CHAPTER 20

BURN OUT

A few days later I was on a plane, flying to Dubai with Kevin for a much-needed holiday. I was really looking forward to it, but you know how you can keep going until you give your body permission to rest? That’s what I was doing. I was like a car running downhill on an empty petrol tank. When it gets to the bottom of the hill, it comes to a stop.

One night when we were having dinner in a lovely restaurant, I looked at Kevin and said as I toyed with my food, ‘Baby, I’m so exhausted I could cry.’

‘That’s OK, Baby,’ he said, his face soft with kindness and understanding. ‘Don’t give yourself a hard time about it.’ He’d been working non-stop for eight years, so he knew exactly what it was like to feel so shattered.

We analysed what had been happening. When I started Strictly in 2003, I’d come straight from years of competing, and I’d never had a proper rest since.

This holiday recharged my batteries a bit, but it wasn’t until months later that I realized how much more time I really needed to give myself.

Whatever next?

Back home in Surrey, I decided to find the time I’d promised myself to complete the NLP and hypnosis courses I’d started before the Strictly tour in 2009, the one with Tom. I saw it as a sabbatical from my normal working life, but, as often happens when I decide to take a break, new opportunities flooded in, including being asked to do my fitness DVD, Dance Off The Inches. But something had changed. Somehow I couldn’t muster my usual drive or motivation. I felt creatively empty, as if I’d lost my mojo, and I didn’t like it. I only knew how to work. Even since I was a child, I’d never had much time for relaxation. And now I asked myself, if I couldn’t get as excited as usual about work, then what was left?

I was in a state of flux. Did I want to leave show business and move into full-time motivational work? And if it was the latter, how could I motivate others when I couldn’t even motivate myself? I remember that at the time I had this deep feeling of loss inside: more than loss, emptiness. I was shocked that the enormous drive I had always had, that had taken me from a two-year-old with a clumsy foot to a professional dancer at the very top of her profession, had gone. And I was terrified in case it never came back.

Flux was soon replaced by limbo! I couldn’t see the reason for anything. I was burned out. I realized that after years on the treadmill, going round and round more and more frantically like a hamster on its wheel, it would take a lot more than a week in Dubai to put the wind back in my sails.

Thank God for Kevin. He totally understood that. He knew I just needed time. Having said that, maybe he was another reason I felt less inspired in my professional career. Our life together was so wonderful that it really put into the shade any joy I could ever hope to get from my work. In fact, being with Kevin, for the first time in any relationship, I could see that marriage would add something to my life and that it would trump simply living together. True, I’d always said to Brendan that I didn’t need a ring on my finger to prove my commitment. But then Kevin told me, not once but often, what a wonderful thing he thought marriage was. ‘Look at our parents,’ he’d say. ‘They’ve been together over 40 years. Isn’t it beautiful to have that kind of commitment and grow old together.’ And when he said that, I found myself wanting that commitment and secretly wishing he’d ask me to marry him. I’d come to realize that to commit yourself to another person for the rest of your life has to be the ultimate way to express your love.

I had no idea what plans Kevin had in mind, but after we’d been at Erin Boag’s wedding in Positano, on Italy’s Amalfi coast, we went on to Capri for a few days on holiday. It’s such a beautiful island and I loved it so much that I wanted to show it to Kevin. It was there that I found myself thinking wistfully how romantic it would be to get engaged there. It came as a huge surprise when the thought came into my head – but there it was!

Then as if reading my mind, Kevin kept joking about what a beautiful, romantic place Capri was. ‘I wish I’d thought of it sooner,’ he said. ‘If I had, I could have proposed to you here. Shame I don’t have a ring. Would a Haribo do instead?’ I thought we were both having a laugh. If I’d had even an inkling that getting engaged was on Kevin’s mind, the way he was joking about it would have banished the thought from my head. Little did I know!

To commit yourself to another person for the rest of your life has to be the ultimate way to express your love

After we’d been there for a day or two, we were walking down a cliff path to an idyllic beach when he suddenly went down on his knees. Thinking he was still fooling around, I begged him to get up. ‘It’s not funny, Babe!’ I said. And it wasn’t. But how was he to know that his pulling my leg was ruining my fantasy proposal.

