebekah of leaking ‘false stories’ about her private life to the press.

Rebekah denied the allegations and sued Coleen for libel, but the case – dubbed the ‘Wagatha Christie’ trial – found in Coleen’s favour, and left Rebekah liable to pay £1.5 million towards Coleen’s legal fees.

Just last month, Vardy was ordered to pay £100,000 of the money she owes.

While Coleen has already told her side of the story for £1 million in a Disney+ documentary last year, ITV bosses will no doubt be hoping for some extra titbits during her jungle stay.

But they may be left disappointed – Coleen says she’s ‘drawn a line under’ the saga.

‘That’s a place that I’ve been, I’ve dealt with it,’ she says. ‘In my life now, I’m just moving forward and not looking back. ‘That’s something I’ve done my whole life, dealt with things and moved forward at the time and got on.

‘There are more important things to think about with the family and kids.’

And, looking back, she has dealt with a lot. Her 16-year marriage to Wayne – whom she met when they were both 12 while growing up in Liverpool – has not been without its public scandals.

Even before they tied the knot in a stunning ceremony in the village of Portofino on the Italian Riviera in 2008, Wayne admitted sleeping with prostitutes after being caught on CCTV at a backstreet Liverpool brothel. One was a 48-year-old grandmother known as ‘Auld Slapper’ who wore a rubber catsuit. Then came his threesome with two more, Helen Wood and Jenny Thompson, at The Lowry Hotel in Manchester in 2010. 

Most recently, in 2017, he was caught driving Cheshire-based estate agent Laura Simpson’s car while over the drink-drive limit. But Coleen has stood by him through all of it.

However, due to his football commitments, Wayne will not be jetting out to Australia to greet Coleen when she leaves the camp over its iconic bridge.

Instead, that duty will fall to the couple’s youngest sons, Kit, 8, and young Cass.

And the reason her elder sons Kai, 15, and 11-year-old Klay won’t make it?

They don’t want to miss football, she says.

‘They all had the option, but the two older ones decided that they would stay at home to continue with school and football,’ Coleen explains.

‘I think I said, ‘When you come you’ll have to bring your work with you,’ and they would be missing some football tournaments, so they quickly changed their minds.

‘Obviously I would have liked them all to come out but it makes sense in a way, and they both chose a wise decision not to miss out on anything back home.

‘As soon as the show’s over, I’m back straight away.

‘So, it’s one of those things. I think it was missing the football that really did it for them, they didn’t want to miss any tournaments.’

Many jungle contestants come away from the camp excited to have their creature comforts back – soft beds, tasty meals and designer wardrobes.

But for Coleen, she knows that what she will miss most is more straightforward: all she wants is to see her boys at the bridge, even if it is just the two of them.

‘It will be the most magical moment,’ she says. ‘Obviously, it will be the longest I would have been apart from them and I think this is why it’s taken me so many years to agree to do the show because I’ve not wanted to leave the children for so long.

‘But I feel like they’re all at an age now where they understand and I’ve got a good group of people looking after them and out for them, so I feel like we’re at the point when I’m content everything will be OK.’

As for whether any additional publicity from the show will change things for Coleen, she thinks it’s unlikely.

Asked if she’d prefer to be known as Queen of the Jungle if she wins, she quips: ‘I think I’d rather just be known as Coleen from Liverpool.

‘Not from any other type of place. It’s just me as I always have been so hopefully people just think she’s that Scouser that she’s always been.’