Lady Victoria Beckham 'would have proposed' to this Big Brother winner
Lady Victoria Beckham had the hots for this Big Brother champion, but she could not get with the star as the Spice Girls legend was already married to Sir David Beckham.
First Big Brother champion Craig Phillips claimed he received a proposal offer from Lady Victoria Beckham.
After the then-bricklayer won the Channel 4 social experiment TV show in 2000, the Spice Girls icon and her husband, former professional footballer Sir David Beckham, dined with Craig, during which he claimed Victoria said she would have married him if she were single.
Craig, 54, told CasinoHawks: "I had dinner with David and Victoria Beckham. Victoria said, if I wasn’t married to David, I would have proposed to you – that was weird!"
But the "bizarre" moment with 51-year-old Victoria - who married 50-year-old David at the five-star Luttrellstown Castle Resort, Castleknock, Dublin, Ireland, in July 1999 - was the start of many celebrity encounters.
Craig added: "There’s also the weird and wonderful people you meet throughout your journey. It was really hard to understand and accept that all these famous people knew and liked me.
"Some of them jumped on the back of my publicity. It was bizarre – I had Richard Branson contact me to come and meet him at the airport and go on one of his planes."
The reality TV star won the first series of Big Brother in 2000, earning the £70,000 cash prize, which he donated to his friend Joanne Harris to pay for her heart and lung transplant.
And Craig had "no preparation" for how to deal with fame after winning the programme.
He recalled: "For the nine weeks that the show was airing, everyone else was learning about it, so I believe I was genuinely the last person to know about it. There was no preparation for it.
"I came out of the house – it was on live TV – and I was rushed away by bodyguards and police escorts. I was then taken to a hotel where I sat down with the show psychiatrist and Channel 4’s press officers.
"That evening, they explained to me what happened and how big the show had gone. I couldn’t even take it all in – it was crazy. I didn’t get any media training in any way.
"You get an agent, have lots of work to do, then just get on with it."
Since Big Brother, Craig became a DIY expert and even appeared on home transformation programmes, including ITV's 60 Minute Makeover.
He and his wife, Laura Sherriff - who got married at Peckforton Castle, Cheshire, in 2018 and have a son named Lennon - have a YouTube channel where they offer tutorials, workshops and advice on home building and refurbishing works.
