Chanelle Hayes - Baring My Heart

by Hayes, Chanelle

  The weekend the story came out, I was at Center Parcs with my friends, Alison and Zoe, and I was so fed up about being portrayed as this trampy girl who broke up people’s relationships that they took me off to Manchester to buy Crumpet. She definitely made me feel a lot better – and then, soon after that, she made her TV debut in the second show I did for VH1, called Wannabe Popstar. This one followed my bid to release a single called ‘I Want It’. Although I am actually a good singer and did really well at GCSE Music, it was so hideously embarrassing and cheesy. Saying that, it got to No.2 in the UK dance chart and the remix went to No. 5 in Russia, so it can’t have been that terrible.

  I got paid about £75,000 in all to do the song, which included a nationwide tour as well as a music video. And that was the bit I absolutely hated. During filming, they put me in a tiny corset and knickers and bra and I just wanted to cry. But for that kind of money, I could hardly complain, could I? That was my life now: Dave would just tell me what I was doing and I had no say at all. For instance, if Victoria Beckham changed her hair, he’d book me an appointment at a salon and tell me to get exactly the same style. I know I was doing very well out of it but it was like he had power of attorney over my whole life.

  So there I was in this video, gyrating all over the place and looking like a right tart. And watching it back, all I could think about was how fat I looked.

  ‘Look at my bum – it’s disgusting,’ were the first words I said.

  Straight afterwards, I went and had liposuction done on six different areas of my body – including bum, thighs, arms and tummy. It was silly really because I was only a slim size 8–10 but I had begun to see myself in a whole new light.

  This, I’m afraid, is where I started to experience the real pitfalls of fame. I’d started feeling very body conscious as soon as I’d come out of Big Brother and hit the trail of celeb parties and events. Dave had a lot of models on his books, and I was constantly comparing myself when we all went out, thinking I was too chubby next to them.

  I remember moaning to one girl about my thighs on a night out and she said to me, ‘Why don’t you do coke? It makes you lose so much weight.’

  A lot of the girls in the clubs were really into it and would do it in the toilets of places like Chinawhite. I just thought it was a vile and disgusting habit – I’d far rather have a glass of Moët any day!

  With a spiralling belief that I was too fat, it was around this time that I’d become good friends with the Celebrity Big Brother star Chantelle Houghton, who Dave also represented. She was the one who had gone in as a ‘normal housemate’ in 2006 but beat all the real celebs to win it. Chantelle married the Ordinary Boys singer Preston soon after meeting him on the show but it all fell apart in a matter of months and she became badly bulimic as a result. She very publicly admitted her issues and told how they’d go to posh restaurants where she’d eat huge bowls of pasta and then have a big dessert, before going home and sticking her fingers down her throat to bring it back up.

  Now don’t get me wrong, I’ve always liked Chantelle and we had a brilliant time together a few years back. But I can’t deny that her eating disorder had a massive influence on me. I don’t blame her for one second – I was a grown adult and responsible for my own actions but it was hard to be around someone so hung-up on food and not get sucked in. After already dealing with mild anorexia following my abortion, I guess I was still susceptible to using food as some kind of control mechanism.

  I didn’t know many people in London, so Chantelle became a close confidante of mine. But she was still openly bulimic and wouldn’t hide it from me at all. She was forever obsessing about what she ate and it made me really start thinking about what I was eating. We went on quite a few holidays together and, if we went out for dinner, she’d go back to our room and straight into the bathroom to make herself sick. She was losing weight so easily and I remember saying, ‘God, I feel really fat compared to you. My arms look massive. I hate them.’

  One day, I decided to try and make myself sick too. But it’s actually harder than you’d think. I tried with my fingers and it didn’t work; I tried using a toothbrush – that didn’t work either. I even used a chopstick but still nothing happened. I didn’t understand how Chantelle could do it so effortlessly. So I went on the Internet and looked at all these pro-anorexia and bulimia sites telling you how to purge yourself. It was very easy to find this information, which is so dangerous for young girls.

