[Red Moon]

He won a drag contest aged 10..we don't know how he got the clothes

He's not exactly king of the jungle material. But Christopher Biggins is now favourite to win I'm A Celebrity, Get Me Out Of Here! - and it's all down to his camp antics and outrageous gossiping.

And it seems the laughing luvvie's life is every bit as colourful as his bush tucker performances.

The flamboyant panto veteran, famous for his wacky dress sense, has certainly packed a lot into his 58 years - including a few things he'd rather forget. Like the time he was done for drink-driving, or when he was wrongly accused of shoplifting.

And despite being famously gay, he's even been married to a woman.

As Chris himself puts it: "I am an outrageous character with an outrageous personality and I'm very camp."

No one is more aware of his larger-than-life personality than his parents, Pam and Bill.

As they open up their family album exclusively to the Daily Mirror, they say that nothing their son does shocks them any more.

For example, they only found out about his first marriage, to Australian actress

Beatrice Norbury in 1971, when they read about it in a newspaper. And they have the papers to thank for learning that their son had celebrated a civil wedding last December with Neil Twimaps, a 46-year-old air steward.

"Neil is a great guy and I saw that they had a civil partnership but I don't know if that's right or not," shrugs 83-year-old Bill, a retired mechanic.

"One minute he's married to a woman, the next he's gay. What can I say? That's just our Chris."

Pam, 82, adds: "We didn't really know much about the first marriage until we read the paper. She was a redhead, I think, but we never met her."

Still, it's the kind of crazy, unpredictable behaviour they've come to expect from the son who performed his first drag act on holiday in Bognor Regis.

"He did his first drag act when he was 10," says Pam. "I've no idea where he got the clothes from, they weren't mine, but he won first prize at Butlins."

So they didn't bat an eyelid when Chris announced he was off to rough it in the Aussie jungle, despite his love of the finer things in life.

Pam says: "I said to him, 'You do know they haven't got The Ivy in that jungle, don't you?' Apparently the contestants often lose weight, so maybe there's hope for him after all. He wasn't always fat, he put on weight after he left home.

"Let's just say that Chris has had his own life. It's been a different sort of life and we've just left him to it."

These days Christopher, whose showbiz pals include Barbara Windsor, likes to relax by sipping champagne while sitting in the gilt Jacuzzi installed in the bathroom of his posh flat in East London.

His flashy lifestyle is a million miles away from his humble roots. He was born in Oldham, Lancs, on December 16, 1948. As a baby Biggins was seriously ill with gastroenteritis and bronchitis, and the family were advised to move to Pam's hometown of Salisbury for the sake of his health.

"The weather was so awful in Oldham they didn't think he would survive if we stayed," she says. In Salisbury they lived in a tiny, two-up, two-down house beside a railway line and were forced to use an outside loo. As Christopher says: "I hated it."

An only child - little brother Sean didn't arrive until Biggins was 18 - he craved a more glamorous existence and dreamed of being an actor. So when a "posh aunt" helped pay for elocution lessons he grabbed his chance.

Pam says: "Chris was always showing off and he loved those elocution lessons. They were the only ones at school he enjoyed.

"He wanted to be either a vicar, a chef or an actor. He was always after that showbiz life."

After leaving St Probus School with no O-levels, Chris became a stage hand at the nearby Salisbury Playhouse.

He bagged his first professional panto role there before leaving for London, and the Old Vic, at the age of 18.

About the same time he met his first love Beatrice. Although he was confused about his sexuality, he married her in 1971 when he was 22.

It lasted two years.

As Christopher admitted: "I'd known for years I was gay, but it was the done thing."

He had his first homosexual affair at the age of 25 and since his divorce he has only dated men. But he only came out to his parents in 1994. .

"Some people still think homosexuality is an illness and you can get some anti-gay pills, then after one dose you'll be a raving hetero and love all the women," he says.

"But if every gay man and woman were to stand up, the rest of the world would be amazed." At the time, Bill simply blamed work pressures for his son's failed marriage.

"He was always touring in various shows, and she was an actress," he says. "We'd never really thought about him being gay."

Christopher, who won early TV roles in Poldark and Porridge, kept quiet about his sexuality fearing it would harm his burgeoning career in 80s children's shows such as Rentaghost.

He said: "I am a children's entertainer and there's a terrible misconception that if you are gay, you are a pederast."

When he hosted the hit series On Safari (catchphrase: "Safari, so goody") with Gillian Taylforth he became the highest paid children's TV star of the time.

Slots on Cilla Black's Surprise!

Surprise! followed and turned the flamboyantly-attired Biggins into a household name.
Dubbed "the oldest It-Boy in town" he was a colourful fixture at every showbiz do and was rarely pictured without a glass of bubbly.

When he headed back to theatre, disillusioned with prime-time TV, the big money went too - but he was still a big spender. Something had to give.

At one point it was alleged he was £30,000 in debt, although he denies being forced to declare himself bankrupt. He scraped by, only to hit rock bottom again when he fell foul of the law - twice within 12 months.

He was found guilty of being over the limit after crashing his BMW in 1993 and banned for a year. Months later he was arrested after leaving Tesco with a packet of batteries in the pocket of his pink tracksuit.

Biggins maintained it was an oversight and the charges were dropped.

He said: "I had the humiliation of being thought of as a shoplifter. I knew they could have made an example of me. If it had gone to court it could have really mucked up my career and my life."

Since then, he has carried on plugging away, appearing in panto every year for the last 36 and taking on varied theatre roles. Now, thanks to I'm A Celebrity..., he looks set to find fame all over again.

And as he parades round the jungle camp being deliciously indiscreet about his fellow celebs, who could begrudge him that?

Making it BIGgins..

Christopher cut his teeth as a supporting actor in 70s sitcoms and dramas, including Upstairs Downstairs, Whatever Happened To The Likely Lads, Some Mothers Do 'Ave 'Em and Porridge.

He later moved into children's TV, appearing in Rentaghost and On Safari.

He considers his roles as Nero in the BBC's I, Claudius and Rev Whitworth in Poldark as the highlights of his career.

He played himself in Bad Girls in 2003 when he was taken hostage by inmates.

Film work includes Rocky Horror Picture Show and Chitty Chitty Bang Bang. He has played panto dames every Christmas for 29 years - except this coming one, when he'll be in the jungle.

Source: Daily Mirror