by Ollie Locke
I looked around for months to find something I knew I could make my first home. Eventually I walked into a place in an amazing complex and knew I’d found exactly what I wanted.
In October 2011 I moved in. I really only wanted a few things to start off with – I always thought that if I had a Molton Brown hand soap and a Jo Malone candle I would feel like the house owner I wanted to be. But then I decided to scour London to find black and white wallpaper and I covered the whole flat in it. My sitting room looks like a hideout for a cartoon robber who’s holding a large gold mirror he’s stolen. You might have seen it on the show …
It was awesome having my own home and being able to do what I liked. No one bought blue loo roll because it was cheaper! But not long after Cheska and Binky, who were still living together in Parsons Green, were told that their rental agreement was coming to an end, so I offered both of them the spare room in the flat. They ended up flipping a coin for it, and as you probably know, Cheska won.
Around the same time my Granny Hatton became very ill, and within weeks she sadly passed away. My mum then decided that she wanted to move to London, so in the most extraordinary of circumstances, Binky and my mum ended up moving in together.
Series 3 passed by in a blur. Richard Dinan joined the cast and it was great to have another friend on the show. But, all in all, I wasn’t in a good place at that time. My previous break-up was still taking its toll, losing my grandmother was very hard and I started to feel that I had become a bit of a parody of myself. By the time the summer of 2012 and filming for Series 4 came about, I realised that I hadn’t had any form of relationship – let alone a good shag – in over nine months. This wasn’t a fact I felt particularly happy about. I began to question what the problem was and realised that I no longer really knew who I was. Despite only snogging a few men over the years compared to 10 relationships with women, the whole country thought I was 100 per cent gay.
I needed to make some changes. Big changes. I’d had long hair since I was 16 and I needed a new look. My hair had grown longer and longer, and become my trademark. When you work in clubs you have to look different and be recognisable, and having long brown hair helped.
But after a while I felt that I had lost my sense of self. I was no longer Ollie Locke, I was ‘Ollie from Made in Chelsea’ – the guy with the long hair and Union Jack clothing. Something had to give. I looked at myself in the mirror and realised that I wasn’t happy with what I saw any more. Plus, if I was going to end this horrific nine-month sex drought then it would probably make sense to do something about my hair.
After all, if you ever ask a girl what type of man she goes for, she rarely says ‘Mediterranean camp guys with long hair’. Especially girls who live in Chelsea. Not that I’m saying my hair was the sole reason why I wasn’t having sex, but I felt like it may have been one factor in the package that had knocked my confidence with the ladies.
I had one big problem, though – my ears. When I was a kid I hated my ears so much I thought that – along with wanting to look like a cross between Travis, Charlie and Jarred – by growing my hair I could deflect attention away from them.
There was only one thing to do; I called a Harley Street clinic and booked myself in to have my ears pinned back. I had to be awake throughout the operation, which was rather terrifying, although it didn’t hurt during the procedure and 111 Harley Street is renowned for being the best at ears, so I was in safe hands. It was bloody painful for a couple of weeks afterwards as they were healing, but it was worth it to be able to look in the mirror and not hate what I saw.
So then I decided it was time to cut off the hair. This was difficult for me. Was I really going to lose those locks that I’d spent the past 10 years growing? I told the show that I wanted to cut it and they nearly had a seizure. I booked an appointment at Neville in Belgravia and the cameras followed as the first cut was made, and my long dark hair fell to the pristine white floor. I held my breath and stared straight into the mirror. I was so ready for it but also so scared. As soon as it was done, I felt a weird sense of relief and I was thrilled with the result. I donated my hair to a charity called the Little Princess Trust in Brighton that makes wigs for children who have lost their own hair due to cancer. It’s already been made into a wig so somewhere a little girl is wearing my hair, and that means the world to me.
Just to top everything off, I threw out most of my clothes (apart from my Union Jack stuff, of course!).
I was still me, but I didn’t feel like I was a complete joke any more.