  I made up some username like ‘Skinnydream’ and, using the guidance from one of these sites, taught myself how to do it. It was horrible. I really loathed doing it – I hate being sick, even when I’m poorly. And, while Chantelle could look completely normal afterwards, it left my eyes streaming and mascara running down my face and I’d be all sweaty and carry on gagging for ages.

  Within a few days of making myself throw up for the first time, I thought, ‘This isn’t for me. There must be another way.’ So instead, I started really cutting down on what I ate and stuck to chicken with vegetables and no carbs. But as I got more and more obsessed, I began to dislike the feeling of having any food in my stomach at all. I invented a concoction made up of a tin of tomatoes and half a chopped pepper, mixed up with some Tabasco sauce and a clove of garlic. Some days that’s all I would eat. Occasionally, as a treat, I’d divide up a packet of Hula Hoops into three clear plastic bags and make them last for three days.

  On that basis, you’d think I would have quickly started to waste away but the frustrating thing was that I was still going out a few times a week, so getting a fair amount of calories from champagne and cocktails. And if our crowd was going out for dinner, I had to join in and actually eat. But, unlike Chantelle, I just couldn’t cope with regurgitating it all later.

  That’s when I found my answer. I stumbled across some laxatives in my local supermarket and, amazingly, they came in the form of little chocolates, so it seemed like they were an actual treat. I’d put them in a Tupperware box and put them in my handbag and, if I ate one, people just thought I was having a normal chocolate fix. I got hooked on them immediately and, if we went out for dinner, I’d take several that night. The morning after, I’d be doubled over in pain on the toilet and wouldn’t be able to get up until the afternoon.

  After a while, my cleaner, Jessie, started to grow suspicious. She was from Thailand and just the nicest lady. I always told her not to but she’d go above and beyond her duty, doing all kinds of odd jobs for me. She came in two mornings a week and each time would bring me breakfast in bed.

  I’d say, ‘Oh, I’m so sorry, Jessie, I really don’t want anything. I feel really sick.’

  ‘Is your stomach playing up again?’

  ‘Yeah,’ I’d tell her. ‘I’ve got the worst cramps and diarrhoea.’

  She eyed me carefully. ‘You’re always in bed and feeling ill. You should go to the doctor’s.’

  ‘I know, I will,’ I fibbed.

  Bless her, she was so concerned and would shake her head: ‘You’re not well – this is not normal.’

  One morning, she was emptying my bathroom bin and came out holding up several laxative packets.

  ‘What are these?’

  ‘Oh, they’re nothing,’ I said.

  ‘Have you been taking all of these, Chanelle?’

  ‘No, you really don’t need to worry about me.’

  ‘Come on, what’s going on? You can tell me.’

  I made up some lame excuse that I’d found the laxatives in a cupboard and thrown them away.

  ‘But why are the packets all empty?’ she said.

  ‘Oh, I threw the actual tablets down the loo so I’d never be tempted to take them,’ I replied.

  ‘Hmm,’ she said, obviously well aware I was lying – but what could she do?

  Gradually, the weight did start to fall off me and things then took a turn while I was doing one of my weekly shoots for the Daily Star with the photographer, Jeany Savage. Lying on the floor for a shot, I suddenly went really dizzy
and my head hit the floor. It wasn’t like I’d fainted as such but I was really weak and lost control of my body.

  ‘What’s the matter with you?’ said Jeany.

  ‘I’m so sorry, I’m so hungover,’ I bluffed.

  ‘Right, let me make you a bacon sandwich,’ she said.

  ‘Oh, no thanks, I feel sick.’

  ‘What about some crumpets then?’ Jeany was so funny like that, always trying to feed me up.

  Later, she said, ‘Have you been dieting, Chanelle? You look so thin at the moment.’

  ‘Really?’ I said and grinned. ‘Thanks!’

  ‘No, I don’t mean it as a compliment. Your ribs look disgusting. I don’t think we’re going to be able to airbrush them out.’

  I just laughed. ‘You crack me up, Jeany.’

  ‘But I’m not joking, Chanelle, the Star aren’t going to like these shots. You’re too skinny. You need to put some weight on.’

