I'm A Celebrity's Charlene White says she feared…

I'm A Celebrity's Charlene White says she feared losing her job over Matt Hancock saga

Charlene White has spoken out about on her "inner turmoil" during her time in the I'm A Celebrity jungle due to Matt Hancock 's participation in the show.

The Loose Women star and ITV News presenter was the first campmate to be evicted from this year's series, with many viewers surprised that the former Health Secretary survived the public vote. And Charlene opened up about her thoughts on sharing a camp with the West Suffolk MP after departing the jungle, saying that she felt she was "walking a tightrope" when it came to their relationship.

Charlene, 42, told The Mirror and other press that she was afraid that she would have no job to come back to once she left the jungle if she was seen as being too sympathetic to Hancock. The presenter admitted that she was "constantly worrying" whether she would "still be taken seriously" in her day job after being in close quarters with the politician.

"Being there and having a laugh and having a joke – that kind of finished when Matt came," Charlene revealed. "Because I have interviewed enough of the families who have lost loved ones during the pandemic.

"I am one of those. As soon as he walked in I thought, 'I’m going to be walking a tightrope here.'"

Charlene added that she was "constantly going through inner turmoil" over whether viewers would feel she was being too sympathetic to the Tories in her encounters with Hancock. "If I don’t think about them and ask the questions they want to know regarding his reasoning for going into the jungle when we are in the middle of the inquiry into the reaction after the pandemic... then I’m not doing my job," she said.

"It went from me just having a laugh to constantly worrying... whether I would still be taken seriously when it comes to dealing with politicians." The presenter also addressed the incident that sparked a huge reaction from hosts Ant and Dec and viewers at home, when she refused to sleep in an RV alongside Hancock after he chose her as deputy camp leader.

Admitting that she refused the sleeping situation due to concerns over her journalistic integrity and remaining impartial, Charlene said: "I didn’t want to get out of the jungle to find that I had no job. I was completely wrong not to be more explicit about it. I understand that now. Hindsight is a wonderful thing."

Charlene was praised by viewers early on in the series after she gave Matt a grilling over his decision to take part in the ITV series when he first arrived in camp, much to the shock of his jungle co-stars. She told him: "My aunt died from Covid in the first wave. We couldn’t go to the hospital to visit her. I had to sit by myself in the church at her funeral.

"We couldn’t hug each other because we were following guidance," she said, criticising Hancock for saying "I fell in love" as an excuse for breaking Covid social distancing rules by having an affair with his aide. "And I get that you fell in love, I understand all of those things, but 'sorry', for a lot of families like mine, doesn’t really cut it."

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