Put the words "sex symbol" together with “Redknapp” and until a few months ago everyone would have thought of Jamie or his ex-wife Louise.
But now another Redknapp is laying claim to the title. And it is none other than Jamie’s 72-year-old dad Harry who stormed to victory in last year’s I’m A Celebrity on ITV.
But in his usual no nonsense fashion, which won him many fans on the show, Harry is having none of it.
“Me a sex symbol?” the former Premier League boss asks. “I can’t get my head round that and nor can Sandra, can you Sandra?’”
Harry’s pining for Sandra, his wife of 51 years, while in the jungle was another huge factor in his win.
However she too has noticed the increase in attention her husband now attracts from the opposite sex.
Despite this he says: “Sandra knows no one’s that stupid to want to run off with me and I haven’t been chucked any knickers or been handed any phone numbers of anything. No, no, no, definitely none of that stuff. I’m happily married. I’m not stupid. I know when I’m well off.
“If I’d married an ugly old bird, sitting there with her rollers in, or someone I didn’t stop arguing with for 10 years, I might’ve been different. I might’ve ended up getting a divorce; but I married a super fit bird, I get on great with.”
It’s this mix of slightly Del Boy banter and disarming honesty that made him king of the jungle.
His triumph brought an avalanche of opportunities, including publication of his latest autobiography The World According To Harry.
“It’s been crazy,” he confirms. “When I came out, people were saying, ‘You ain’t going to believe it. It’s manic.’ The biggest difference is who talks to me now.
“It used to be mostly just blokes talking about football but now it’s everyone; women and children too but I ain’t got a problem with it. I’ve always got time for people.”
We chat in his favourite local fish restaurant Rick Stein’s, yards from the £4million Sandbanks beach house he shares with Sandra and bulldogs Lulu and Barney.
Still smitten after more than half a century, Harry and Sandra gaze at each other throughout the interview. The fact he very nearly left Sandra permanently disabled after accidentally running her over in his Range Rover in 2016 hasn’t changed a thing.
“We have honestly never had a row and she didn’t blame for turning her ankle into what looked like a slice of bacon,’ says the ex-Tottenham, West Ham and Bournemouth manager.
“It was my fault entirely as I wasn’t concentrating. She had to have skin grafts after half of her ankle was left in the road but you couldn’t have a row with my missus if you tried. She’s so placid.
“I don’t know what I’d do without her. She’s my electrician, my chef, my handyman, my chippie and a good Samaritan to everyone.”
Sandra’s remarkable listening skills have been invaluable in the last two years.
In 2017 former Tottenham and Liverpool midfielder Jamie ended his 19-year marriage to pop star Louise. They had drifted apart as she shone on Strictly Come Dancing and his TV career took off.
“Obviously Jamie and Louise separating was a shock but we all move on. They’ve moved on. That’s life. People get divorced, don’t they?”
Less than a year later older son Mark was charged with driving his Mercedes whilst 15 times above the drug-driving limit. A verdict is expected next month.
Harry’s also a grandfather to seven now including Jamie’s boys Beau and Charles.
He says: “I worry all the time about the world my grandkids are growing up in. It’s getting really dangerous, particularly for kids. I’ve had so many friends whose kids have been mugged lately and even held up at knife point. My ex-secretary at Tottenham, her boy, lovely boy, got mugged.”
In the new book Harry writes: “I don’t know what’s gone wrong with the East End – you hear about stabbings up every week. Not long ago, my mate’s kid and one of his pals were walking home in Stratford and seven kids pulled up on bikes. They got them against a wall, pulled out a knife as long as your arm and nicked their coats, trainers, watches, wallets, phones, the lot.
"You can be in the wrong place at the wrong time and end up dead, just like that. I couldn’t stick a knife in someone for all the money in the world. But now kids think nothing of it. I even get a bit scared when I see these gangs of kids now.”
Like the rest of Britain, Harry is tired of the Brexit-fuelled in-fighting. “Today’s politicians come from another planet,” says Harry, who started life on an East London housing estate after the Second World War. “We come from the street. We understand the real world. I think half of them don’t. Do I think I could do a better job? For sure. The country’s in a mess.”
In the new book he explains what he’d do if in charge: “I’d put pensions up, make sure everyone had a decent place to live, give more money to the NHS and nurses a big raise.
“The facilities in some hospitals are terrible and staff overworked and horribly underpaid. It’s madness. A footballer can earn 300 grand a week and a nurse only be on 20-odd grand a year.”
The World According To Harry, by Harry Redknapp is published by Ebury Press. Priced £20.