A few days later the producers of the show called to speak to me because they were genuinely worried I was going through some kind of silent breakdown. I think Cheska may have been thinking the same thing too. But actually I was probably the sanest I’d been in my life; I was seeing things more clearly than I had done in a long while.
I was really happy with my new look, and by the time Series 4 started, about a month later, most people had begun to get used to it. On the whole I got a great reaction, but some people were surprisingly weird. I’ve had comments like ‘You’ve ruined yourself now you’ve cut your hair.’ Can you imagine ever saying that to anyone, especially to their face? When I reply, ‘Actually I did it because I was really unhappy with myself,’ they don’t know what to say. Just because most of the time I come across on screen as happy and ridiculous doesn’t mean I don’t have my down days and insecurities like everyone else. I’m lucky that I don’t suffer with that many bad comments on Twitter. I’m not a dick and I don’t set out to offend people. That said, I did once get a message from someone saying they were going to hunt me down and stab me with an infected needle. I was devastated but decided that the best thing to do would be to just bat it off, but the knowledge that someone has sought you out and put finger to keyboard with the specific intention of abusing you is hard to accept sometimes.
By the time the new series got into full swing I felt completely reinvigorated. I started dating again and began to do all of the things that I had been missing so much.
My new look had given me a much-needed confidence boost and it is well known that if you feel good about yourself then you attract people to you like a magnet.
We all fear change, but making those changes in my life made such a huge difference to how I felt about myself. Of course change has to come from the inside too, if that doesn’t sound too worthy, but you shouldn’t let other people’s opinions hold you back from changing things about yourself you’re unhappy with. If you live your life for other people you will never truly be happy. Many people tried to talk me out of cutting my hair or told me my ears were fine, but it’s all about how you feel. If you want to make a change, make it.
I started writing this book in 2011, and it’s been like love therapy for me. Revisiting past relationships in detail now I’m older and wiser has shown me what mistakes I’ve made and how I’d do things differently now. It’s like looking at my history as an outsider, which has helped me to work out what I do and don’t want in a relationship going forward. I’d been writing for almost a year and was updating my friend Toby on its progress. I lamented how I hadn’t had a date in so long that I’d forgotten how to be in a relationship, which seemed ridiculous since I was writing a book about relationships. ‘What you need is to go on another date. I know a girl who will be up for it,’ he replied. Great, I thought, he’s going to set me up with an ugly horny girl or one of his sloppy seconds or someone that breathes too deeply in her sleep. Googling my date-to-be, I saw that she looked hot externally, no sign of hideous skin condition or a lazy eye, and that she used to be in a big TV soap about five years ago. I remembered her from those days but she looked far more beautiful now and she was at that time a major voiceover artist.
I had nothing to lose by going on this date, except my virginity, which had seemingly grown back after my undeserved chastity. It was Halloween and Toby set us up on a blind date in a club in Kensington. We got on surprisingly well from the word go; luckily she wa
s dressed in something more slutty than a corpse bride and we ended up having a bit of a snog that night. We started seeing each other more regularly and we were messaging constantly. It was that kind of amazing constant BBM banter, where everything is hilarious and you end up smiling like an idiot while you sit on the loo, in the bath or on the Tube. We had the same sense of humour, which is one of my priorities when it comes to girls. I knew I hadn’t had such a sense of humour connection on this level since Tilly, way back at school, which was a genuine worry to my heart. But, that said, the relationship did have its issues.
She was convinced that I was sleeping with loads of people like some of the other cast mates she knew did. The reality was that I hadn’t had sex in so long that the 65-year-old woman who gives out free chocolate samples in my local M&S was starting to look dateable. I just acted aloof to keep her on her toes in the hope that she would fall for my fake Lothario ‘I could get with whoever’ attitude. It failed, and it was another lesson learned.
