Battling Bake Off butterflies
Winner of the Great British Cake Scoff Candice, suffered anxiety during filming? That must have been tough!
Imagine having heart palpitations over a Victoria sponge.
I’ve lived with anxiety myself for a while now and it was made a thousand times worse by being on Big Brother.
The weird thing about anxiety, though, is that it comes at the strangest moments. It’s not always when you’re scared or stressed.
The last time I had an attack, I was in the supermarket struggling to decide what type of mushrooms to buy.
I’ve met lots of celebs over the past few weeks and somehow we always end up talking about panic attacks and anxiety.
Rebecca Ferguson told me she gets it when she’s on live TV and really struggled during The X Factor finals. Brian Belo has chatted to me about his long struggle with feelings of anxiety and depression since leaving the Big Brother house.
Now Candice has spoken about it too.
I’ve found the best way to deal with leaving a big reality show is to focus on the day ahead and not think about the future.
Candice has so much to look forward to but for the time being I’d advise her to go away on holiday somewhere so she can relax and escape the madness long enough to recharge.
Either that or make a flan safe in the knowledge that Mary Berry isn’t going to criticise your soggy bottom.
Has Halloween hype hit dodgy heights?
Katie Piper says Halloween ‘gore’ makeup is offensive to people who live with permanent disfigurements. She makes an interesting point and I have to say it is pretty weird how Halloween has become an opportunity for people to look like they’ve bumped their face on a chainsaw.
Psychologically, it must be something to do with sticking a finger up at death.
Katie says we should go back to the old days when people would dress up as pumpkins. But hang on a second, Isn’t that just as offensive to people who have to live with looking like a pumpkin?
Essex Girls, do yourselves a favour…
Moving on, I want to take this opportunity to thank TOWIE’s Gemma Collins for her heartfelt and truly inspiring ode to the dictionary.
I have to quote her because my own vocabulary couldn’t possibly reflect the glory of her lexical perspicacity.
She says: “I’m a massive fan of the dictionary… because, like, it is like such an amazing historical thing, like, isn’t it.”
Oscar Wilde couldn’t have wished for such loquacious dexterity!
She was explaining that Essex girls are given a bad name by the dictionary’s definition of the term which basically describes them as brash and materialistic.
Well I’m not sure Gem is the perfect person to dispel that perception…
She’s based her whole career around being the quintessential Essex Girl so why she would want to bash her own brand I can’t imagine. Unless it’s just a way to get her hair extensions more TV time?
Get me out of here!
I can’t believe we’re about to helicopter into the I’m a Celeb jungle again! I love this show so much… from Ant and Dec’s banter to 80s pop legends gagging on testicles.
Wasn’t Gemma Collins on that show for five minutes? She screamed ‘get me out of here’ within just three days. She said at the time that she just couldn’t hack it. She must have been missing her dictionary too much.
The fix factor?
Ryan Ruckledge, my ex BB housemate, has claimed he was guaranteed he’d get to the finals of The X Factor by a producer from the show who he was dating.
He told the same story in the house. Nobody knows about reality TV as well as Ryan who has been on everything, and anything, and makes no secret of the fact that he exaggerates and performs to give producers what they want.
From a tanning addiction to telling Judge Rinder his mate had basically stolen his car, there’s not much he won’t say or do to get on TV and fair play to him.
I remember one task in Big Brother where he had to put electrodes on his bum cheeks. He instantly started shouting and squealing with agony.
One problem… Big Brother came over the speakers to inform him that the electric shocks hadn’t started yet.
Ryan is an entertainer and a very funny guy.
But with the tan, the lips and the performing… Ryan is the fake.