Sex symbol? But I smell of pig poo, says Countryfile star Kate Humble

SHE’S the popular star of some of the BBC’s best-loved shows, but Kate Humble laughs off suggestions she is a sex symbol, declaring: ‘I smell of pig s***.’

The self-effacing presenter, 51, claims it is only the ‘deranged and desperate’ who find her attractive and admits her ‘wholesome’ reputation is undeserved because she is so foul-mouthed.

‘I’m now of the age where quite handsome, slightly younger men will come up and say, “Dad really fancies you.” So maybe I’m a sex symbol for people who are 80 and above and who can’t really see any more,’ she tells The Mail on Sunday’s You magazine today.

Kate, right, who hosts the BBC’s Animal Park, quit the London rat race for a farm in the Wye Valley where she has three dogs, 20 hens, eight ducks, four pigs and a flock of sheep.

Describing herself a ‘fish out of water’ in London, she says: ‘I got to a point where I thought, I can’t be here any longer, I’m done. I don’t want to start my day running down the pavement, then standing on the Tube under somebody’s armpit.’

The former Countryfile presenter met her husband, Ludo, at a family party in the 1980s and recalls being mesmerised by a handsome stranger with ‘spiky hair who was smoking’ but wouldn’t talk to her.

‘He ignored me and years later, when I had a go at him for it, he said, “I was 24 and you were 16 and I wasn’t sure whether we were related or not, so it could have been very inappropriate in every way.” ’

The couple decided not to have children and she is shocked when people question their decision.

‘It’s 2020! People have been on the pill since the 1960s. Apparently we can have a “choice” and yet it’s still seen as something bordering on freakish if your choice is not to have children,’ she says.