  The week after, Dave came with me on another shoot for the paper. As we were looking through the shots on a computer with Jeany, she said, ‘We’re going to have to make your boobs look bigger on these. You don’t have any any more.’

  And it was true: my bra size had dropped down to an AA.

  ‘We’ll need to blend your ribs in too.’

  But I just wasn’t getting it. ‘Do you think you can take a bit off my arms too? They look really big.’

  Dave butted in and said, ‘No way. You’ve got nothing to lose off your arms, or any of you, for that matter.’

  We were basically seeing a completely different photograph – one which I thought I looked massive in, even though I was only about 6½st. I was roughly the same size I’d been when I’d had my eating issues after the abortion but still I wanted to be thinner. My goal was to be 85lbs, which is about 6st.

  As I was changing, I heard Jeany tell Dave, ‘The paper have seen the untouched pictures and they don’t like them. They think Chanelle’s too thin. She’s going to lose her contract if she doesn’t put on at least a stone.’

  At that time, I was earning about £3,000 a week from the Daily Star, so to lose the contract would have been awful – for Dave as well as me.

  ‘You look horrible,’ he told me bluntly. ‘You’re not going to get any more lads’ mag covers unless you put on some weight.’

  And he was right – curvier models do always sell better than the really skinny girls. These magazines do like the glamour girls to be womanly and have boobs and a bum. Something to grab hold of, as they say.

  I was thrown into a panic by his words but he hadn’t finished yet. ‘You look ill, you’ve got bags under your eyes, you’ve always got stomach ache,’ he said. ‘It’s not professional to be like this on shoots.’

  What could I say? I really did look and feel awful – but I still wanted to be slimmer. Living down in London, it wasn’t like I was seeing my family or friends that often, so I didn’t have anyone to tell me to get a grip and get some proper food down me. I was hanging out with all these models and, because I’m so petite at 5ft 3in, I blended in.

  I’m not sure if Dave had any idea I was taking laxatives but I think he knew that Chantelle and I were in a bit of a competition to lose weight. So, from then on, he tried to separate us, assigning her to a different agent and making sure we didn’t go to the same events. It didn’t stop us texting, calling and meeting up though. She was still probably the only real friend I had down south.

  But because I was scared about losing all my contracts, I did cut down on using laxatives, although it was hard because I was still convinced I was fat and hated myself whenever I went out for dinner.

  Around this time, a change for the better came about when a mutual friend introduced me to the footballer Danny Simpson, who went out with Tulisa from the X Factor a few years later. At the time, he was playing for Manchester United and was one of the big up-and-coming stars. We started texting a lot and I was quite drawn to him – especially after finding out that he was a real family man and adored his mum so much that he’d bought her a lovely house. He was ambitious too and, as a professional footballer, was more clean living than some of the druggy people I’d been mingling with in London.

  Although it was never overly serious, Danny turned out to be a guy I’d see intermittently over the next 18 months and dating him definitely helped me deal with my food issues. Staying up with him in Manchester, we’d go out for dinner a lot – either to a Chinese restaurant, where all the footballers like Wayne Rooney and Rio Ferdinand went, or to Nando’s. The crux of it is that I had to eat normally with him. It was a new relationship and I didn’t want him to think I was a psychopath. Plus I didn’t want to be taking laxatives at his place and spending all day on the toilet! Can you imagine anything more embarrassing? So by default, I kind of snapped out of it altogether. I started going to the gym with him, got my energy back and put on a few pounds. But because I was working out, I was toned and had muscles. People said I looked better than in ages and I genuinely felt that way too.

  I guess, in some ways, I was lucky that I could get better through spending time with Danny and also by not wanting to lose my modelling contracts. Some girls obviously don’t have that chance and that’s when eating disorders can spiral out of control. I was able to sort out my weight issues because my circumstances meant I needed to.

