Age: 60

From: Gloucestershire

Occupation: Retired headhunter

Status: Married - with two children and two grandchildren

"The British public will either love me or hate me - either way they'll want to keep me in... I think there's a strong possibility that I'll win."

"I like to think that I'm intelligent, eccentric, perhaps a little unpredictable," says Lesley, a member of the Women's Institute.

She has been married twice, first at 16, and her second husband is 23 years her senior.

Lesley ran her own recruitment business for 20 years.

She also worked as a Cambridge don and set up a marriage agency for successful divorced people. She and her husband recently returned from a six-year spell living in Portugal, where she tried her hand at stand-up comedy.

Lesley's tastes range from Michelin-starred restaurants to fish and chips, and she enjoys dinner parties and country house weekends.

She has a personal trainer and a cook - "I don't do anything domestic" - and devours Victorian literature, Dickens being her favourite. Harvey Nichols is her big love but she hates music as it's "distracting".

Lesley claims to be honest and honourable, and says she'd hate to share the house with "no-hopers".

She hates "negative under-achievers, arrogance, people without ambition and people who don't try." She predicts she'll be the "safe older woman" in the house, but admits, "I do have terrible temper tantrums. If I don't like something and I don't want to do it, the bottom lip starts wobbling...faux crying..."