by Sam Faiers
LIVING LIFE THE ESSEX WAY
Sam Faiers is the star of the ITV2 reality show The Only Way Is Essex. She owns and runs Minnies Boutique along with her mum and sister, Billie. Living Life the Essex Way is her first book.
Thanks to my family and friends, who have supported me so much, especially Billie and Dad.
But in particular to you, Mum –
this one’s for you!
First published in Great Britain by Simon & Schuster UK Ltd, 2012
Paperback edition published by Simon & Schuster UK Ltd, 2012
A CBS COMPANY
Copyright © 2012 by Sam Faiers and Emma Donnan
This book is copyright under the Berne Convention.
No reproduction without permission.
® and © 1997 Simon & Schuster Inc.
All rights reserved.
Picture credits: 17, 21–3 © PA; 19 © Xposure Photos; 20 © Matrix Pictures
The right of Sam Faiers to be identified as author of this work has been asserted by her in accordance with sections 77 and 78 of the Copyright, Designs and Patents Act, 1988.
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A CIP catalogue record for this book is available from the British Library
ISBN: 978-1-47111-421-2
eBook ISBN: 978-1-84983-980-8
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Printed and bound by CPI Group (UK) Ltd, Croydon, CRO 4YY
CONTENTS
Introduction
1 How the TOWIE Dream Began
2 The Orange County Rules
3 I’ve Always Been a Poser
4 The Men in My Life
5 Lots of Lashes and Lip Gloss
6 Living the Dream?
7 White Stilettos? As If!
8 My Business Mind
9 The Bigger, the Better
10 My Sister Billie
11 Diet and Exercise
12 The Other Way Is Marbs
13 Changing TOWIE
14 The Only Way Is Up!
Dictionary: The Essex Lingo
All My Thank Yous!
List of Illustrations
INTRODUCTION
Oxford Dictionary definition of ‘Essex girl’: noun, British, informal, derogatory: A brash, materialistic young woman of a type supposedly found in Essex or surrounding areas in the southeast of England.
For me, the true definition of ‘Essex girl’: noun, British, informal, complimentary: A stylish, hard-working, big-hearted and family-minded young woman found in Brentwood or nearby areas (and Marbs).
As Amy Childs came out through the changing room curtain in a wedding dress, I felt a nervous giggle building up in me, and when I tried to speak I couldn’t stop grinning. I could sense my friend Harry Derbidge doing the same next to me and was afraid to catch his eye.
I carried on talking, but saw this glint in Amy’s eye too, and suddenly I couldn’t hold it in, and all three of us got hysterical. We were lying on the floor laughing and couldn’t get it together. Hardly likely to be a great TV debut, but then can you blame us? The three of us were filming our first ever scene for The Only Way Is Essex, and we were terrified. I was so nervous, but giggling and excited at the same time. We were supposed to just be getting on with our everyday lives, but until you are used to having three cameras filming you, it can hardly be expected to feel very natural, can it? Especially as it was our first time in front of the cameras. We’d only had a rough briefing from the producers, and weren’t told how to behave, or even what to expect. So really, we were like three hyperactive kids.
After a stern talking to from the producer, who already had the hump with us, we carried on filming – not that our hysterics were a one-off that first day!
But let’s face it, only a few weeks before I had been working in a local bank, plotting how to improve my glamour-modelling career and trying to figure out what to wear to a night out at Sugar Hut that weekend. I hadn’t realised that within a couple of months I would be on one of the most discussed TV shows in the UK and written about in news papers and magazines practically every day – something which has had both good and bad effects on my life, as you’ll read about later. I would be able to earn in an hour what I earned in a month at the bank, and would be having experiences I had never dreamed of, not to mention the chance to open my own shop. It really does feel like I am living my dream right now. And I even get to do it all while still living in the best place in the world – Essex!
This book is my way of giving you a taste of my life growing up, what it is like being on TOWIE and what it means to be a true Essex girl. I hope you enjoy it – make sure you give me a tweet @SamanthaFaiers to let me know. And remember: don’t be jel, be reem!
Sam Faiers
1
HOW THE TOWIE DREAM BEGAN
So I guess you want to know how I got to be on The Only Way Is Essex in the first place, because being a show about ordinary people, it’s not like you can work towards getting cast. Being from Essex was perhaps the only qualification needed. But it was a more complicated route to the show than just that.
I know people in the public eye say this all the time, but I honestly never imagined that I would be famous one day. Other than when I was a kid, plotting to be in the next Spice Girls or something, I wasn’t one of those teenagers who dream of being a celebrity and spend all their time working out how to do it. You would never have seen me in a queue for the X Factor auditions!
Weirdly though, if you ask any of my schoolmates who they thought would end up being the famous one, they are all like, ‘Oh my God, yeah, blatantly it would be you, Sam!’ One of my mates reminded me that at primary school I did cheerleading and became obsessed with the film Bring It On. So when I was in Year 6 I insisted we had a cheerleading team too, and I loved being in it and showing off. So maybe wanting to be centre of attention was in me after all . . .
