If her track record’s anything to go by, sparks are liable to fly when TV personality and tabloid regular Kim Woodburn takes to the stage in Fife.
The combative star of camp lifestyle hit How Clean Is Your House? and reality favourite I’m A Celebrity…Get Me Out Of Here! is due to talk about her frequently controversial on-screen career when she stops off at Dunfermline’s Carnegie Hall tomorrow, with BBC entertainment reporter Alex Belfield charged with asking the probing questions.
Kim hit the headlines earlier this year when the broadcasting watchdog rejected almost 8,000 complaints about an edition of ITV talk show Loose Women in which she was left in tears while taking part in a heated face-off with panellist Coleen Nolan, with whom she shared house space in the 2017 series of Celebrity Big Brother.
Ofcom ruled the daytime programme hadn’t breached guidelines by staging a crass mock trial — hosted by veteran journalist Janet Street Porter — which brought the pair together for the first time in 18 months last September. Amid accusations of bullying, 25,000 people later signed an online petition for former singing star Nolan to be sacked after Portsmouth-born Kim stormed off the set.
The unsavoury incident was the latest in a string of bitter rifts that the 77-year-old’s become embroiled in, with one of the most well-publicised involving Aggie MacKenzie, her former co-host on How Clean Is Your House?, which ran on Channel 4 from 2003 until 2009.
Aviemore-born Aggie also collaborated with Kim on spin-off shows Too Posh To Wash and the one-off When Kim And Aggie Went To Hospital, as well as on a best-selling book and DVDs, but she revealed in a recent interview that the pair hadn’t spoken off camera since a row in 2007 during the interval at a pantomime they were appearing in.
Rarely publicity shy, just last month Kim uploaded a video to social media showing herself ogling topless men during a taxi journey through London — and also claimed she harbours ambitions to appear on ITV reality dating show Love Island.
The Surrey-based star’s Fife conversation is expected to look back on the voyeuristic cleaning-themed series that made her famous overnight at the age of 61. She finished as runner-up to Italian TV chef Gino D’Acampo on I’m a Celebrity in 2009, and her jungle experiences are also likely to figure high on the agenda.
Kim’s CV also includes high-profile turns as a stand-in host on ITV’s This Morning plus appearances on now-defunct Channel 5 mainstays Big Brother and Big Brother’s Bit On The Side in 2011, as well as Celebrity Big Brother in 2017, where she finished third behind Nolan and Irish twins Jedward. Away from TV, her unflinching 2006 autobiography Unbeaten detailed her often troubled early life.
Kim Woodburn plays the Carnegie Hall, Dunfermline, on August 10.
onfife.com
