George Galloway: 'I got Pete Burns out of jail'

George Galloway has claimed that he bailed out Pete Burns when his former Celebrity Big Brother colleague was arrested.

The recently-elected Respect MP for Bradford West told The Big Issue that he is still close to some of the people he met on the reality show in 2006.



Asked if he had stayed in contact with his co-stars, Galloway said: "Pete Burns, for a while. I got him out of jail.

"I had to go to a police station and pay a sum of money, of surety, to get him out of the cells. A fracas? There's been a lot of fracas."

He added: "And Dennis Rodman, I became firm friends with him. He has a beach house in Malibu to which he keeps inviting me.

"I keep making the point that it probably wouldn't be good for me to be hanging out at his beach house in Malibu. It wouldn't be wholesome. Drink would be the least of it."

Galloway also claimed that Channel 4 was "incredulous" that he rejected a reported £250,000 to feature in its Ultimate Big Brother series, adding: "Once was enough. I knew they would contrive damaging situations, definitely go for a reprise of the cat scene.

"It would have been a signal that I was giving up on returning to parliament. I'm too young for that. You ain't seen nothing yet!"

Read the full interview with George Galloway in this week's edition of The Big Issue. The Big Issue is sold by homeless and vulnerably housed vendors for £2.50, with £1.25 of the cover price going directly to the vendor.

> Big Brother - Pussycat George Galloway named 'Most Memorable Moment'

Watch George Galloway's classic 'cat scene' from the 2006 series of Celebrity Big Brother below: