Just when you thought she couldn't shock you any more, we reveal... I'm A Celebrity star Nadine Dorries's secret husband

• Suspended Tory MP walked out on supposed 'only' ex-husband Paul Dorries, father of her three daughters, in 2006
• But real first husband Raymond Hughes has been airbrushed from her life
• She married Hughes, an industrial chemist, in March 1978
• Nadine, then 20, wed Hughes, then 31, in Runcorn, Cheshire
  

By Natalie Clarke

PUBLISHED: 17:41 EST, 16 November 2012 | UPDATED: 17:44 EST, 16 November 2012

Normally talkative Nadine Dorries, seen here in I'm A Celebrity, has kept very quiet about one aspect of her past - her real first husband, Raymond Hughes

Nadine Dorries may argue that the mantle of femme fatale has been thrust upon her, but she certainly seems to be embracing the role.

This week, viewers of ITV’s reality show, I’m A Celebrity... Get Me Out Of Here watched her wade into a pool in the Australian jungle in a swimsuit that showed off her curvaceous figure to flattering effect, her bleached blonde hair carelessly tousled.

Her old image of devout Christian and anti-abortion campaigner, sensible wife and mother, has been cast aside and in its place is a middle-aged woman who is embracing notoriety.

Where shall we start? Well, first there is Miss Dorries’ suspension from the Conservative Party for her decision to become a contestant on I’m A Celebrity.

Then we have the ongoing entertainment of a raging spurned wife who at every opportunity is loudly accusing Miss Dorries of ‘stealing’ her husband.

Rachael Butler’s 57-year-old husband, John, walked out on her last year to be with Miss Dorries, who had been a close friend of the couple for more than ten years, though the new relationship quickly crumbled.

This week, Mrs Butler revealed she has taken her revenge upon Miss Dorries by voting ‘hundreds of times’ for her to take part in the show’s ignominious bushtucker trials.

And it worked — Miss Dorries has done two already, including being locked inside a coffin filled with maggots and cockroaches.

‘I did vote for her to do the trial thing,’ she says. ‘I wanted to see her suffer. I’m loving it. Keep her in, keep her suffering. I do blame her for destroying my marriage. How the hell did she get on that programme in the first place? She’s not exactly a celebrity, is she?

‘She’s a publicity-seeking, self-obsessed, delusional marriage-wrecker.’

Mrs Butler, who remains separated from her husband, is fervently hoping Miss Dorries will not be evicted any time soon so the humiliation and discomfort will go on as long as possible.

The suspended Tory MP (right) walked out on her long-suffering - supposedly first - husband, Paul Dorries (left), the father of her three daughters, in 2006. It has now emerged her first marriage was to Raymond Hughes in 1978, when she was 20 and he was 31

Nadine Dorries is seen washing her hair at the jungle waterfall shower yesterday in I'm A Celebrity... Get Me Out Of Here

‘They go into a five-star hotel if they leave. B***** that!’ she says. Waiting at the five-star hotel to embrace Miss Dorries when she leaves the jungle will be her latest admirer, Chris Hammond, an equine vet.

Mr Hammond, a sensible man by all accounts, was not at his Surrey home this week and is believed to be in Australia waiting to be reunited with his lover. According to reports, the pair have been together for six months and he is said to be smitten.

A member of staff at the Versace Hotel on Australia’s Gold Coast said yesterday that he is due to check in at the weekend.

So we have a suspension from the Tories, a raging wife and a besotted lover. On top of this, Miss Dorries’ mother, Sylvia, has spoken out in an interview to say her daughter ‘failed everything’ at school and had been a ‘nightmare pupil’.

And there is a long-suffering former husband, Paul Dorries, the father of Nadine’s three daughters, Philippa, 27, Jennifer, 25, and Cassandra, 20, whom she walked out on in 2006.

But today we can reveal there is yet more in Miss Dorries’ history — something the normally talkative MP has kept very quiet about.

Rachael Butler's (left) 57-year-old husband, John (right), walked out on her last year to be with Miss Dorries, who had been a close friend of the couple for more than ten years, though the new relationship soon crumbled

There is a perception — tacitly encouraged by Miss Dorries — that Mr Dorries is Nadine’s first and only husband. Inquiries by this newspaper, however, have established that Paul Dorries is Nadine’s second husband.