By the time TOWIE came along, I’d already had a taste of TV. I’d been in the Live & Kicking studio audience twice, and on The Sooty Show once – when they had filmed in Spain, where my family had a house – I was sat on the beach with the puppets! But apart from those Oscar-winning appearances, I’d had no experience of it, and wasn’t even thinking about getting on TV. Instead I was focused on getting myself established as a glamour model, and although I knew it wouldn’t last forever, it was my aim at the time. I also had a full-time job in a local bank, and hoped to progress there too. I was 18, and my aim was just to earn more so I could have more fun, as well as saving for the future. I had a manager to help with my modelling, but I didn’t have a proper agent at this point. Celebrities were just people I read about in magazines in my spare time.
Meanwhile, Brian Belo, who came from Essex, had just won the eighth series of Big Brother. After the show finished, he was always at Sugar Hut partying and basically making the most of his new celebrity status, as you would. Because of that he was friends with Kirk Norcross, who owns Sugar Hut, and Amy Childs, as she was always there with Kirk. Then he got to know me through Amy, although he says he had heard about me before that, through other people – all complimentary, I hope!
I already knew Kirk a bit before the show, and I have always thought he has two sides. One side of him is so lovely, almost too nice: the lovey-dovey family guy who loves women – he is obsessed with the whole boobs, bum and glam thing. Then there is the side of him that is like ‘my way or the highway’. He will argue himself into a big row if he thinks he’s right, even though sometimes it’s so blatantly o
bvious that he is wrong. I keep out of all that; I don’t want to get on his wrong side, knowing what he can be like. We’re not close, but we will probably always be in the same group of friends.
Anyway, once Brian had got a taste of fame he definitely wanted to keep working in TV, and he came up with this idea that he wanted to do a show about Essex. He wanted it to be like the American show The Hills, but with people from here. Because he’s from Essex himself, he knew it would be a bit mad and would show how different the place is from anywhere else in the UK. Or, for that matter, from anywhere in the world!
So he told us this plan, and said he wanted to call the show Totally Essex and make a pilot, a one-off version of the show that you give to production companies to see if you can get anyone interested in making it. He asked if the three of us wanted to be in it. I’ve never asked why he specifically wanted me to do it, but I guess he thought I was a good fun girl who is down to earth but likes to party too – pretty much what Essex is about.
At the time, as I’ve said, it wasn’t really in my life plan, but I thought, ‘Well, I have nothing to lose, so why not?’ Actually I thought nothing big would really come of it, other than if I was on TV, it would probably be quite good for my modelling career. So I reckoned I would go for it.
So Brian invited me, Amy, Kirk and a few of his other friends who he thought would make for funny TV over to his friend Chris Carter’s house. Chris was also taking part in the pilot show, and Mark Wright was there too. I had known Mark for a few years, and he was popular and well known in the area, partly for all his club work, but also as a playboy – yep, even before TOWIE was aired, that was definitely his local reputation! So I guess Brian knew he’d make good viewing.
There was a TV company called Sassy Productions on board too, and basically for the pilot, we all had to talk about ourselves to camera: what we did for a living, why we loved our lives, what set Essex apart from the rest of the country, that kind of thing. I talked mostly about doing glamour modelling. Looking back at the tape, it is so embarrassing and cringey – if that had been aired, it might have been the biggest mistake of my life!
Mark chatted to camera about how he was so good-looking that he would never go home alone, that kind of thing – typical of him. He kept winking at the camera and his hair was slicked back with tons of gel – it was really funny. Kirk talked a lot about how much money he had and about clubbing, and Amy talked about her boob job and basically just chatted on in the way she does. I don’t know if I should admit this, but you can still find the pilot on YouTube . . . To be honest, I don’t think any of us came across particularly well.
Then Brian went off with the tape, and we heard nothing about it for just under a year. He was going to production companies, but it seemed no one wanted it, which may have been a good thing!
Anyhow, the next thing that happened – I was 19 by now – was I got a call from a lady called Sarah Dillistone from Lime Pictures, who said she wanted to meet me and Amy for a casting for a new show she was doing. We went together to Mooro’s, a restaurant in Chigwell, next to the gym where Amy used to work as a beautician, and just chatted with her. It was really relaxed, and at the end she was basically like ‘I love you’. We found out later that she had also seen Mark and Kirk, and we were like ‘Oh my God, this is amazing!’
They also got James Argent – Arg – on board through Mark. I have known Arg for years after I dated one of his friends, and I think he is a great guy. We get on brilliantly, although we argue like brother and sister. He knows I will always be straight with him and tell him when he is annoying me, and he doesn’t always like that and tells me I am horrible, but both of us know the other one doesn’t mean it. It’s a classic brother–sister relationship.
I had my first ciggie with Arg. He used to smoke the odd cheeky cigarette, and when I was about 18 I remember having one with him at a bus stop. It makes me laugh thinking of that. I liked hanging out with Arg, but I didn’t like the cigarette!
