One of the things I appreciate the most about the way my career has developed in the past year is getting invited to take part in things I wouldn’t have dreamed of when I was younger.
Even with all the things I’ve done over the past few months – feeding animals on a farm, singing the US national anthem in front of loads of cowboys at a rodeo – something really special that stands out for me is The Real Full Monty: Ladies Night, a once-in-a-lifetime experience that I’ll always remember.
I’d heard all about the boy version the year before – a bunch of male celebs stripping off to raise awareness of prostate cancer – so when I heard they were planning a ladies’ one, I really wanted to take part. My granddad suffered from prostate cancer, so I thought this would be a really nice way of paying tribute to him. I also knew it would be a great show, an opportunity to meet some amazing people and work with them, and it was a really important cause too – raising awareness of breast cancer as well as other types of the disease.
I went for a meeting with the producers in London, and they were keen for all of us taking part to have some sort of connection to the illness – sadly, there aren’t many families that don’t – but when I got there, I kept asking loads of questions, and I think they realised I could be useful on the show like that as well. They needed someone to be a bit thick – and I don’t mean that in a bad way at all, I just mean someone who wanted to learn stuff – and I was happy to be that person. I wasn’t shy about asking, ‘What does that mean? What does that look like?’ which meant I could help loads of viewers who were probably wondering the same thing. Plus, they wanted to reach a younger audience who’d be asking those questions too, and it was really important for me to be able to do that. I hope I did bring in some younger viewers, just like my friend Arg hopefully did on the boys’ one.
So I went for this big meeting, dressed up all nice, and had these big chats about the show and how it would all work, and finally I remembered to ask about the actual clothes we’d be wearing, or I should say, lack of them. I asked whether they wanted us to bare all, and the answer was, ‘Whatever you feel most comfortable baring.’ For some reason, I asked them, ‘Will I be able to wear nipple tassles?’ like I thought that was going to make it look any better LOL.
I remember thinking I’d probably end up in some sort of sexy suspender underwear, complete with nipple tassles! – don’t ask me why! – like it was going to be a cabaret-type thing, some sort of burlesque outfit. They kept saying, ‘It’s for you to discuss with the other ladies,’ so I just thought, ‘Oh, that’ll be fine, we’ll sort it out… and I’ll definitely be wearing nipple covers.’
I got the official yes a few days later, which was amazing. A few months passed before we were set to begin rehearsing. I got busy and forgot to think much more about it really, until the day before the very first rehearsal, when they rang me to check, ‘Are you ready for tomorrow? It’s going to be exciting meeting everyone.’
I was in the car when they rang and I replied, ‘Cool, I just want to double check. I’m going to be wearing nipple covers, right?’
Big pause.
They said, ‘No, this is actually going to be baring all.’ I said, ‘What, not my nipples?’ but they said, ‘Well, yeah.’ I thought, ‘What have I gone and done here?’ but they explained that, when we went completely topless, all the TV viewers would see would be our backs, so that made me feel a bit better, even though I soon realised there’d be a live audience there as well who’d be getting an eyeful of a lot more.
I also started panicking about the rehearsals as well. It wasn’t just going to be the girls in the room, there’d be all the film crew, producers, everyone looking. I didn’t sleep much that night.
I got to the rehearsal room the next day and we were all introduced. Such a lovely group of ladies, and a huge mixture – presenters Victoria Derbyshire, Sarah-Jane Crawford and Coleen Nolan, Sally Dexter from Emmerdale, legend Ruth Madoc, comedian Helen Lederer, plus popstar Michelle Heaton and me.
When it came to getting our kit off, some people were braver than others, they just got on with it, getting their boobs out, practising the dance steps, but I couldn’t do that. I said, ‘I’m not doing it until the last possible moment,’ even though loads of people kept telling me, ‘It’ll be better for you just to get them out and get used to it,’ but I couldn’t. I kept saying ‘No’ and I stuck to my word.
Throughout the rehearsals, it did get difficult, especially when they threw things at us at the last minute, like photo shoots where we had to strip off. Don’t get me wrong, I’ve done those kind of sexy photo shoots before where you’re clearly not wearing much even if you can’t see anything, but I’m not a topless model and, well, I’ve not got the biggest boobs and I’ve definitely got the smallest boobs out of the group, so it got quite difficult for me. One day we did a Calendar Girls shoot where we covered up our bits with cakes, buns and bottles of champagne. To be fair, I only need a couple of cup cakes for mine! But, although I’ve got this massive grin on my face in the pictures, in reality I ended up going off camera and having a little cry. I know it might sound silly, but I just felt really exposed and self-conscious. I just kept thinking, ‘I know the viewers aren’t going to see much, but there are so many other people in this room!’