Despite these issues, Soap Girl, as we will call her, and I got on ridiculously well. We spent every day together exploring London, and we laughed constantly. After only three months I knew that I was dangerously close to falling for her. But one thought troubled me: if I brought her onto MIC and lived our relationship in the public eye as I had done twice before, it was bound to fuck up. I’d end up crying to a relationship guru in India for the next 20 years before realising I was gay after all!
I just couldn’t face having another relationship on camera. After the last one ended, I had cried more than I had ever done and it had taken me months to feel even slightly better. And it wouldn’t be fair to me or her to pretend that I wasn’t seeing anyone and to carry on doing the show as normal without anyone knowing. I had to make a decision, and sadly it was to be single. So, with a heavy heart, the following Sunday morning, over brunch, I ended it. A decision that I would later realise was a huge mistake. All my friends loved her – we were perfect.
As harsh as it sounds, I went about removing her from my life – deleting her from my Facebook and Twitter accounts, all the normal things I do after a break-up. It was months later and the new series was nearly out, my love life was completely useless, sex was something I could just about remember and two sad singletons (Cheska and myself) sat down to watch the advert announcing the new series of MIC on E4 – to discover that the voiceover artist was none other than Soap Girl. I’d done everything I could to prevent myself from seeing or hearing about her and of course she had bloody well landed a job on my show! You may have noticed that things are never normal around me – and there was no escape. And, as it soon appeared, there was no escaping Hattie Clark either.
One Sunday afternoon Binky popped round for tea, OK, fuck it, wine. She was outside when her phone rang so I answered – to hear Hattie Clark’s voice. It was the last person I was expecting. I hadn’t seen or spoken to her since that embarrassing incident in Cornwall. I knew that Binky and Hattie’s paths had crossed in the past, but I had no idea they were now friends. I don’t know whether she remembered our cringeworthy run-ins, but she was being really over-friendly and invited Binky and me round to her house that night for drinks. I pretended to be completely cool about seeing her again and for once I felt like I was almost cool enough to be chilling with the infamous Hattie. It was a great evening, and we stayed up drinking, laughing and chatting until 4am. I got so drunk that I thought I would send out a tweet that read, ‘If anyone out there wants to tell someone they love them, do it now. Or if you fancy someone, ask them out.’ (If I wasn’t getting laid then I could at least try to inspire someone to get the confidence to get some.) Hattie read it, turned to me and said, ‘Ollie, will you go out with me?’
I laughed and said something inappropriate, thinking she was joking, but it became apparent that she wasn’t. I reminded her of how uncool I was (why after 10 years of trying to get her I was trying to put her off, I have no idea). The next night, I got us a table at one of my favourite restaurants called La Bodega Negra, on Old Compton Street in Soho. I’m not going to lie, I was shitting myself knowing I may finally have a chance to snog the woman who had been my dream-girl and mean-girl all that time ago.
I described that painful scene and told her that she’d acted like a dick, to which she replied, ‘Yep, that sounds like me.’ I was sort of expecting a kiss and for her to say she would make up for it in other ways, but annoyingly she’s very blunt and she just laughed it off.
The evening got off to a good start with four Vodka Martinis, although I’m still not sure why I ordered them as they get me so pissed and don’t actually taste that good, especially not with olive juice, which tastes like poisoned ear wax! Maybe I thought they would make me look sophisticated. Again, I don’t know why I thought that as she knew everything about me, having watched the last three seasons and she was now living with Caggie.
Halfway through the evening we decided to go for a cigarette and I pulled out the big guns – charming her about the way Shakespeare uses speech. I must stop doing that! But then again, she leant in for a kiss, so maybe not. I reciprocated so enthusiastically I bruised her cheekbone, like a bad blusher accident. I was so excited that I’d finally got with Hattie Clarke I felt like doing Carlton’s dance from the Fresh Prince of Bel Air, right in the middle of the street.
After the date, we started seeing each other more regularly but it soon became apparent that it wasn’t going to be a long-term thing. We are so different from each other it’s ridiculous. I finally got to have my romance with Hattie, and realised that it wasn’t what I wanted after all.
