Edwina Currie's Biography

Who is Edwina Currie?

She attended Liverpool Institute for Girls and St Anne's College, Oxford University, initially to study Chemistry but she switched to PPE, and then gained an MA in Economic History from The London School of Economics.

Edwina Currie taught economics and economic history, before switching to a career in politics.

In 1975 she became a Birmingham City Councillor and chairman of Central Birmingham Health Authority.

In 1983 she was elected Conservative MP for South Derbyshire.

From 1985 to 1986 she was parliamentary private secretary to Sir Keith Joseph.

She then became minister of public health in the Department of Health, but resigned in 1988 after she made the statement that "most of the egg production in this country, sadly, is now affected with salmonella."

Egg sales plummeted.

After leaving politics when she lost her seat in 1997, Edwina Currie wrote books and became a broadcaster. Her first novel, A Parliamentary Affair, had actually been published in 1994.

Her Diaries, published in 2002, revealed that she had an affair with former Prime Minister, John Major, when he was chief whip in Margaret Thatcher's government.

She presented the BBC Radio 5 Live show, Late Night Currie from 1998 to 2003 and the ITV show Currie Night from 2002 to 2003.

Edwina had married her first husband, Ray Currie, in 1972. It had meant falling out with her parents, because he was a non-Jew.

Edwina and Ray Currie divorced in 1997. In 2011, she married retired detective John Jones.

In 2011, Edwina Currie was paired with Vincent Simone on Strictly Come Dancing.

They were the first couple to be voted off Strictly Come Dancing.

In 2014, she became one of the celebrities on I'm A Celebrity Get Me Out Of Here. She was the seventh celebrity to be voted off.

She has also written a number of novels.

In 2020, she was one of the celebrities featured in the BBC documentary series Pilgrimage: The Road To Istanbul.