What made it worse for me was knowing that what some of those other girls had been through was so much worse than any of this. Victoria and Michelle had both been through mastectomies, they’d been frightened for their lives, and there was me worrying about just showing them off. Trust me, I absolutely knew it was stupid but it didn’t stop me feeling like that.
Apart from my small boobs, I’ve got other insecurities about my body. People might not realise, but I worry about things like my waist, my legs, and I was worried about the film crew seeing all that. At one point, they were filming us from all angles while we were rehearsing, and I asked them, ‘Oh, can you not shoot me from the back?’ They must have been thinking, ‘What on earth is she going on about?’ But that’s the real me, always panicking.
I know I have lots of photos of my body out there, but when I’m taking pics for Instagram, it’s always in a very private, controlled setting. There are normally only a couple of people there, and they are ones I know and trust – like my manager, makeup artist, hairdresser and our photographer Danny Craven, who I’ve worked with for a long time now and have built up a friendship with – but in this situation there were loads of people wandering around that I didn’t know at all, and it completely threw me.
This is how insecure I got. At one point, I even went and got a mirror to check my reflection, and I got absolutely slated online for worrying about my hair and stuff. People were writing, ‘There’s people on there that have really suffered, get over yourself.’
The difference between me and the other ladies, though, is how much shit I have to read, daily, about myself online. I get trolled a lot more than the others because I’m of that age where it happens a lot more frequently. Who in their right mind is going to troll Ruth Madoc? It shouldn’t happen to any of us, actually, but I’ve got a large younger following and, while most people are lovely, that’s where the trolls are, let’s face it.
I should tell you it does make me worry when I put pictures on Instagram. Only the other day I was about to put a nice picture up there, and then I realised it looked, to me at least, like I had a bone sticking out a bit. No one else noticed, but I was worrying the whole time, asking, ‘Do you think someone’s going to say something?’ I was over-analysing the whole thing so much that, one point, I thought, ‘I’m just not going to put the picture up,’ before I realised I was being stupid. But my fear comes from all the trolling.
I knew The Real Full Monty would be a big chance for them to get at me, so I was a bit wary. It stayed on my mind the whole time I was rehearsing for the show. It was a big shadow hanging over me, just waiting for the backlash, waiting for the shit to hit the fan, but I’m stubborn, so I was never going to give up. I wouldn’t give them the satisfaction, plus it was far too important.
I say never giving up, but… there was a moment on the very first day when I thought I wouldn’t be able to manage it. Never mind the boobs, it was the dance steps that were the problem. As you know, I’ve had stage training for years, but as you also know, dancing was never my strong point back in the day. Lovely Ashley Banjo was teaching us the routine but, not going to lie, after that very first session, I got in the car, came straight home and told my mum, ‘I can’t do it. I can’t pick up the routine. I don’t know if I want to go back. I feel embarrassed.’
My mum made me a cup of tea and then did exactly the right thing. She said, ‘Show me the routine. Show me all this stuff you can’t do.’ So I went through it, and she just laughed. She said, ‘There’s nothing wrong with that. Pull yourself together.’
The other thing that changed my mind was getting a text message that night from Coleen Nolan. What a nice woman! She could see I was over-thinking everything, and really beating myself up over the steps in the rehearsal, so she sent me a lovely message, telling me how good I looked, and adding, ‘We’re all in this together.’ I really didn’t know Coleen that well at that point, but it came at just the right moment, and it was really kind of her.
We had ten days of rehearsal in total, spread out over a few months, and my confidence really grew after that first session. It was like being back at stage school for me. I used to turn up to rehearsals early, and all us ladies became very close too.
I hadn’t known any of the others that well before we did this. Victoria was really strong, very nice, I got on really well with her. Coleen became like my rehearsal mum, looking out for me all the time. Helen and I used to stand together at the back, giggling our way through the rehearsals, trying to help each other out. I also got really close to Sarah-Jane, such a cool girl. She’s vegan, I’m gluten-free, so we became ‘the difficult pair’ at lunchtime together. She’s become a great friend.
One day, we were all invited to attend the Moulin Rouge cabaret in Paris, which meant travelling by Eurostar, and I ended up sitting with Ruth. She and I hadn’t had a chance to chat properly until then; she probably had no idea who I was – can’t blame her for that – and neither did I realise how much work she’d done. She was telling me all the different roles she’d played, including playing Daffyd’s mum in Little Britain. Well, that made me totally starstruck. I LOVE that show! Of course, I told her that, and then she asked me what I’d been up to. I told her a few stories – managed to leave out most of the bad language – and she was hilarious about it all. She couldn’t believe all the dramas I’d gone through in my young life. She sat there with her mouth wide open and eventually she said, with perfect comic timing in her brilliant Welsh accent, ‘Well, I learn something new every day.’
