Smash hit

This makes even more baffling his glorying in his self-created image as a “very unpleasant man”, a man who said picking one’s nose and eating the debris was good for one’s health. “He wants to be voted out,” explains his wife. “They offered him a reasonable amount of money and he said ‘everyone will hate me and my right-wing and anti-feminist views, and I shall be voted out first’.”

Apparently he also misunderstood the rules and assumed that there would be a vote after 24 hours. He said he would be back for the Sandown races last Saturday. Jenny didn’t want him to take part in the show and still wishes he would walk out. “He doesn’t need the publicity. He’s not like some of these people who are desperately seeking work. He thinks of himself as a serious journalist.”

While we are talking The Booby takes several calls from friends and her husband’s agent about John, and here come the first clues to their relationship. It is like watching an indulgent mother fret over an errant child. There is nothing faked about this. Today in Big Brother McCririck is behaving immaturely, staging a silent sulk at being denied his Diet Cokes. Apparently he is trying to lose weight, though some cynics have speculated this might be a clever pitch for a Diet Coke ad.

But rather than saying he should grow up and snap out of it, she rushes to his defence, claiming that he was promised the Diet Cokes and the programme-makers had broken their contract. And he has cold sores from a lingering cold and should be putting something on them. And he was denied his emergency bag, which meant he didn’t have many of his clothes “or a hat to put on”. You don’t tell Jenny that Celebrity Big Brother is indoors so a hat isn’t terribly vital or, anway, he’s not exactly a baby because he obviously is. Her baby. While McCririck might like to think he’s the boss, she is quietly the one who’s in control because he depends on her so much.

The couple, who met at a party in London in 1969, have never had children. Jenny is reticent about the reason. “I just never had any,” she says. Her husband has said in the past that he hates children. “I hate kids. They only cause trouble,” he is quoted as saying. His wife says that isn’t strictly true. “He doesn’t like screaming babies but to say that he hates children is ridiculous. He just doesn’t like noisy little children.”

He’s your baby, isn’t he, I say. The Booby answers indirectly but tacitly agrees. “Well, can you imagine three like him? You’d need about four nannies.” Maybe she shouldn’t mother him so much then.

“Well, who wouldn’t?” she says. “You come from the same area as me (the North) — are we that different?”

McCririck’s background has probably played a large part in his domestic hopelessness. He was an only child who was sent to boarding school at an early age. The Booby agrees. “If you have people at home to do everything and you go away to school and you’re still not made to do anything how do you ever learn? If someone does your laundry when do you learn to do it?”

It is tempting to say that he’s had 50 years to learn but there seems no point. Though you do wonder why it doesn’t lead to more arguments at home. Like, why does she put up with him calling her Booby (after the dull-witted South American bird which is easy to catch)? Doesn’t it bother her? The Booby is sanguine. “Well, you just ignore it, don’t you? There are worse things you can be called.” Well, she could at least insult him back. Call him fatty or something. “Oh, isn’t it better to ignore it?” she says like a wise old sage. “There’s no point living a life of arguments, is there?”

She is just like a mother indulging a naughty son. “Am I?” she says, again with genuine interest. There is little that will not cause her to leap to his defence, protesting that he has a caring heart of gold. OK, so if she is ill he will mop her brow? “He’s not particularly wonderful or attentive . . . but if you were seriously ill he’d get you off to see the right people.” But no TLC? “No. he expects that if it’s work you carry on.” And no breakfast in bed for you? “You’re joking. How would he do the breakfast?”

His worst trait, she says, is his obstinacy, and his best is his reliability. “I think personality is most important and he is generous, honest, reliable and decent. And he’s loyal.”

As if this proves her point she tells of the night he went into the Big Brother house and asked for some flowers that were in his dressing room, which were going to be thrown away, to be given to Booby. “Someone said it was a cheapskate thing to do . . . but I thought that was sweet.” She is so genuinely touched by this tiny gesture that you want to hug her.

Jenny knows that she has the sympathy of the nation but it is probably misplaced. Not once during the interview does she say that she wishes her husband was different. This marriage is the way it is because that is how she wants it.

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