She is blonde, stuck on a remote desert island and surrounded by TV cameras. But there is a lot more to Clare Hilley than meets the eye.

A contestant in the new series of the BBC's Castaway, which starts tonight, the 23-year-old from Surrey is not your run-of-the-mill celebrity wannabe.

Instead of the usual ambitions to release a pop single or get a job on breakfast telly, Ms Hilley wants to be a Tory MP.

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A Tory activist since she was 15, she is a prominent figure in the party's Conservative Future youth wing, and stood in the Croydon council elections last year while still at university.

With her forthright views - "Margaret Thatcher was an incredible leader" - Ms Hilley was almost undoubtedly chosen to provide some political fireworks on the small island off New Zealand that will be the castaways' home for the next three months.

And you can be certain the trainee pilot will oblige. She admits she can be confident to the point of arrogance and finds it hard to be diplomatic.

She also recently caused controversy on a Tory blogsite by championing the cause of the Tamils in Sri Lanka.

Seven years after the original series on the Scottish island of Taransay, Ms Hilley is one of 13 contestants who will be trying to build a self-sufficient community from scratch on Great Barrier Island.

• Castaway is on BBC1 at 9pm.