THE ex-husband of I’m A Celebrity star Lady Colin Campbell says she’s a
liar and a fake — as he opens up about the day he discovered she was raised
as a man.
Lord Colin Campbell revealed he could not bring himself to touch his wife
after she told him all about her shocking past.
In his first interview for 40 years, he told The Sun on Sunday: “I was
stunned. I simply could not believe what I was hearing.
“After she told me I could not even bring myself to look at my wife, let alone
touch her.
“My brother, the Duke of Argyll, called me and asked: ‘Do you realise you have
married a man?’.
“He was wrong about that, I now realise, but it was a massive shock at the
time. Before then I had not had the slightest suspicion.
“She was a beautiful, flirtatious young woman when I met her. But I soon
discovered that she is trouble with a capital T.
“If I could offer any advice to the other contestants in the jungle it would
be to avoid her at all costs.”
Lord Colin, 69, spoke out as his ex-wife’s unusual antics made her an early
favourite on the ITV show.
The Jamaica-born toff, known as Lady C, has already clashed with boxer Chris
Eubank, branded Dragons’ Den star Duncan Bannatyne a “p***y” and threatened
to quit if she is made to do any more Bushtucker Trials.
She also dubbed viewers “oiks” and joked about having a threesome with hosts
Ant and Dec.
Lady C, 66, has previously opened up about her troubled background in
autobiography A Life Worth Living.
She was born with a genital malformation, christened George William and raised
as a boy. Doctors later confirmed she was biologically female.
At Lord Colin’s apartment in Palm Beach, Florida, where he works as a literary
agent, he recalled his whirlwind romance with the elegant woman — and their
marriage after just five days in March 1974.
Lord Colin, then aged 25, was passing through New York on his way home to
Scotland from the South Pacific when he met his future wife, then known as
Georgia Ziadie.
He said: “I thought she was very attractive. She was flirtatious and I was
a randy young man. I proposed, I was pretty inebriated.
“I was young, stupid and silly. I was an impulsive, stupid young man.”
After a Jamaica honeymoon, the couple met Lord Colin’s family at his ancestral
home of Inveraray Castle in Argyll, featured in Downton Abbey. Lord Colin
said: “The sex was normal and we had a lot of it, like most people do on
honeymoon.
“There was nothing unusual about her body and we were having a fantastic time.”
A month later Lady C’s past was revealed when a journalist unearthed her birth
certificate, leading to false accusations she was transsexual.
She later explained her father, from a wealthy Jamaican family, forced her to
take male hormones when she insisted on dressing as a girl.
He also suggested she kill herself with rat poison to avoid shaming the
family. In 1970, aged 21, Lady C was able to start life as a woman when her
grandmother gave her £3,000 for corrective surgery in New York.
Lord Colin hit the bottle as he struggled to cope with the scandal.
The pair separated after ten months and divorced four months later.
He said: “Looking back I do feel sorry for her, but she should have told me
the truth. Things were not so liberal back then and the scandal was deeply
embarrassing for my family.”
Lord Colin said: “She can seem charming and lovely but in my opinion she is a
monster. I think she’s a crushing snob and a complete fake. She keeps
claiming to be related to the Royal Family through me. How does that work? I
am not related to the Queen, not at all.
“I find it infuriating she continues to call herself Lady Colin Campbell.”
In her autobiography Lady C claimed her ex-husband was a violent drug addict,
which he denies.
After divorcing she moved to London and adopted Russian boys Misha and Dima,
now aged 22, in 1993.
Lord Colin said: “We were never compatible. We had vicious rows and there was
constant nonsense.
“Her voice would irritate me. I read it is an aristocratic accent. Well, it’s
not like any I have ever heard. She has proven to be a constant
embarrassment including when she wrote that ghastly book about Prince
Charles and Princess Diana. I met the Prince of Wales and apologised to him
for the scribblings of my ex-wife.
“I said I hoped he realised it was nothing to do with me. He said he
understood.
“I have not spoken to her since the day we divorced in 1975. I have not
watched I’m A Celebrity.
“She’s bad news and I hope I never have to lay eyes on her again.”
Last night a spokesman for Lady C said: “It is a very much accepted fact that
she was born with a genital defect that caused her parents to register her
as a boy.”
Additional reporting from Caroline Iggulden in New York