But this time he wasn’t pulling my leg, he was pulling something out of his pocket. And, when I saw what it was, I gasped. He was holding the most beautiful ring I’d ever seen – a Tiffany princess-cut diamond, with smaller diamonds around the centre one. It was stunning, delicate and elegant, exactly the ring I would have chosen for myself!

Then he stopped smiling. ‘Will you marry me?’ he asked with a serious look on his face.

As I answered with a resounding ‘Yes!’ my sunglasses were sent flying through the air as I threw my arms around him. I don’t think I’ve ever wanted anything more in my life.

And this time, unlike the last time I’d got engaged, we started planning our perfect wedding day right away. The following summer, we decided. In Ibiza.

I’m A Celebrity

Strictly had catapulted me into the world of celebrity, where the phone would ring and someone would ask, ‘Are you up for a project we’re planning?’ That was how I’d got Underdog, the TV show where Kevin and I had met, as well as the fitness video, the Aristoc endorsement, the CBBC show Dance Factory and many other projects; and it was how, just after I got engaged to Kevin, I was invited onto I’m A Celebrity … Get Me Out Of Here! I jumped at the chance. What was I thinking?

Spiders, snakes, dark tunnels, foul smells, jungle grub challenges; I had no idea what I was letting myself in for. And yet I thought I had prepared myself perfectly! I was given a month’s warning only, but during that time I’d used hypnosis to help feel comfortable with rats and creepy-crawlies. But when the producer said to me, ‘There won’t be much food out there,’ I can’t have been listening properly!

Diet-wise, the most preparation I’d done was to wean myself off coffee, because I didn’t want to be the grumpy one craving her caffeine fix. And I thought I could avoid any headaches, too. But food? Somehow I completely forgot how much it means to me! I’ve got a fast metabolism and a big appetite, but I’m also used to eating little and often to fit in with dancing. But eating little and often wasn’t something that fitted with life in the jungle where there would be nothing to snack on and everything would be rationed to a few paltry portions of tasteless rice and beans.

Along with the other contestants I was taken to Sydney’s Gold Coast, but we were all put in different hotels and not allowed to meet for a few days. The producers wanted to ratchet up the tension, and leave us guessing who the others would be. Then, the moment of truth came, and we were all introduced to each other on a boat. And what a great group it was. Among the celebs who I’d be sharing jungle life with were Hollywood star George Hamilton, the TV chef Gino D’Acampo, the singer Samantha Fox and eight or nine others.

We were divided into three different groups. One had to hike into the camp, one skydived and my group rode in on horseback. So far so good.

Two days after we had all arrived at the camp, and shortly after the show had gone live in the UK, Katie Price arrived too. She’d done it before, and the public voted for her to do practically every task in her first week, so the rest of us were just hanging around, feeling a bit flat.

I don’t think I’d ever sat around for five days just doing nothing. I was so bored. Looking back, maybe it was a sign from the universe that I needed to learn to sit still and just be. And it wasn’t just the boredom, I was starving all the time. It was so unbearable that one day when we were given a water melon to share, a few of us actually considered eating the skin.

It was literally beans and rice three times a day, supplemented by whatever the producers decided to reward us with – which was still not as lot – when someone completed one of the gruesome tasks they’d been asked to do.

With the fire blasting out smoke all night, sleep was hard to come by, and as for going to the loo, still wearing a microphone and with just a piece of canvas between you and the camera, that really was the pits!

Strangest of all though, was how you adjust to these things quite quickly and they start to feel normal. Even so, I knew something wasn’t right when I started getting a desperate craving for bananas. I’d had it before when I was a dancer and I was low on sugar. But from the moment I started craving bananas in the jungle, it was downhill all the way. When I started getting bad cramp in my hands, I knew it was a sign of mineral deficiency. When I was desperate for something sweet, Sam [Fox] gave me some jam she’d somehow smuggled in from one of the tasks, but it wasn’t enough.

Early in the fourth evening, when I’d been in the diary room and been asked about a conversation I’d had with some of the other contestants, I couldn’t remember their names or what we’d talked about. This was a very scary moment for me. Later that night Katie Price said she could tell I wasn’t well and offered to top and tail with me in her camp bed. ‘I’m used to it with the kids if they are not well,’ she said. ‘So just wake me up if you need me.’

