Carol Vorderman has opened up about the 'first love of her life' on I'm A Celebrity...South Africa.
The Countdown Queen, 62, returns to the ITV show on Monday, 16 years after making her debut in Australia.
Carol has spoken about meeting her then-boyfriend on an engineering construction site in the country when she was 19 and he was 24 -and she's now revealed his identity.
"I went there when I was 19," the mum-of-two explained. "I met the first love of my life Andy when I was working on an engineering construction site – his next job was in Botswana and I flew over."
Remarkably, Carol's relationship with Andy played a part in her bagging the job on Countdown.
When her beau returned to the UK, he was living in Leeds, where the Channel 4 show is filmed.
Carol told The Sun: "My mum was homeless, living in student digs, and I was more or less living out of my car.
"After about a year I said to her: ‘Mum, this can’t go on, we can afford a place in Leeds.’ I got the company I was working for to give me a transfer, I found us this house and we moved in.
“Three weeks later Mum was reading this article in the local paper about how Yorkshire Television in Leeds was starting this show called Countdown on this new channel called Channel 4."
Musing about "sliding doors", Carol accepts if she hadn't have met Andy, she would 'never have got Countdown'.
Fans can't wait to watch The Pride Of Britain host on the I'm Celebrity spin-off in South Africa next week.
Joined by stars of the franchise, including Helen Flanagan and Shawn Ryder, Carol said she owes the show a lot.
“It made me realise that I was missing many things I loved and within a short space of time after leaving the camp, I bought a little house in West Wales,“ she says.
“I love Wales and I love being out at night. I’ve got a converted van and I live a bit of a hippie life! I go paddle boarding all the time now.
“You get to a point in life where you think everything is all a bonus. You can’t say ‘I will do that in 20 years' time’. It made me realise that you need to live in the now.“
I'm A Celebrity...South Africa starts Monday 24th April at 21.00 on ITV1 & ITVX.
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