There is a first husband, whose existence she has, for reasons of her own, chosen to keep secret.

His name is Raymond Hughes — and he has been airbrushed from her life.

Take her Who’s Who 2012 entry, for example. ‘Born 21 May 1957; d of George and Sylvia Bargery; m 1984, Paul Dorries (marr. diss.); three d.’

So nothing there about Mr Hughes.

What about her entry on the Conservative Party website as MP for Mid Bedfordshire? ‘Nadine has three children, was brought up in a council house in Liverpool and started her working life as a nurse.’

Mrs Butler, who remains separated from her husband, is fervently hoping Miss Dorries will not be evicted any time soon so the humiliation and discomfort will go on as long as possible. Above, Coronation Street actress Helen Flanagan (left) takes on Miss Dorries (right) in a Bushtucker trial as Ant and Dec watch on

Around the time when she began working as a nurse she married Mr Hughes. But he doesn’t get a mention.  What about her online blog? Is the marriage to Mr Hughes buried away in there somewhere?

We learn that as a young nurse living on a council estate, she: ‘Learnt to communicate with people from all walks of life.’ But no, Mr Hughes isn’t there either.

Nadine married Raymond Hughes, an industrial chemist, on March 18, 1978, at Bethesda Church in Runcorn, Cheshire.

She was then Nadine Bargery, aged 20, and he was the 31-year-old son of a chemical storeman. At the time, they were already living together in Runcorn.

The marriage certificate states the couple were married according to the rites of the Baptists. Miss Dorries has spoken many times about her Church of England Christian faith. It is thought that Mr Hughes was a Baptist.

Yesterday, a close relative of Mr Hughes confirmed the marriage to Nadine and that Mr Hughes, now 65, is alive and well, but refused to divulge his whereabouts.

The marriage took place during a particularly turbulent time in Nadine’s life. 

Miss Dorries, 55, who was suspended from the Conservative Party when she went on the TV show, has been repeatedly voted to undergo sickening Bushtucker Trials

It is well documented that Miss Dorries comes from a working-class family — she is the daughter of a bus driver and his wife and spent her early years living above a shop in Breck Road, Anfield.

She attended Rose Heath Primary School in Halewood and Halewood Grange Comprehensive School.

Her parents, George and Sylvia Bargery, divorced when she was about 18. Nadine lived with her mother, but visited her father often, who had always been in poor health. After the divorce, Mr Bargery became even more frail and struggled to look after himself.

On February 27, 1978, Nadine went to visit him at his terrace house in Liverpool and was alarmed when he didn’t answer the door. She called the police, who broke down the door and found him dead in his bed.

A post mortem examination found he died from ‘extreme under-nutrition aggravated by self-neglect’. He was just 42.

His brother Terence told the inquest: ‘He was always a poor eater, but he found emotional problems very hard to overcome after his divorce.’

Nadine was devastated. Her marriage to Raymond Hughes took place less than a month later.

It is not clear how long the marriage lasted or when Paul Dorries entered her life.

What is known is that before he met Nadine in 1978, Dorries was married to Sharron Harrop, a 25-year-old divorcee.

So were Nadine and Paul Dorries still married to their spouses when they met? We do not know.

But at some point Nadine and Raymond were divorced, as were Paul and Sharron. Mr Hughes later remarried a woman called Susan Richards.

Rachael Butler (pictured with Miss Dorries on a Caribbean holiday in 2000) said: 'She's never been into that sort of thing, camping and roughing it. She likes creature comforts and luxury hotels. She is definitely doing it for the publicity and for the money'

The date of Nadine and Paul’s wedding is unclear — the Mail has been unable to find any trace of a marriage in this country. It is likely they married abroad.

Miss Dorries has spoken in the past about how, early on in the marriage, they spent a year together in Zambia, where her husband ran a copper mine and she took charge of a school.

The couple’s daughter, Philippa, was born in 1985, followed by Jennifer in 1987 and Cassandra in 1992.

