Between filming that first series of Ex on the Beach and waiting for it to air on MTV, I had nothing much to do, no job to go to and a tiny little bit of money left over from my payment for the show, so there seemed to be only one logical thing to do… go to Magaluf.
Jordan was by now officially my live-in boyfriend and he was going off to rep there, so I went along and we ended up staying there for a month. We lived in hotels when we could afford it, but mostly we lived like tramps because we barely had a penny between us.
I was making a tiny bit of money as a shot girl along the strip – handing out free shots in the hope of getting people into bars – while Jordan sold tickets and enjoyed himself. He kept telling everyone, ‘She’s going to be in Ex on the Beach,’ like it was some massive thing.
I liked him enough to hang out with him, but he was a little bit of a twat. He did like to tell porkies about girls, and sometimes he couldn’t help but big himself up, which meant I got the wrong idea about situations. This often turned into more bust-ups in bars. I still hadn’t learned the lessons of Nu Bar – stay sober, don’t get into rows, don’t always blame the other girl – and if I’m honest, even these Magaluf scraps were still all about The Dip.
I could switch in a flash, and for some reason I didn’t care how I came across in public. Sober, I was quietly spoken, always polite, remembering the good manners my parents and grandparents had taught me. Drunk, I could say vile, disgusting things without even thinking about it. I’d always been a quiet thing, a small girl who never stood up for myself. Now, if I ever felt remotely threatened by someone – which was often – I wouldn’t hold back and I’d just be rude to them, often before they even said anything. Looking back, it was like I was discovering my voice, finding out I could actually hold my own.
My targets weren’t any of this lot in Magaluf either. It was actually those pricks who’d been horrible to me all those previous years, but it was only now coming out of me. Now, in bars, on the strip, down at the beach, it didn’t matter where, if somebody said something I took the wrong way, I was having none of it. I would jump down their throat and not even give them a chance to explain. Girls were scared of me, while some boys quite liked this unpredictable creature. But both girls and guys were wary of me, and they were right to be.
Did I like this new Megan? Well, I knew deep down that I was still very unhappy and I was putting on a front, but at least I felt strong now, able to protect myself. So that all worked, in public at least. It was only when I went home that I was crying, carrying on drinking, abusing my body like crazy.
Ex on the Beach finally came out, and, overnight, I became this person who everybody on Twitter wanted to follow. Every evening the show aired, my followers went up, by tens of thousands. Then, the really bad stuff started appearing on the show, but every time I had a meltdown, more and more people started following me on social media.
In the street, girls started coming up to me, and these were proper rude, scary girls that normally I’d run away from myself. Instead, it was them seeking me out and saying, ‘Oi Megan, you’re sweet, mate.’ I thought, ‘What’s going on here?’ I think I was saying stuff they wished they could say themselves, so they could relate to that person they saw on screen.
So I kept it all going. I started being funny but also lairy on social media, and then I got another call from MTV, saying they were about to start casting the next series of Ex on the Beach.
‘Do you want to come back? We’re going to make a big deal of it if you do.’
I wasn’t sure about going back on. But, after all those years of auditions, of trying to get my name and face out there, it felt like things were finally starting to take off for me. I’d signed with an agent, I was getting offers of public appearances, a bit more money this time, plus they said I could go back on the show with Jordan.
So I agreed, and the next thing I knew, they’d made a whole separate advert with my face coming out of the water. They tagged it ‘Armeganeddon’. I thought, ‘Well something’s obviously working. I won’t change a thing.’
Turned out I didn’t have to. If them producers wanted me to kick off as usual, they chose the perfect person to put in front of me, but once again it looked as though I was being entirely irrational, losing my shit for no apparent reason. Well, let me tell my side of the story, and I’ll leave you to judge for yourself whether there was no apparent reason…
First, what did the viewers get to see? Well, me and Jordan arrived out of the sea in episode four, halfway through the series. In the previous series, we’d both had our turn sitting on the beach waiting for the possibility of an ex to arrive, so we knew how terrifying it was. But it was equally terrifying, walking up the beach, turning up new and not knowing what kind of reception you’re going to get.
Scotty T from Geordie Shore was sat there with a couple of girls. As soon as we got to them, one of the girls jumped up and hugged Jordan, so it was clear she knew him. I said on camera, ‘Fuck me, Jordan’s been scraping the barrel. Four out of ten, mate,’ which I know sounds a bit bitchy. Later that evening, I upped my game and I said to her, ‘Daddy’s little princess, did he buy you a boob job too?’ Equally nasty, but hopefully you’ll understand in a minute.
