Former shadow chancellor Ed Balls has revealed he turned down an offer to go on ITV reality show I'm A Celebrity ... Get Me Out of Here! after he lost his seat in Parliament at the general election.

He also said it was "unlikely" he would ever return to front-line politics.

Balls was the Conservatives' biggest scalp when he lost his Morley and Outwood seat in West Yorkshire to Andrea Jenkyns by a wafer-thin margin of 422 votes on May 7.

He revealed that among the hundreds of messages of consolation he received after his defeat was a "very nice" text from Chancellor George Osborne - his adversary over the despatch box on countless occasions - but nothing from David Cameron.

Another message came from the I'm A Celebrity team inviting him to go into the jungle and undergo the notorious trials by ordeal.

Asked if he was tempted, Balls replied: "No. I wrote back to say that I'd already subjected myself to one high-profile public vote this year, and I wasn't really sure that I wanted a second one. At least having to eat bugs and crickets wasn't part of the election process. I'm not tough enough for that."