When we got to the Moulin Rouge, well… I have to say, I thought the dancing was pretty average, but then I guess people don’t really go for the dancing. The room itself was amazing, though, like being on the set of Bugsy Malone. We were all there to get our confidence up apparently, to realise that everyone gets their boobs out, it’s no big deal. But… the difference with those girls is, they’re cast specifically to look a certain way; they have to have a regulation body, height, weight, everything, plus, if you can hold a pencil under your boobs, you don’t get the job – I’d actually pass that test! – whereas we were all different shapes and sizes. Oh well, keeps it interesting, I suppose.
For the night itself, we all had to go up to Sheffield to film it, and it’s fair to say that, by the time we got to the theatre, the adrenalin was pumping. In our dress rehearsals, we’d had people’s tops pinging off and I was feeling the nerves all over again. When we got to our final rehearsal, I was pinging my top off but I was actually secretly wearing another bra underneath, as I still couldn’t bring myself to do it. The crew lit us deliberately so that we’d be less exposed, but a lot of people could still see us, I’m sure.
By the time it came to get out there for real, I was so nervous my mouth completely dried up. Literally, my lips were sticking to my veneers, ha ha.
Despite all that, I have to say, it was really good fun getting ready – getting all glammed up with the other ladies, plus my makeup girl Sam really smashed it. This is a special shout out to Sam for that night; she’d literally just had her baby but she knew how important the night was, so she came all the way to Sheffield to do my hair and makeup – l love that girl, I want her everywhere with me. I just want to roll her up and keep her in my bag. She’s magic!
After all that worry, the routine itself went off perfectly. Okay, we made a few mistakes along the way, some of us forgot some bits, but we got through it in one piece, thanks to some clever camera angles, and the massive smiles on our faces at the end were all completely genuine. We had the best time. When the song ‘This is Me’ from The Greatest Showman comes on, it still gives me goosebumps.
A huge support to me that evening was having my family around me, plus a very special someone at my side for the whole thing. Along with everyone else, he travelled all the way to Sheffield to make sure I was all right, and support me through the night. But I’ll get to him in a bit…
Why did doing The Real Full Monty matter so much to me? Well the whole performing side of it was something I hadn’t shown to the public for a really long time, so I thought lots of people were going to be saying stuff like, ‘What’s she going to be like? Is she going to be any good? Will she be rubbish? What’s she doing there?’ That was a big thing for me, plus I was stressing out so much about getting my boobs out that when I finally did it, it felt like a really big achievement.
I think lots of people look at me and think, ‘Oh, it’s that nutter on the TV,’ but this show gave me a chance to show people I’m just a normal, insecure girl, just like anyone else my age.
Plus it was a major-league big show, an important, serious message, with me standing on stage next to people I’d never thought I would work with, people like Coleen and Ruth. But like Coleen said, we really were all in it together. We got on so well, we formed a GroupChat and we’re all still in it, chatting away. I’ve done group TV before and what normally happens is, you form a GroupChat and then one by one everyone leaves it over the next couple of weeks and that’s it, you don’t speak again, but not this time. This experience definitely meant something to all of us.
The reaction to our performance was amazing. On the night itself, my social media went nuts and it didn’t calm down for weeks. Most importantly, we had messages from all sorts of people, including young girls, saying that, for the first time, it had made them check their breasts.
One viewer wrote to me, and this is what she said:
‘I just want to say a massive thank you for saving my life. After The Real Full Monty was shown on TV, I checked my breasts, which is something I never do. I was devastated to find a lump. The following day I was seen by a doctor and referred to a breast clinic. This week I have received the devastating news I have breast cancer. Never did I think at thirty-eight this would happen. I’m now due to have surgery and have a full mastectomy. Thankfully by catching it early I have a good chance at life. Thank you from the bottom of my heart.’
I was stunned to receive this message, and so relieved she’d got checked early. Because the truth is, young girls don’t check. They don’t think it’s going to happen to them. Especially girls with small boobs like me. So it’s really, really important.
On a personal note, I was pleased to have the chance to show this other side of myself. The whole experience taught me that it’s okay for me to feel scared about stuff, but, as long as I keep going, I’ll be able to do more things that feel well outside my comfort zone.
And, after that little bit of abuse about the mirror early on, all the trolling stopped. I didn’t get one nasty comment. It was all positive. So that was another learning experience, just another one to add to the many.