
Former Speaker of the House of Commons John Bercow ruined his chances of appearing on hit ITV show I'm a Celebrity after it was alleged he demanded a £1million fee.

The 56-year-old called his last order yesterday after leaving the role of Speaker after 10 years at the helm.

He had been rumoured to appear on the show, hosted by ITV darlings Ant and Dec, filmed in the Australian outback.

A source claimed he had asked too much from producers, leaving himself out of the race which sees contestants battle it out to be King or Queen of the Jungle.

John Bercow (pictured above) called his last order yesterday after leaving the role of Speaker after 10 years at the helm

A TV insider said MR Bercow ruined his chances of appearing on the show which is hosted by Ant and Dec (above)

Previous contestants of the show include Rebekah Vardy (pictured above in 2017 eating Vom au Vents'

Speaking to The Mirror, a TV insider said: 'John has priced himself out of the market by asking for £1million, far more than anyone's ever been paid on the show.

'It's a shame, he would have been an interesting addition to the jungle ­gathering, not least because of his extremely extensive vocabulary.'

They added that he is a 'proper character', with a long career in politics and that he would have been a good match for the show.

'But perhaps he decided to demand a crazy fee because he just didn't want to do it? He's probably terrified of spiders. Or of eating kangaroo balls', they added.

All smiles! On his final day in Parliament Mr Bercow looked relieved but emotional, as he stepped down after 10 years on the job

The eyes have it: Tearful John Bercow is seen at Parliament on his final day as the Speaker of the House of Commons

Will tears in his eyes and a smile on his face, Mr Bercow was thanked yesterday at his final Prime Ministers Questions

A moment in time: Mr Bercow will be missed by his colleagues, including Speaker's Chaplain the Reverend Rose Hudson-Wilkin (pictured embracing above)

As Speaker, Mr Bercow had a salary of more than £150,000 - more than the prime minister. It is also claimed that he has a pension of around £38,000.

With a salary and pension of a sizable amount, it may have been the case that Mr Bercow hadn't been swayed by the £500,000 prize money which was won by last year's winner Harry Redknapp.

Bookmaker Coral had him at 4/5 to be a contestant on the show and 10/1 to go on and win it.

Despite the rumours a spokesperson confirmed that there would be 'no way' he would have gone on the show, and that he had 'other plans'.

Other celebrities rumoured to be entering the jungle include former pop star Nadine Coyle (left) and ITV presenter Kate Garraway (right)

On Thursday afternoon Mr Bercow also said he would not be joining the show for 'any fee'.

Other celebrities rumoured to be entering the jungle include former pop star Nadine Coyle and ITV presenter Kate Garraway.

I'm a Celebrity previous winners 2002: Tony Blackburn 2003: Phil Tufnell 2004: Kerry Katona & Joe Pasquale 2005: Carol Thatcher 2006: Matt Willis 2007: Christopher Biggins 2008: Joe Swash 2009: Gino D'Acampo 2010: Stacey Solomon 2011: Dougie Poynter 2012: Charlie Brooks 2013: Kian Egan 2014: Carl 'Foggy' Fogarty 2015: Vicky Pattison 2016: Scarlett Moffatt 2017: Georgia 'Toff' Toffolo 2018: Harry Redknapp Advertisement

The Speaker's wife Sally, had also appeared on the show in 2011, but had been the first to have been voted out.

Mr Bercow made his final appearance at the House of Commons yesterday and was praised by MPs from across the political spectrum for his contributions to the house.

After proceeding ceased on Thursday afternoon everyone stood for Mr Bercow as he waved his final goodbye to the house.

His impact on the house was also seen through one touching picture captured of him embracing the Reverend Rose Hudson-Wilkin, who has served as the Speaker's Chaplain.

Tributes to his time in parliament have since been rolling in with many saying he should be 'heralded' for his contributions.

Jacob Rees Mogg was one of the Conservatives to praise Mr Bercow, but also said that there would be 'debates' about his term in office.

'As there are debates about the terms of office of other speakers in our history', he added.

This is while Labour backbencher Paula Sherriff said his 'humanity and personal touch' would 'never be forgotten'.

In response to a number of touching tributes by MPs, Mr Bercow thanked colleagues and admitted it had been an 'embarrassing experience' to be the Speaker of the house.

On Thursday morning Bercow stopped to pose for photographs as he crossed Westminster Bridge and let a commuter take a selfie with him with the Houses of Parliament in the background.

Meanwhile a collection of previously-unreleased photographs of Mr Bercow over the past year emerged of him at a reception after the Queen's Speech, speaking to college students from North Wales and meeting a Muslim community in North London.

A replacement for Mr Bercow will be elected in due course - with favourites including his deputy Sir Lindsay Hoyle and former deputy prime minister Harriet Harman.

He will also resign as MP for Buckingham - a seat he has held for 22 years - which will be hotly contested in the general election this December.

Mr Bercow announced his intention to stand down from the influential position in September, saying the timing was the 'least disruptive and most democratic course of action'.

Mr Bercow is pictured preparing for the Queen's Speech before processing through the Palace of Westminster on October 14

Mr Bercow holds a daily meeting with staff to discuss the House of Commons business for the day on October 14

His final moments as Speaker: As sessions came to a close today, Mr Bercow can be seen on the floor of the Commons

Mr Bercow holds a Q&A session with students from Yale Sixth Form College in North Wales in Portcullis House on April 1

He would have relinquished the role sooner if MPs had supported Boris Johnson's initial attempt for an early general election in September.

Mr Bercow entered Parliament in 1997 and held several shadow ministerial positions before taking the Speaker's chair on June 22 2009, promising to serve 'no more than nine years in total'.

He abandoned that commitment ahead of the 2017 snap election, but allegations of bullying by former members of his staff, denied by the Speaker, led to fresh calls for him to quit.

In recent months he has also come under fire for a series of controversial rulings in the chamber which were widely considered to favour Remain supporters.

The contest to replace Mr Bercow will take place via a secret ballot, with a result announced on the same day as voting.

He has been no stranger to the limelight in more than ten years in the Speaker's chair.

The one-time Conservative MP for Buckingham, with a high-profile Labour-supporting wife, has made a catalogue of unconventional comments since he took over the impartial role from Michael Martin.

He has survived attempts to remove him from the chair, including from former colleagues in the Tory party, revelations about his expenses and allegations of bullying, which he denied.

But it will perhaps be his interventions in the Brexit crisis, and the relish with which he seemed to make them, for which he will be best remembered.

Regular Parliament watchers may or may not miss his inimitable style, such as his bellowing shouts of 'order' and 'division, clear the lobby', but those quirks are what brought him international attention when the eyes of the world became fixed on the Commons throughout 2019.

As the Brexit debate raged and senior opposition figures played every trick in the parliamentary book to prevent the governments of Theresa May and Boris Johnson from pursuing their preferred policies, Mr Bercow drew the ire of hardline Eurosceptics for perceived bias.

After he allowed an amendment by Tory rebel Dominic Grieve to be voted on in January, he was labelled 'Speaker of the Devil' by one newspaper, while the Daily Mail called him an 'egotistical preening popinjay (who) has shamelessly put his anti-Brexit bias before the national interest - and is a disgrace to his office'.

He voted Remain, discussing it candidly with a group of students, but in an interview with Italian newspaper La Repubblica denied this meant he had lost his impartiality.

'If I'm biased, I'm biased in favour of Parliament. Parliament being heard. Parliament having a right to speak. Parliament having time. Parliament being respected by the government of the day and indeed by the opposition,' he said.

Since being elected as the 157th Speaker of the House of Commons in June 2009, he has delivered many caustic put-downs, earning him both loathing and appreciative laughter from MPs.

He had a fractious relationship with former Commons Leader, and now Business Secretary, Andrea Leadsom, after he was accused of calling her a 'stupid woman'.

