I talk to former Derbyshire MP Edwina Currie about her collection of Florence Nightingale artefacts, her political Toby jugs including John Major and her Spitting Image puppet!


Edwina’s latest spell in front of the cameras takes viewers inside her 400-year-old cottage in Whaley Bridge which is stuffed with treasured collectables.
She contributes some prized possessions and insights into her life in the new series of Celebrity Yorkshire Auction House which launches on the digital TV channel Really on November 11.
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Hide AdIn an interview ahead of the programme’s screening, Edwina said: “I collect stuff about Florence Nightingale. I’ve got the first edition of her notes on nursing, it’s quite well thumbed.”


A cup from the Scutari hospital in Turkey where Florence nursed during the Crimean War featured among items that Edwina donated for sale. Edwina bought the wooden beaker several years ago and recalled that she may have acquired it through the Bamfords auction house in Bakewell. She said: “It was clear that it had been carved by someone who almost certainly had been nursed by Miss Nightingale and her band of heroic nurses. Florence was a Derbyshire woman. She bought things like that home and gave them to members of her family and friends.”
Another item that Edwina contributed was a miners lamp, given to her during her 14 years of service as MP for South Derbyshire which included the era of the miners strike. She said: “The South Derbyshire miners decided they were not going on strike and they told me they didn’t like Arthur Scargill. I used to go down to the miners welfare in Swadlincote and have a quiet drink with people and try and get some feeling for how they saw the world. Decades on with the mining industry having disappeared entirely from this country, the lamp is a valuable relic so I was glad to see it go to somebody who wanted it. I have another that is engraved with my name.”
Edwina, who could read before she was three, is a prolific author and an avid collector of old books. She submitted a first edition of Charles Dickens’ Dombey and Sons for sale on Celebrity Yorkshire Auction House. “I put it in the auction because I had another one. By the time it was published Dickens was a huge name and there were lots and lots of copies of it around,” she said. “I was a bit surprised that some collector recognised it as a special copy and wanted to have it. The bidding from all over the world went boomf, boomf, boomf…..it fetched several hundreds of pounds.”
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Hide AdThe programme gives an insight into Edwina’s life away from the public glare and shows a woman with a big heart. She has opened her home of 20 years to a mum and two sons who are refugees from Ukraine and who have lived with her since 2022.


Part of the proceeds from the celebrity auction – which raised a total of £1,357 after fees – have gone to help aid work in Ukraine. Beneficiaries included the Midlands Humanitarian Aid for Ukraine, composed of paramedics and firefighters from the East Midlands and Lancashire, whose voluntary work in the wartorn country includes training the police in first aid and delivering old ambulances from England.
Edwina’s great-grandmother and her grandmother on her mum’s side were born in Ukraine. She said: ”I want to go to Ukraine when the war is over – to meet the rest of the refugee family that is staying with me. Some of the money that we’ve sent to help them has gone to the local anti-aircraft regiment and they bought a big fridge for food. When there were lots of power cuts we sent generators and I know they’ve been a huge help particularly during the winter.”
Her love of collecting artefacts began many years ago when she lived near an auction house in Surrey. Edwina said: “What my husband John Jones would do - classic police officer – he’d bid for a box that had one book in it that he wanted and it wasn’t until we got the box home and started to delve underneath the book that we’d find what rubbish or treasures we had acquired. That’s how some of the things came up that I was able to put into the auction.”
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Hide AdSince the death of her husband in 2020, Edwina has continued to browse the auction catalogues. She said: “I have to ration myself and give myself a budget. If it’s a tough month and I’ve got a big electricity or gas bill to pay then I make sure I don’t even look online to see what’s available otherwise I’ll get myself into difficulties.”


One item that Edwina cherishes is a Spitting Image puppet of herself which she bought online in a Sotherbys auction for £200 in 2001. She said: “She has cost me more than that recently to get her restored because she was slowly crumbling to bits.
"I’ve got a teapot of Margaret Thatcher and another teapot of Ronald Reagan. They were created by the same people who did Spitting Image.
"I’ve also got a whole collection of little Toby jugs from the House of Commons. I had to wait ages to get the Boris Johnson one because every time they produced them, they would sell out. Rishi Sunak is there, Liz Truss is there – I’m waiting for Keir Starmer, they haven’t done him yet.”
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Hide AdI asked Edwina whether she has a Toby jug of John Major with whom she had a widely publicised four-year affair while she was a backbencher and he was the government whip. She replied: “I have – he is hidden behind Gordon Brown.”
Edwina’s passion for the quirky is evidenced in her home’s jungle room where there is a model of a giant giraffe and a realistic-looking gorilla which were both bought from a shop in Leek. This den, which she uses for entertaining, is inspired by her stint on I’m A Celebrity….Get Me Out Of Here in 2014.
Now president of the High Peak Conservative Association, Edwina was junior health minister in Margaret Thatcher’s government when the salmonella-in-eggs controversy broke and she resigned from her post. Looking back on her time in the government, does she wish anything had been done differently? She said: “I would have wished that my colleagues paid as much attention to my warnings about the dangers of food safety and food poisoning from eggs as the public did. The public trusted what I said and were very cautious and were right; my colleagues thought I was talking nonsense, which was a shame. You can’t dismiss safety warnings, you can take appropriate action to minimise them but you should never dismiss them.”
Often referred to as a controversial public figure, Edwina, 78, said: “I come from Liverpool originally which probably gives me a slightly colourful turn of phrase and I’ve always believed in speaking the truth. People don’t always like to hear what I have to say but I will not lie to them.”
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Hide Ad*Find out how much each of Edwina’s lots – including a Beryl Cook limited edition signed print which hung in her loo and a 1930s Donald Duck doorstop – raised in Celebrity Yorkshire Auction House on the Really channel on November 11 at 9pm. All episodes will be available to stream on discovery+.
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