After the death of Nadine’s father, another tragedy struck the family in 1986 when her younger brother, John, a labourer, was killed in a car crash aged just 26.

Speaking about the tragedy on Radio 4 this week, Nadine’s mother, Sylvia, who lives in Lytham St Annes, Lancashire, said: ‘My son was killed in an RTA [road traffic accident] and though it slaughtered me, it also slaughtered her. She’s much more Godly than I am — it’s something to cling to.’

These two tragedies undoubtedly helped define Nadine’s character and spur her determination to make something of her life. She decided to enter politics.

After losing the parliamentary seat of Hazel Grove in Greater Manchester in 2001, she won the safe seat of Mid Bedfordshire in 2005.

This appears to be the turning point in her life. A year later, she left Paul Dorries, with whom she had lived in a large house in Chipping Campden, Gloucestershire, saying they had reached ‘entirely different stages of our lives’.

She was fond of publicity from the start of her political career, branding herself a working-class ‘woman of the people’, concerned, caring and in touch with the real world.

She campaigned unsuccessfully to have the legal abortion limit reduced from 24 to 20 weeks. In an interview about the campaign, she spoke of her religious convictions, saying: ‘I am not an MP for any reason other than because God wants me to be.’

At the beginning of last year, Miss Dorries’ found herself receiving publicity of a different kind when Rachael Butler came forward to attack her former friend as a marriage wrecker.

Mr and Mrs Dorries and the Butlers had been close friends and neighbours, and even holidayed together in St Lucia. One of Mrs Butler’s two daughters attended the same school as one of Miss Dorries’ daughters.

It had all been very cosy. Too cosy, as Mrs Butler was to discover.

According to Mrs Butler, Miss Dorries began an affair with her husband around September 2010 and he walked out on her in January last year.

The couple moved into a £1 million cottage, not far from Mr Butler’s marital home. Six months later it was all over.

This year, Miss Dorries’ appetite for publicity and controversy rose to new heights.

She declared David Cameron and George Osborne to be: ‘Two arrogant posh boys who show no remorse, no contrition and no passion to want to understand the lives of others.’

At Westminster, eyebrows were raised at ‘Mad Nad’s’ latest antics.

‘The thing about Nadine is that she hasn’t been as successful in politics as she wanted to be and she’s resorting to these headline-grabbing antics,’ explains one Westminster source.

‘No one thinks she really believes what she’s saying; she’s just attention-seeking.’ It certainly does seem that right now she is crying out for attention.

She claims she decided to go on I’m A Celebrity, for which she has reportedly received £40,000, because it would give her a platform to speak out on political issues to the constituents she serves.

But is that really true or does she see it as an opportunity to serve herself? She has, for example just taken on a publicist. Is that for the benefit of her constituents?

One person who has been enjoying watching Miss Dorries on the TV is her former love rival, Rachael Butler.

Nadine Dorries seen during a 'bug burial' Bushtucker Trial. Her ex, Paul, said: 'As she's making a fool of herself, my daughters and I are sitting here smirking'

She has been cheered by the sight of Miss Dorries enduring the humiliation of the bushtucker trials, one of which required her to eat lambs’ testicles and an ostrich anus.

‘When I heard she was going to be in the jungle, I did phone John and said to him: “Don’t be surprised if she starts discussing you around the camp fire.”

‘He was mortified and I think he’ll be hiding behind the sofa when it’s on as he hates all of the fuss.

‘I want people to know she broke up my marriage and her relationship with John didn’t even work out.

‘I feel sorry for her poor constituents. I feel she’s always been more interested in the publicity than their concerns.

‘It did all die down and now she is in the public eye again. It’s a bit annoying.

‘She’s never been into that sort of thing, camping and roughing it. She likes creature comforts and luxury hotels. She is definitely doing it for the publicity and for the money.

‘As she’s making a fool of herself, my daughters and I are sitting here smirking.’

When I contacted Mr Butler this week, he sighed and said: ‘I really don’t want to say anything. I feel I’ve had enough exposure already.’

A sentiment, you feel, that is unlikely to be felt by Nadine Dorries any time soon.

Additional reporting: Emily Andrews and Keith Gladdis