The next day, we all went off to a water park, and I was enjoying myself, hanging out with the girls until I spotted Jordan deep in chat with this same girl on a balcony. This was shit for me to see, but I soon made it known, screaming at him – Mental Megs came back out to play.
It definitely would have looked like I was taking something out on this girl for no reason, but nobody realised what was really going on behind the scenes.
Before we went back on the show, I said to Jordan, ‘Have you done anything that would upset me if they drag it up on the show? Because you know they WILL drag it up.’ He said to me, with a completely straight face, ‘No, Megan, you have nothing to worry about.’
Then, when we were walking up the beach just ahead of filming, I asked him again, but there was still nothing, apparently. Then the producers gave me a big sambuca and told me, ‘One of Jordan’s exes is on the beach.’ They told me her name, and I asked Jordan, ‘Who is this girl?’ He said, ‘I just fucked her once.’ Obviously any girl would want to know a bit more.
He then added a final point. The pair of us had been to a club only the previous week, and it turned out it belonged to this girl’s dad. We were getting further and further up the beach while this chat was going on, getting ready to make our debut on this series. At this point, we could see Scotty T and the other two girls, and even Jordan looked a bit sheepish. We’d had a group of girls dancing and standing on our table at the club the week before, and it turned out she’d been one of them girls. By now I was four sambucas down, so I was tipsy, and I couldn’t believe he’d taken me to the club of one of his shags – where we’d had a great night, drunk loads of their vodka – and he’d forgotten to mention it. ‘I didn’t think she’d be on the show, Megan,’ was his reasoning. Did this muppet have no idea how the industry works? Girls LOVE having one up on each other. Of course she was going to be here. Just as we got to them on the beach, he added, ‘She won’t say anything, she won’t say anything.’ As if.
The first thing she said to me was, ‘Enjoy the vodka, did you?’ and that was it. ‘Enjoy living off Daddy’s money, do you?’ I replied, and off we went. At the end of the day, she hadn’t done anything wrong – as usual, the other girl hadn’t actually committed a crime, it was just easier for me to think she had – but she clearly enjoyed having one over me, as predicted. So we kicked off. It was all a bit dramatic – our drinks ended up all over each other and we had to be pulled apart. The producers were all buzzing. I was genuinely fuming about the whole thing – I hate being mugged off, probably because I’ve been mugged off so much in the past, but I think I also felt the pressure of living up to the whole ‘Mental Megs’ thing, even though I tried to dodge it, and the producers kept stirring it up. They definitely encouraged me to be bitchier than I would have been normally – I called one girl ‘Harry Potter’ just because she had glasses. I think by then I was just a bit bored. Sorry, Kristina.
During that series, which was luckily shorter than the previous one, and filmed in Portugal, we had all the usual dramas. I was sent on a date with another boy called Lewis, and he tried his luck with me. It turned out this boy, who’d been going on all the way through about the importance of having respect for women, suddenly saw nothing wrong in trying it on with someone else’s girlfriend. We had to go on this shit painting date, and at one point he turned to me and said, ‘You and I are going to get married.’ I didn’t like that. Then he asked if he had a chance. Well, I hated that. I told him, ‘Never,’ then went back to the villa and told Jordan. On that occasion, Jordan actually grew some balls for once and went and said something. Lewis kicked off big time – he started waving his arms around, had to be put on the floor by security and ended up actually being chucked off the show. Just another day on Ex on the Beach!
But the real problem for me in that house was the other girls.
They’d all clearly been watching me on the other series, and they’d worked out that if they behaved as nutty as me, they’d get the same amount of attention. So they all took turns to behave as if they were out of control, but I knew they were putting it on, while I was still being genuine. Everyone was pretending to be the big, mouthy one, but I didn’t have to pretend. If someone pisses me off, it shows all over my face – I’ve never had to fake it, and I think viewers and other people can tell the difference.
There was one girl in particular who made it a horrible experience for me. Some of the other girls had warmed to me by then, but she led a little clique giving those girls a hard time for it. Jordan and I turned up late to the show, so the friendship groups had already been formed. Yet again, it was like being back at Woodbridge. I was in the house for two weeks and they felt like the longest two weeks of my life. Although we looked quite happy on camera, Jordan and I actually rowed the whole time we were there, and the producers were hoping for a big argument to kick off between this particular girl and me. Eventually they got it. They created competition between us with a talent show one evening, both of us singing, both of us already on the sambuca – what could go wrong?
