Anna Ryder Richardson is feeling slightly worse for wear today. And we’re rather envious, because last night she was out on the fizzy stuff at London’s swish Wolseley restaurant. And not just that. She was with the fabulous Christopher Biggins, listening to fabulous tales of fabulous famous folk. How, well, fabulous. Can we come next time please?
‘Isn’t he amazing? I adore him, he’s gorgeous and I want him to be my friend forever,’ she enthuses, through mouthfuls of a hangover lunch of lamb chops, chips and fried courgettes (nope, we have no idea where she puts it all either). ‘Biggins has been in the business for ever and ever, and all the names he says, he does know them all, and all his stories are true. He’s so entertaining.’
Of course, the story of When Anna Met Biggins began in the Australian bush some two months ago, when the pair signed up for three weeks of wondering whether they’d have to eat a kangaroo’s backside on I’m A Celebrity… Get Me Out Of Here. (For Biggins, the answer was yes, although he got to wash it down with champagne, so that’s alright. For Anna, it was no, but she did get an alligator stuck in her underwater helmet, which is arguably worse.) ‘I’m so glad he came in, he was like a tonic,’ says Anna. ‘He’s such a jolly man and he’s really like that all the time. Although he did nearly lose it once or twice. He was like, “Anna, I don’t do this, but when I do, stand back.” A couple of times I thought, “Oh my God, he’s going to blow.” That’s when you knew things were really bad.’
And bad they indeed got. Not so much because they were covered in rats or that they had to lug their toilet doings around in a big barrel, but because the jungle was full of scary creatures – of the human, mildly famous variety.
‘Before I went in, the producers said, “There are some quite big personalities in there,” and now I know what they were talking about,’ says Anna. ‘They were so big and the clashes were so loud. It was like, “What on earth is going on here?” We’re adults. My children would have behaved better than that. And it was all the OAPs, as we called them – the older aggressive people.’
So we take it some of her jungle buddies won’t be receiving a Christmas card this year…
‘I have to say I don’t think I will miss John Burton Race or Rodney Marsh. John was difficult to be around. I think he has things going on in his life that perhaps he should have left at home. He wanted it too much and tried too hard. The same with Rodney. He would say, “There are too many people in here who aren’t being themselves”, but he was the biggest culprit at not being himself. It was exhausting to be around.’
Talking of exhausting, if you looked up the definition in a dictionary, you’d most likely see a (heavily airbrushed) picture of fellow jungle dweller Janice Dickinson.
‘If I saw Janice at a party, I’d have a ball. For all her madness and craziness, she can be great fun, and somewhere in there is a nice, normal person. She is TV Janice and she’s a great professional – everything she says and does, it’s a great shot. We’d have missed her if she had gone out early, but at the end, it was like, “Can you not just be quiet for a bit?”’
And then there was the blossoming relationship between a failed soap star and a one-time respected indie singer, particularly because the former had a girlfriend and forgot 10 million people were watching him spectacularly humiliate her. The ex-Changing Rooms presenter made up a cosy threesome (not in that way) with Marc Bannerman and Cerys Matthews. Did she have any idea of the furore they were creating in the outside world? ‘I think I was the last to know. I just thought we were all really good friends. The penny dropped after a while. But Cerys is amazing, you just want to look after her.’
Anna confesses she’s ‘pleased’ they got together, but is not so happy about how Marc hurt is girlfriend ‘so badly and so publicly’. Does she think, then, that he is deserving of the accolade of Britain’s Biggest Love Rat? (We bet Darren Day wants to shake him by the hand.)
‘Well, I’m a big girl now, I’m 44, and I understand you can’t help falling in love with people, and nobody chooses their moment. He loved his girlfriend, but then he fell in love with someone else. And I’m sure if someone had said, “You’re going to meet your true love on national TV”, he’d have said, “Don’t be so ridiculous”. But they look really happy.’
Despite us not being able to get enough of the jungle when it’s on our screens, we struggle to understand why celebs go on the show. So why, aside from the big fat pay cheque, did Anna volunteer to eat kangaroo balls on live TV?
‘I did it for two reasons. One was that to be asked is quite a big thing, because it’s such a massive show, but my main reason was I’ve bought a zoo, and I thought it’d raise my profile and be good for letting people know about the zoo.’
We think we can be pretty certain in saying this is the first time anyone has gone on a reality show to promote their zoo. We thought Anna was more au fait with wallpaper paste than wallaby poo…
‘A friend asked my husband Colin to invest in a zoo in Cornwall, but we missed out on it. After that I gave him a really hard time. I’d pictured myself as Sigourney Weaver in Gorillas In The Mist rearing orphan lion cubs in my house.’
So when another zoo in South Wales, coincidentally a matter of miles from where Cerys lives, came up for sale, the couple went for it.
‘The opportunity to buy a zoo doesn’t happen very often. Colin was like, “Can’t we just live in the country and you can have a couple of dogs or something?” But I had to have it, and we got it.’
The couple and children Bibi Belle, five, and Dixie Dot, four, are going to live on-site at the zoo in a wooden eco house with a grass roof. ‘Then we can wake up in the morning and it’ll be like being in Africa. I’ll be hands on, I’ll muck out any animal at all. And I’m going to get a horse to ride around the zoo.’
Anna is also making a documentary about it all for Channel 4. ‘It’s quite scary and not the sort of TV I’m used to,’ she says. ‘It’s quite a serious programme because our zoo is very green and we only have endangered animals, but it’s also about the fact the funny little girl from Changing Rooms has bought it.’
Talking of Changing Rooms, does she ever see a resurgence of the DIY show?
‘We did it for nearly a decade and I think that’s enough. And if they did bring it back, they’d draft in younger models to replace us old wrinkly ones. They don’t want me there with no teeth and my zimmer frame. But if someone wants to give me a show about looking after monkeys…’
Well, after three weeks in the jungle with some of the biggest baboons in the biz, we’d say that’d be a walk in the park, eh, Anna?
Anna is the face of Kit Kat 2 finger biscuits. With only 107 calories they can be enjoyed as part of a varied, balanced diet.
Anna, who’s a teeny, toned size 8, on her babe of a body at 44
‘I became obsessed with food after the jungle. I only lost about 6 pounds while I was in there, but when I came out the doctors said my body mass ndex was on the edge of being a worry. I put the weight back on over Christmas and I became fixated with food. I kept opening the fridge going, “Look at all the food.” I do have quite a large appetite, it has to be said. My plate is probably as big as my husband’s and he’s 6ft 2in and 16 stone. He’s like, “I can’t believe you’re about to put that away”, but it’s just about having a balanced diet and I don’t eat like that all the time. I have a toasted bagel with marmite or porridge for breakfast, lunch is a big bowl of spicy vegetable soup with a lump of wholemeal bread and butter, then a snack in the afternoon, and something like prawn green curry with rice for dinner.’
‘My 400-sit-ups-a-day workout’
‘I’m not very good at sticking to fitness regimes. I just run around in my normal life. In the jungle, I got all muscly and toned up – Rodney had us doing 400 sit-ups a day. It felt like Mike Tyson had punched me in the stomach.’
Words: Lara Kilner. Fashion: Viv Harris, assisted by Lindsey Elliott. Photography: Kate Martin. Hair: Simon Izzard at Mandy Coakley using Kevin Murphy. Make-up: Helen Banon at Mandy Coakley using Paul Mitchell. Pictures: Rex Features/Capital Pictures.
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