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Hamiltons to club together for night out

From the Echo, first published Tuesday 29th Oct 2002.

NEIL and Christine Hamilton - the formidable Tory couple who became surprise TV celebrities - are the guests of a Bournemouth nightclub's student night.

Berlins, in Hinton Road, expects the pair to prove a major draw tonight following Mrs Hamilton's stint on the reality show I'm a Celebrity, Get Me Out of Here.

Christine Hamilton has roots in the area, having grown up in Ringwood and gone to school in Bournemouth and Christ-church.

The couple became famous when Mr Ham-ilton lost his seat as a Tory MP in 1997 amid allegations that he took cash for asking parliamentary questions.

The episode turned his wife into the media's favourite "battle-axe" when she confronted Independent candidate Martin Bell on Tatton Heath during the general election campaign.

Since then, Christine has authored The Bumper Book of Battleaxes and the pair have appeared on Have I Got News For You, Who Wants To Be a Millionaire and a fly-on-the-wall documentary with Louis Theroux.

Babs Hurst, assistant manager at Berlins, said the couple would be meeting and greeting clubbers and might also take a turn at serving behind the bar. "Apparently they're quite a laugh," she said.

She added that she expected the couple to be popular with students. "She's just started going out doing personal appearances and he comes along with her. We got offered the chance to book them, so we booked them," she said.

Christine Hamilton lived in Ringwood until her mid-20s, where her late father Ted Holman was a GP from 1947 to 1974 and her mother Megan helped start the fundraising events which established the Greyfriars Commu-nity Centre.

Christine, who spent much of her childhood sailing with her family around the Isle of Wight, Lymington and Christchurch, was also a boarder at Wentworth School in Boscombe Manor before going to Christchurch Grammar School and Salisbury College of Technology.

She told the Daily Echo in 1999: "I am the noisy and boisterous one, rather like an undisciplined Labrador, as Neil once described me."

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