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Victoria Derbyshire evicted from I’m a Celebrity 2020: Who is she and what is she famous for?

Star decided to go on show after recovering from breast cancer

Ellie Harrison
Monday 30 November 2020 22:43 GMT
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I'm a Celebrity 2020 contestants revealed

Award-winning journalist Victoria Derbyshire has become one of the latest contestants to be voted out of I’m a Celebrity… Get Me Out of Here!, but what is she famous for?

The 52-year-old hosted her own self-titled current affairs programme on BBC Two from April 2015 to March 2020.  

When the show was cancelled as part of cost-cutting efforts earlier this year, she tweeted that she was “devastated” after she learned about it in a newspaper report.  

She has also appeared in the series Loose Women, Panorama, Pointless Celebrities and The Real Full Monty, and she is married to Mark Sandell, a television and radio producer, who currently produces podcasts for BBC Radio 5 Live.

While they have been a couple for nearly two decades, they chose to marry in 2018 after Derbyshire completed her cancer treatments.

Derbyshire was diagnosed with breast cancer in July 2015 and completed her final stage of chemotherapy the following March. It was the experience of the illness that motivated her to take part in the show.  

“Because of cancer, I know more than lots of people, life is short,” she said. “I am now saying ‘yes’ to stuff I wouldn’t have done previously. And if I don’t do my boys proud, I will never live it down!”

Read more: Inside the ‘haunted’ Welsh castle where I’m a Celebrity is filmed

Speaking ahead of going on the show, Derbyshire admitted she would find it strange not following current affairs.

“I will find it difficult not knowing what is going on in the news but there is nothing I can do about that,” she said. 

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“But it will be absolutely surreal! I keep up with the news minute by minute every day and suddenly there will be a void but that is also quite thrilling because we will have to fill it by finding out about each other and working as a team. It will be a digital detox!”

In her exit interview, she said she had found the experience “incredible” and believed that her former campmate, EastEnders star Shane Richie, would be crowned King of the Castle.

I’m A Celebrity… Get Me Out Of Here! airs nightly at 9pm on ITV.

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