Jeremy Hunt's wife has revealed her nickname for the Foreign Secretary as 'Big Rice' - and explained how he can become the country's next prime minister.
Mr Hunt came second after Thursday's first round of MP voting in race of the Tory leadership, with Boris Johnson winning 114 votes to his 43 votes.
But he is confident in winning the position as he unleashed his 'secret weapon' - his wife Lucia Guo.
Chinese-born Lucia has let slip her pet name for her husband during an interview with the Mail on Sunday when she called him 'Big Rice'.
She said it happened when they travelled to her home city of Xi'an in China to introduce him to his future mother-in-law.
"My grandma found it very hard to say 'Jeremy' so she would just call him the 'big mi'. Mi means 'rice', so I call him 'big rice'," she explained in the report.
The pair met during a meeting organised by Hotcourses - an online education business which turned then 40-year-old Mr Hunt into a multi-millionaire.
Lucia was a student recruiter at Warwick University helping to get students from China to study at the university.
They married within a year and have three children - Jack, Anna and Eleanor.
When asked if Mr Hunt could become the next prime minster, Lucia explained: "He is kind, he is always generous, he cares about his family and he is very strong. He never hides from challenges."
The Oxford-educated foreign secretary said: "I am the insurgent in this race.
"When the country is in a Brexit crisis and Boris is thought by the country to be the leader of the Brexit campaign the, curious though it is, the Foreign Secretary of this country is the insurgent candidate.
"I am in it to win it because we have to give the country better choices given the crisis that we're in now."
