I’m A Celebrity… Get Me Out Of Here! star Reggie Bird declared she was “third time lucky!” after meeting her “lovely partner”, fellow single parent Phillip Jade, who she went public with after winning Big Brother for the second time in 2022.
“We don’t live together. It’ll be seven years this year. We’re very opposite. He’s introverted and kinda shy. It takes him a bit to open up. He would never do anything like this,” the star told her campmates.
Reggie, who divorced her second husband, fireman Dale Sorensen – who she shares two children with, daughter Mia, 18, and son Lucas, 15 – in 2012, has spoken of her heartbreak. “I’ve had two marriage breakdowns, which is sad,” she says.
But the reality star – who wed first husband Adrian when she was just 21 before they split shortly after her first appearance on Big Brother in 2003 – is convinced she’s finally found her Mr Right in 44-year-old Phil.
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“Reggie has had really bad luck with relationships until her Prince Charming, the bloke she calls her “knight in shining armour” FIFO worker Phil swept her off her feet,” a friend of Reggie’s tells Woman’s Day.
“He’s just an all-round good bloke – a typical Aussie, he really spoils Reggie and tries to do as much as he can to make her life easier as her eyesight continues to deteriorate. She would desperately love for Phil to ask her to marry him but he had a messy marriage split the first time around and is that once-bitten, twice-shy type, even though he adores Reggie.”
Their kids are also keen for the couple to make things official. “If it was up to the three kids they’d have been married a long time ago – Mia and Lucas adore Phil, and Indya treats Reggie like a second mum,” says the insider.
BLENDED FAMILY
Reggie shared about their blended family in the jungle.
“He has a daughter the same age as Mia, they went to the same school together. She’s lovely,” Reggie revealed.
The couple and their kids have already enjoyed family holidays together.
“She and Phil took their kids to Queenstown for a five-star no-expenses-spared holiday in 2023 and Phil spoiled Reg last year and took her to Bali for her 50th birthday, where she has since confided with friends is where she wants to say ‘I do.’”
“Reg has even said she wants all three kids in the wedding party – they just have to convince Phil now!”
Reggie, 50, admits the FIFO worker – who also lives on the Gold Coast where the reality star is based but stays with a friend when he’s in town from his WA-based job, likes to take things slow.
“We met at the bowls club, ‘down the bowlo’ on the Goldie [Gold Coast]. I used to see him come in now and then at the bowls club and I used to wonder why all the staff would go up to him. I thought, ‘Who’s this guy? I only see him now and then and when he does come in, everyone’s friendly to him.’ They’d all be like, ‘Oh, Phil’s back in town,’” Reggie told her campmates of the couple’s first meeting.
“There are other guys at the club that we both know, and we went back to someone’s house one night to play eight-ball [pool] and we hit it off from there. We didn’t shag or anything, just had a kiss. That’s how we met. We texted now and then and saw each other down the bowls for a drink and sort of just went from there. It took him a while, actually it took about a year.”
RUNNING OUT OF TIME
But, her friend shares, the reality star is feeling the pressure of her failing eyesight, thanks to her battle with the rare degenerative eye disease, retinitis pigmentosa.
“Reggie feels like her life is slipping away and that one day she is going to be completely blind so why not travel the world and just enjoy life,” says the source.
“The one steady thing in her life is Phil and she would trade all the reality TV paydays to walk down the aisle with her true soulmate.”