Anyway, as well as Arg, Mark got his then girlfriend Lauren Goodger and his sister Jess Wright on board. Harry Derbidge came through me and Amy, and then there was a couple who appeared only in the first series, Candy Jacobs and Michael Woods. And that was about it – the cast (if that’s what you could call us!) wasn’t so big in the beginning.
Harry is Amy’s cousin, but I have known him since he was six, when he would come to family meals, and even then it was pretty obvious he was gay – Amy was always putting shoes and make-up on him and doing him up like a doll. His brother is very blokeish, so I think he’s always enjoyed having me and Amy around to talk to.
He confronted and dealt with the fact that he was gay really well. I think his family – especially his mum Karen, who is lovely – gave him loads of support. He was openly gay through school, and his attitude was: ‘This is who I am, I can’t help being this way, deal with it.’ And I think because he was so brave and was not worried about what other people thought, he didn’t get any hassle. What you see is what you get with Harry. He is obsessed with everything to do with girls, like boobs and periods. We all knew he would make for great TV!
Anyway, we did a pilot with Lime, and this time it was exactly as TOWIE turned out. So rather than talking to camera, as we had done with Brian, it was us being filmed actually getting on with everyday life. We weren’t given much of a brief at all, as I think at this point the producers wanted to just let us get on with it and see what happened. So they would say things like: ‘Just get ready for a night out and chat with each other like you would if we weren’t here.’
A lot of the scenes from the pilot ended up in the first episode, like us taking Amy’s dog for a walk and me and Amy getting ready for a night at Sugar Hut. It was so weird having the cameras there as we got on with our normal lives. They try to make it as subtle as possible, but at the end of the day there are a lot of people involved in filming, so it can end up feeling more like a set, no matter how hard they try. There are usually about ten people, including three cameramen with cameras on tripods, a sound guy, a director and a producer.
I remember the very first scene we filmed really clearly. It was the one I mentioned in the introduction, with me, Amy and Harry in the shop, when Amy came out of the changing room in a wedding dress. Oh my God, it was hilarious. The moment that marked the point of no return in our laughing was when I said to Amy, ‘Oh, Kirk will definitely take you up the aisle.’ I meant it innocently, but all three of us have dirty minds and we got the giggles and were soon hysterical. The crew didn’t get the innuendo and got the hump with us, but we were lying on the floor laughing. We really couldn’t get it together, and they were like, ‘Come on.’ But this was all so new to us – we just couldn’t take it too seriously.
They couldn’t use that bit, but the idea is to try not to reshoot any scenes, because that wouldn’t be natural. You might have to repeat a sentence for the camera, if someone talks over you, or repeat a walk down the stairs or something if they got the angle wrong, but most of the time reshooting wouldn’t work, because you wouldn’t get people’s genuine reactions. Anyway, that first day of filming was great, and no wonder the pilot was so good!
I am not really sure what happened as far as Brian was concerned. We didn’t fall out with him, as he accepts that Amy and I were approached by a different company, who we saw as bringing in a new project. But he claims that the idea was stolen from him by Lime Pictures, and Lime claim they were already working on a very similar concept, but also say that we did come to their attention through Brian’s tape. I don’t know the ins and outs really, but I know it has now become a legal battle between them, as was reported in the papers last year (2011), which is a shame.
I think Brian is upset as he got no credit for bringing the main characters to the table, and to be fair I am not sure Lime would have found me and Amy without him. Kirk and Mark are maybe a different matter though, as they were so well known around Essex that anyone wanting to do a show about life there would probabl
y have ended up finding them.
Either way, it was a brilliant idea, whoever came up with it first. But I am glad we ended up doing the show with Lime. I love Sarah and get on really well with her, and I honestly don’t think – much as I love Brian – that he would have pulled off a better show, even for such simple reasons like him obviously having a much smaller budget to work with. Lime has been great to work with, and the whole crew have definitely become genuinely good friends of mine now.
Anyway, there was a gap of only a month or two after we filmed the pilot before Lime took it to ITV2. I have no idea what was said about it and what made them decide to go for it, but ITV obviously liked it, because soon after Sarah called to tell us it had been commissioned. I really didn’t know at that point what TOWIE was going to turn into, but I tell you, I was so excited at the time anyway. I just remember leaping around the house, and Amy and I making all sorts of crazy plans for what we would do when we became well known. We loved the idea of posing for the paparazzi! I didn’t think twice about handing in my notice at the bank as soon as it was commissioned – come on, it was hardly a difficult choice, was it? It didn’t occur to me to take on an agent at this point – it was only halfway through the first series, when people started approaching me to do interviews and photo shoots, that I realised I needed someone to look after that side of things.
There was a bit more filming to be done to finish off the first episode, but we didn’t do anything for later episodes just yet, as they wanted to keep it as current as possible. So what you see on TV each week has generally been filmed within the last week. Once they had enough material for the first episode, they invited the cast to the Maddox Club in London for the official launch – and I cannot tell you how excited we were.
We got there and there were posters of us all over the place, and all the top people from ITV. They were basically the big bosses who had decided the show would happen. There was also loads of press there to meet us for the first time and watch the first episode, which was so scary, as what the media think of something can really influence the public.