Not surprisingly people are often interested to know if I get on well with everyone in the MIC cast. If I’m being honest, I don’t. People are sometimes shocked when I say that, but I see it as no different to any other workplace. If you work in an office you may think that Carol in accounts is a complete asshole – well, it’s the same with certain co-stars, if not worse. I don’t want to attack anyone in the book, but there are definite personality clashes and it’s certainly not one big happy family.
Some people have got egos and at the end of the day all they want is to secure more work, like TV shows and magazine deals, so there are some alpha male characters trying to be cooler than everyone else.
People also like to think that there’s some kind of massive rivalry between us and TOWIE, but as far as I’m concerned, there really isn’t. I get on with all of the cast and have come to know a lot of them quite well. To try to put an end to this rivalry rumour, I suggested that we all shared a table at an awards ceremony and we had an amazing night. I would call people like Joey, Sam, Arg, Gemma, Lydia and Lauren Goodger friends now. And to be quite honest, I would rather spend time with the Essex lot than half the Chelsea lot most of the time. It’s great because no one else understands the MIC life as well as they do. Reality TV can be quite crazy and of course they’re in exactly the same boat as us and they’ve been through the highs and the lows too.
Cheska once went through a really hard time on the show and felt like she wanted to quit, and she was getting the most awful undeserved abuse on Twitter. She came home one day in floods of tears because someone had tweeted to say that they were going to hunt her down, throw acid in her face and cut her tongue out. It was vile and James ‘Arg’ Argent called up to check she was OK and said he would always be there if she needed to talk. It just shows you; we are all in this together. Mario showed me how to style my hair after I had it cut, and Lauren Goodger has stayed in Cheska’s bed a few times after nights out in London. We all support each other a lot, and I think the press just like to make up this rivalry.
In fact, I can actually claim to have been in both shows. In September 2012 I somehow managed to do the Virgin Active London triathlon. OK, I’m going to be honest, I did it for the photo call with David Hasselhoff and Richard Branson, not because I wanted to push myself to do a fucking triathlon. It was so much hard work, especially as I had ‘forgotten’ to train for it (and may ha
ve had a couple of Martinis in the days leading up to it). We had to run, cycle and swim, and 15 minutes into the first cycle I thought I was having a cardiac arrest. I was a man who smokes like a chimney and drinks like a fish and hadn’t ridden a bike since I was about nine, so I was in real trouble. Finally the bloody thing was over and I did complete it, actually in a good time. I walked over to say goodbye to Lydia, Tom and Debs from TOWIE, who had competed in the triathlon too. What I didn’t know was that I’d ended up walking onto the bloody TOWIE set by mistake. I got a tweet when it was aired from someone saying, ‘Did I just see you in the background of TOWIE?’ Oops!
I don’t tend to go to as many parties or events as you may think – my years working on the club scene have beaten it out of me, I guess. In fact I would go as far as to say that I’m starting to become old, something I realised the other day when I walked into HMV in Westfield, straight past the chart music and asked a girl at the desk if she had any Native American pipe music, which is supposed to aid a healthy night’s sleep. I suppose I’ve put my major partying days behind me, but when Made in Chelsea was nominated for a BAFTA in 2012 that was not an event I was going to miss.
The show had become incredibly successful worldwide, and by the time Series 2 finished, it was being aired in numerous countries including the United States, Canada and Australia, and in countries like the Congo and the Philippines. My voice is dubbed by someone who sounds nothing like me (I’d love to hear a Filipino say ‘Binkletits, darling’).
I’ve heard that it’s still the highest downloaded and most tweeted about show that Channel 4 has ever made – apparently there have even been some weeks when we’ve been tweeted about more than The X Factor. The cast and crew put everything into making the show as good as it can be, so it was an honour for that hard work to be recognised with the BAFTA nomination. People do take the piss out of Chelsea, but the fact is we aren’t actors with lines, we are actually conducting our real lives on camera with over 100 people working behind the scenes 24 hours a day in a huge office in Shoreditch to make the show.