She’d been upstairs practising; she was all ready to give her best Alicia Keys impression, and she didn’t like it when I belted out a tune. We’d been grating on each other for days, but the fight really came out of nowhere. She called Jordan good-looking but then she said, ‘I don’t find your man attractive.’ I told her I didn’t need the attitude, and she took her glasses off and threw them. For once, it was actually me thinking, ‘What just happened? Calm the fuck down.’ That didn’t last long, though. She put out her hand, I shoved it away, she got me in a headlock, and we were at each other. Next thing I knew, I was being marched off by security and screaming, ‘She thinks she’s the big girl in here, well she ain’t the big girl. I’m the fucking big girl.’ Once again, I had completely lost it.
I was furious with her, but I was also upset at the producers, screaming at them, ‘How could you put me in this situation, twisting it and then allowing her to carry on?’
It wasn’t unusual for me to lose my shit, but this time, I couldn’t seem to calm down. Not to play a broken record, but once again it was that all-too-familiar feeling of being bullied, of someone trying to have one over me and trying to make me feel small. I wasn’t an angel and I knew we were all supposed to have a good row from time to time and make good telly, but I wasn’t in there to get this hurt.
Because I was still raging, I got taken to stay in the villa next door. I was absolutely beside myself – lying on the floor, screaming and packing my clothes to go home. I couldn’t get control of myself, and I was somewhere where no one cared about me. I just wanted to get out of there.
Looking back on that now makes me feel sad. I realised I needed counselling, and I needed to go home. The producers told me to sleep on it. They even let me call home, and I spoke to my mum really briefly. She didn’t say much, just told me to come home if I thought I had to.
The next morning, I got taken for a chat with a really senior producer. She sat me down and said, ‘Listen to me. Do you want to be a star?’ I realised this wasn’t the average pep talk they gave everyone, so I replied honestly: ‘I want to make something of myself.’
She said, ‘Do yourself a favour, go back in that villa and hold your head high. Apologise to the girl for shoving her first, because you did. I think you should do it, because I have a feeling other TV opportunities could come your way.’
I asked, ‘What, really?’
She said, ‘Yes.’
Okay, then. I put a smile on my face, went back in the house and apologised to the girl. She did too. We hated each other, but at least we shook on it, and we just avoided each other after that. I made myself feel better by saying on camera, ‘As soon as I’m home, I’m blocking that bitch on Twitter.’ Later on, that same girl kicked off again with someone completely different. See, it’s not just me.
The next day happened to be my birthday. It was right near the end of our stay in the villa, so Jordan ‘hosted’ a big party for me. All the food was gluten-free and everyone was wearing a paper crown. Jordan had already given me a toy elephant and a nice card in the morning, but I didn’t realise he still had something else up his sleeve.
We went upstairs to the penthouse, where Jordan suddenly got down on one knee, pulled out a ring and proposed. Actually asked me to marry him! What the fucking fuck? So there I was, paralytic, with a glass of Prosecco in my hand, staring at a grinning boy in tight white jeans, both of us wearing paper crowns, taking part in a TV reality show, with rose petals on the bed and cameras rolling next to us. Of course I said, ‘Yes.’
It was strangely emotional. I think I was just happy that a boy was being nice to me. Jordan told me I deserved to be happy because, as he put it, ‘You’ve been treated like shit so much.’ He was loving the ‘tamed man’ thing, and the ring he bought me was quite sweet. Jordan told me he’d spent £500 on it. Every time he mentioned it when the show aired, the real price popped up on screen – ‘£179’. Like how stupid could he be? Did he really think the producers were going to keep that a secret for him?
After the big proposal and my acceptance, he said, ‘I need to ring your mum and dad about this.’ I got a bit cross, asking him, ‘What do you mean, you haven’t rung them?’ and being all old-fashioned about it, even though inside I was thinking, ‘This isn’t real.’ But I knew it was all going to be on TV, so they had to know first.
Jordan dialled my mum’s number, and I heard him say, ‘Tanya, can I speak to you about something?’ I was meant to be standing outside our room, but I could hear their chat easily. He seemed to go a bit weird and just said, ‘Okay then, bye.’ I knew my mum and dad really liked him – I mean they knew he was a bit of a bean but they still liked him – but he told me my mum had said, ‘Sorry, Jordan, it’s not a good time to talk.’ I knew that was really out of character for my mum, so I insisted on calling her myself. We weren’t allowed any phones in the villa, but the producers made an exception for me on this occasion. I think they already had an inkling of what was going on at home. By the time I dialled the number, if I’m honest, so did I. Because for the previous two nights, I’d been having some very strange dreams…