Jungle Harry: My love story
» The day I met Sandra at dance was my luckiest ever » I didn’t cry in court but I did when I got home to her
Sandra, Harry, Jamie and their pet pooch
We may only be at half time but Harry Redknapp is already bookies’ favourite to win the I’m A Celebrity crown. And while the 71-year-old football manager has become an unlikely double act with emperor Noel Edmonds, there is no doubting who this possible King of the Jungle would share his reign with – the queen of his heart, wife Sandra.
Harry has made no secret he is missing his wife, the pair not spending as long apart since they met 54 years ago.
Now here, in an abridged extract from Always Managing: My Autobiography, Harry, reveals why his beloved Sandra, 71, might not be his campmate, but is certainly his soulmate ....
I loved Sandra to bits from day one. I always say she was my best signing.
I met her at The Two Puddings pub in Stratford. It used to have a dance upstairs on Sunday nights and I would go with my mate Colin. There were two girls there that we asked to dance, Susan a police raid. They didn’t need to do it like that, as if I were some hardened criminal. All they did was terrify my poor Sandra. Later that day I found myself in a police cell, bars no windows. There were real crooks coming in. Throughout the investigation, I became convinced people were talking about me. Sandra found it difficult just going to the shops. Then came the trial. [My son] Jamie came with me, but I wouldn’t let Sandra. I would have looked over and cried every time our eyes met and she would have done the same. It would have slaughtered me, and slaughtered her, too. I can hardly bear to recall how desolate it felt for my two days on the witness stand. I and Sandra. Colin got Susan; I got Sandra. I think Sandra thought she’d pulled the bad draw. She was hoping Colin would ask her to dance!
So I’ve never felt anything less than very, very lucky. One of the couple’s hardest times came in the late noughties, when Harry was investigated for tax evasion. His name was finally cleared at court in 2012.
The trial lasted 15 days, but the ordeal overtook five years of my life. It began on Wednesday, November 28, TRIAL With son Jamie 2007. I had just landed from
Stuttgart and could hear Sandra’s voice, in a terrible state, crying down the phone, hysterical. She’d been woken at
6am. She thought it was a burglar. It was