  And while I’ve been dieting like mad this year after putting on 3st, I’ve been doing it sensibly and by eating super healthily. If I cut down on carbs as well as alcohol, the pounds do fall off. I think my weight will always fluctuate – as you’ll know if you saw some rather unflattering pictures of me in a bikini on the beach in Tenerife in December! But I’m relaxed about it nowadays and I’d definitely never touch laxatives again. I just couldn’t go through all that again – I don’t have enough time to sit on the toilet all day, for starters!

  CHAPTER TWENTY

  Back To My Roots

  Eventually, life in London began to grind me down and I was more and more homesick for my friends and family back home. My on-off romance with Danny had also fizzled out again after – surprise, surprise – I found out he was messaging other girls, and I was a bit disillusioned by the circles I’d been moving in. It felt like I was losing the ‘real’ me amidst all the bitching, backstabbing and cheating that went on in showbiz.

  I was also sick of the constant pressure to look good and the way that girls would compete to get ‘papped’. I realised how crazy it had become when I went to get my lips plumped one day and had the most hideous reaction to the injection. The day after, I was out for dinner at Nobu with Dave and some of the guys and my lips just kept on swelling. In the end, they got so big I looked like Lesley Ash. I had to have antihistamines injected into them to decrease the size but then my tongue swelled up too and I had to cancel all my work for a week. What a joke.

  Nowadays I’m much more careful and, though I do still occasionally have my lips done and the odd bit of Botox once a year or so, I only see a specialist that I’d trust with my life. Ultimately, I am happiest in my pyjamas, with my hair scraped back off my face and wearing no make-up.

  I began making plans for a quieter life and set about finding my own place to buy in Wakefield. It was a decision made all the easier as I’d also ended up starring in a fake sex tape for MTV that April, which proved to be a massive headache. Let me get this straight: I categorically didn’t want to do it and, if you’ve not seen it, please don’t go and Google it! But it all came about when Dave said, ‘I’ve got a great job for you. You’re going to do a sex tape with a puppet!’

  ‘What are you talking about?’ I said. ‘There’s no way I’m doing a sex tape, Dave.’

  ‘But it’s not real. It’s with a puppet. It’ll be a laugh.’

  ‘No way, it’s not going to happen.’

  ‘It is going to happen – I’ve signed the contracts,’ he said.

  ‘But I’ve not authorised you to sign any contract, so I’m not doing it.’

  ‘Yes, but
you signed a contract authorising me to represent you and to sign deals on your behalf. And that’s what I’ve done. So you are doing it.’

  We argued back and forth for days but, despite being offered £15,000 for just two hours’ work, I was dead set against it.

  ‘Look,’ I persisted. ‘I’ll pay them £15,000 and they can pay someone else to do it.’

  ‘You’re being really silly,’ Dave said. ‘It’s funny. It’s a viral advert. Learn how to laugh at yourself – who cares?’

  ‘But I don’t want to. It’s not funny. My mum and dad will go mad. I can’t do it.’

  ‘Come on, it’s no different to Leonardo DiCaprio and Kate Winslet having sex in Titanic.’

  ‘But they were acting in a film – that’s different.’

  ‘Well, think of this as an acting job then. But you’re doing it and that’s the end of it.’

  A few days later, I went along to the shoot, was really pleasant to everyone and got the job done – but I was so angry that I didn’t speak to Dave for a week. The clip was shot in semi-darkness and I was rolling around on this bed in my underwear. And then I had to pretend I was having full-on sex with this horrible frog-like puppet wearing sunglasses. The disgusting thing was spanking me and shouting, ‘Yessss!’ How utterly grotesque!

  Up to this point, there were usually just a couple of photographers outside my apartment every day but, after the ad went viral, there were 25 of them out on the pavement. My neighbours were furious with me for causing such chaos but I was like, ‘What can I do?’

  I can at least laugh about it now but it was the most humiliating thing I’ve ever done. I was especially mortified as Mum and Dad got abuse on the street over it and their house was egged. I just knew then that I couldn’t carry on with that kind of lifestyle. I’d always done everything Dave wanted me to do and, of course, I was very grateful to him for helping me forge such a lucrative career but I was coming up to my 21st birthday and it was time for a change.