His remarks from the chair include telling Labour's Paula Sherriff (Dewsbury) she would have received an anti-social behaviour order (Asbo) if her rowdy behaviour had taken place outside the Commons.

He made the joke in January 2017 as he sought to quieten the chamber to allow then prime minister Mrs May to respond to a question.

Mr Bercow meets worshippers at Finsbury Park Mosque in North London in March where he spoke to the Muslim community

Later that month he was caught on microphone warning cabinet minister Sir Michael Fallon it would be 'stupid' to pick a fight with a senior MP.

He made the unguarded comment after the then defence secretary had been grilled about reports that a Trident ballistic missile veered off course during a test firing.

Mr Bercow has suggested yoga to several MPs, including Labour's Tom Blenkinsop (Middlesbrough South and East Cleveland) and Ronnie Campbell (Blyth Valley), while calling for calm during heated debates.

He admonished MPs for repeatedly asking for a tea break or whether they could use the toilet during a long-running Brexit debate.

His decision to strip parliamentary officials of their traditional wigs in 2017 was met with disapproval from a number of MPs.

In the last few years he has faced scrutiny of his expenses. In November 2015 it was revealed he had spent almost £20,000 of taxpayers' money to fly to a conference in Japan with an aide.

In February 2016 a PA freedom of information request revealed that he spent thousands of pounds wining and dining fellow MPs, plus almost £2,000 on a dinner with his Australian counterpart and hundreds of pounds to tune the grand piano in his apartments.

His office argued that the overall expenditure of the Speaker's Office had fallen during his tenure, from £626,029 in 2009/10 to £504,737 in 2015/16.

Born on January 19 1963, the son of a Jewish taxi driver, Mr Bercow went to school in Margaret Thatcher's Finchley constituency and first got involved as politics as a teenager.

He attended Essex University, where he gained a reputation as something of a firebrand, and became a member of the hardline Tory Monday Club, notorious for its 'hang Nelson Mandela' slogans, joining its Immigration and Repatriation Committee.

At the age of 20 he left the pressure group, saying some of its members' views about immigration were 'unpalatable'.

Mr Bercow laughs as he holds a Question and Answer session with students from Yale Sixth Form College on March 19

After a short spell at Hambros Bank, Mr Bercow embarked on a career as a lobbyist, serving as a councillor in Lambeth, south London, at the same time.

At the 1992 general election he stood unsuccessfully against Labour's Dawn Primarolo in Bristol South.

Three years later he went into politics full-time, becoming special adviser to chief secretary to the treasury Jonathan Aitken until his resignation, and then to heritage secretary Virginia Bottomley.

Mr Bercow finally secured a berth in the safe seat of Buckingham, and, despite Labour's landslide victory, entered Parliament at the 1997 general election.

He was made shadow chief secretary when Iain Duncan Smith became Tory leader in 2001 before quitting the Conservative front bench in November 2002.

He became Speaker following Labour MP Mr Martin's resignation and was re-elected twice, despite angering former Tory colleagues with his behaviour in the chair.

Nadine Dorries, his constituency near neighbour, was one of a handful of MPs who tried to have him removed in 2010. He was re-elected in 2015.

Mr Bercow married Sally Illman in 2002 and they have three children together.

The marriage has been a source of attention throughout his tenure, with his wife becoming a household name after posing for a photoshoot in Speaker's House draped in a sheet, and appearing on Celebrity Big Brother.

In 2015 she admitted she had been a 'terrible wife' amid reports of an affair with her husband's cousin.

Attention will now turn to what Mr Bercow will do next, with speculation focused on him becoming a reality TV star.

There is also speculation that he will become an after-dinner speaker, with Ladbrokes offering odds of 1/10 on that career move taking place in the next 12 months.

William Hill is offering odds of 1/1 that Mr Bercow will have a number one selling book before the end of 2020, 20/1 that he will be the next Prime Minister, and 100/1 that he will be the next mayor of London.