WHEN Myleene Klass entered the jungle for I’m A Celebrity . . . Get Me Out Of Here! she was just another familiar face with her best years behind her. But when she walked out last December, as runner-up, her life was transformed.

“I’ve been inundated with job offers and had just three days off,” she says.

Myleene’s good-natured attitude in the jungle, whilst mixing it with slugs, bugs and mud, won her a swarm of new fans. Men, in particular, took notice when she had a memorable waterfall shower dressed in a white bikini!

“I had no idea that had caused so much fuss until I got out,” she laughs. “Showering seemed such a minimal part of jungle life. It was only for 10 minutes a day, and the rest of the time I was in horrible clothes.”

Myleene later auctioned the bikini and raised £7500, which went to those who had lost their money after the collapse of the savings company Farepak.

The Queen of the Jungle was quickly snapped up by Marks and Spencer to model their swimwear and she was England team captain in the TV quiz show Your Country Needs You. She also presents the Sunday breakfast show for Classic FM.

Now Myleene is one of the panel of question masters, along with GMTV presenter Kate Garraway and veteran quiz show presenter and producer William G Stewart, in The National Lottery People’s Quiz on BBC1.

“I’ve turned down a lot of work but I was very excited about this quiz because the questions are so random that anyone can win it,” she says. “It’s a mix of high brow stuff and popular culture so you need a good general knowledge.”

The series, which runs until June, hosted auditions throughout the country in main cities including Glasgow, Birmingham, Manchester, Cardiff, Belfast and London, as well as in a variety of unusual locations from Highland castles to The Eden Project in Cornwall.

“Initially people had to answer 10 questions in a row correctly to proceed through to the next round and we did get some funny answers,” she laughs. “One man was asked who led the Vikings into Gaul and he replied, ‘The Klingons!’ The thought of those Star Trek baddies made it hard for me to keep a straight face but it’s the pressure that makes people blurt out such things.

“I keep getting told off by the producers for being too soft on the contestants but I want them to feel relaxed and do the best they can because I know how they are feeling. I have done audition after audition myself since I was six years old, trying to get into music school, and I know what it’s like to walk into a room with a panel and have them say, ‘Next’ with not one iota of sympathy.”

Born in Norwich to an Austrian-English father and Filipino-Chinese mother, Myleene was immersed in music. Her father — a diver and ship’s captain — comes from six generations of classical musicians and her grandmother was an opera singer. Her grandfather left her the violin she still plays. She also plays the piano and harp and studied at the prestigious Guildhall School of Music in London. 

“I was a real geek at school,” she laughs. “I was called Penfold because I had my hair scraped back and I wore big black-rimmed glasses like the cartoon character in Dangermouse.

“I was always studying like a swot and trying to avoid sport. I used to get the mickey taken out of me a lot and some days I would come home crying but my dad would reply, ‘One day, the geeks shall inherit the earth.’ And it’s turning out to be true. ‘Geek chic’ is very ‘in’ now. Look at the popularity of Harry Potter and the American TV series Ugly Betty.”

Myleene would never have dreamed then that one day she would become a pop star and a pin-up.

In 2001 she shot to stardom after auditioning for TV’s Popstars and was chosen to be one of the pop group Hear’Say. The band had a number one hit with Pure and Simple, before they split up two years later. Myleene returned to her classical roots, making an album, but her career stagnated until her appearance in I’m A Celebrity. Now, she is so busy that she reckons she barely has time to get married this year.

Myleene, 28, is due to tie the knot with fiancé Graham Quinn, 30, a former Hear’Say bodyguard, at a castle in Ireland where her sister got married. But apart from booking the venue, little else has been organised.

“We’ve had to push the wedding back to the end of the year — some time around Christmas — to give us time to organise it!” she laughs. “To make things simpler we have decided to have a fish and chip van supplying the food. It’s unusual but at least people will remember it! Graham is Irish so there will be Guinness on tap. But that is about as far ahead as our planning has gone.

“I would love just to be able to run off and get married quickly because it would be so much easier, but we both have Catholic families and they are expecting something more traditional.”

By that stage Graham may find that he has married a real egghead.

“I’m picking up so much random knowledge from doing The People’s Quiz,” Myleene laughs. “Most of it is trivial but my brain is soaking it up like a sponge. The other day I was appalled to hear myself telling somebody, ‘Do you know that pasta didn’t actually come from Italy? It’s Chinese.’ 

“I’ve got to shut up because I’m becoming a real bore!”

By Jim Maloney.