A few hours into the night I felt my breathing was getting tighter, my hands were cramping badly and I didn’t feel at all like myself. I lay there thinking about what had happened in the diary room and I started to feel as if my mind was going. That will rank as one of the scariest moments in my life for some time.

In the middle of the night I woke Katie and said I was feeling really ill. Being the lovely, kind person she is, she walked me up to the diary room and sat with me until the doctor came. She was still totally jetlagged, trying desperately not to drop off. I’ll never forget what a gem she was that night.

The doctor gave me something to help me sleep and the next morning when I saw her again we agreed that I couldn’t go on with the show: I had to be sent home. I was given food and drink and two days later when I was fully rehydrated, I was on a flight back to England, heading for home.

I hated having to leave early. I know it made me look like a quitter, and that was one thing I’d NEVER been! And I hated letting the others down. But I had to accept defeat. I chose my health over a TV show and I could live with that.

As soon as I was out of the jungle I called Kevin and my Mor. They were both so relieved to hear my voice because apparently they had seen some footage of me crying live on air. ‘Thank goodness you are out,’ Mor said. ‘I’ve been praying that you wouldn’t stay. You looked so unwell, I was seriously worried about you.’

And apparently when I talked to Kevin on the phone, I sounded so dreadful, delirious almost, that he told me later that he’d hardly understood a word I’d been saying, ‘You sounded as if you were talking in your sleep,’ he said.

For two weeks, I was unwell and almost too weak to move. Kevin slowly helped me to regain my strength with my favourite dishes like his home-cooked salmon, lamb and chicken. When I was stronger, he told me there had been some bad press and that some people had been saying some really unpleasant things about me, like that I obviously had some sort of eating disorder. He’d been really upset and wanted to defend me somehow. He knows I love food and was angry that word was going around that I was constantly on a diet.

Funnily enough, I didn’t get as upset as Kevin about it. I just thought, ‘I know the truth and that’s all that matters.’

Enough is enough!

Although I am the biggest fan of I’m A Celebrity and I adore Ant and Dec, I just had to admit that my body wasn’t suited to what it was being asked to go through. I think in life it’s quite OK to throw your hands in the air and say, ‘Well, at least I tried’, because if I hadn’t given it a go I would have wondered what it would have been like, and it might have ended up being the best thing I’d ever done.

Sometimes fear of the unknown holds us back from trying something new, so I’m proud that I went for it because although I fell ill, I also have some amazing memories from the four days spent in the jungle – the laughter, dancing with everyone around the campfire, the friends I made. And I learnt a valuable lesson about what my own limitations are. I now know that I’m happy to take on challenges as long as I have my food and my sleep!

GIVE YOURSELF A BREAK

After I’m A Celebrity, I realized that I hadn’t fully recovered from the burnout I’d had before I’d embarked on the show. I didn’t know that at the time, but I learned from the experience that I mustn’t let myself burn out again. Now, if I feel stressed or need inspiration for a project or speech, I simply take some time out, anything between 5–20 minutes, to meditate.

You may be thinking, ‘I could never do that’, but believe me, if I can do it anyone can. I used to find it so hard to sit quietly for even five minutes. My mind would race away and I would be thinking of 101 things at one time, making plans about tomorrow, next year, whatever, but eventually I taught myself to just take five minutes. It helps to join a meditation group, or if you prefer to be on your own, you can find a guided meditation on the Internet. Or you can do what I do – just sit with your eyes closed, allowing thoughts to come and go, not paying any attention to them. Sometimes my five minutes became 10 or 20, but I was happy even if it was just the five. Taking this time now gives me the inner calm I need to see me through the rest of the day, and meditation definitely helped me change my life, to be more calm and keep the creativity flowing.

SO, TAKE FIVE MINUTES …

Sit on the floor, cross your legs, and rest with your hands palms-up on your knees. Close your eyes and focus on your breath going in and out. I find it helps to have some soft music in the background. Ask in your mind what it is you’re looking for: inspiration maybe or the guidance to see through a project you’re involved in. When the five minutes are up, open your eyes and take a few deep breaths to bring you back, and as you do this, be thankful for the inspiration to carry on with your day, for it’s more than likely that things will flow just that little bit easier because you have given yourself the gift of being calm. Remember what Matthew wrote in chapter 7, verse 7 of the Bible: ‘Ask, and it will be given to you; seek, and you will find; knock, and the door will be opened for you.’