Fragile

by Nikki Grahame

  That evening Mum and I were due to meet all my friends for a curry. They were all late as they hadn’t been home since the previous evening. Mum and I sat in the restaurant waiting for them, squeezing each other’s leg in excitement, barely able to believe the adventure I was embarking upon.

  That was a Friday, which meant I had just two days to prepare to meet the chaperone who would be minding me for the fortnight until filming began. I spent the whole weekend shopping, looking for an entire new wardrobe to take with me into the house – including my arrival and eviction outfits.

  On the Sunday evening Mum came round to my flat to say goodbye.

  ‘The next time you see me, Mum, I’ll be coming down the stairs at the Big Brother house,’ I said as we stood hugging in my hall. We were both crying.

  Next morning I felt like a spy on a secret mission as I stood outside Sloane Square tube station looking for a woman called Anna Dunkley, a Big Brother researcher. When she came up to me and introduced herself, we got into a car and went straight to a nearby Holiday Inn, where we spent the rest of the day.

  First there was a photo shoot for our official Big Brother pictures, then I had to fill in a mammoth questionnaire about everything you could imagine. What would my epitaph be? What was the most recent argument I’d had? The most upsetting moment I’d ever had? The happiest moment I’d ever had?

  Then we spent the rest of the day eating, sleeping and just hanging around.

  There was no phone in the room and Anna took my mobile from me too. The production team were terrified about the press finding out where we were, so security was paramount. And I wasn’t allowed magazines, newspapers or even a television because they didn’t want us to know anything about what was going on in the outside world.

  I wasn’t even permitted to step outside the room as other housemates were staying in the same hotel and we couldn’t be allowed to meet before arriving in the house.

  It all felt really weird, but I was used to weird environments and I’d spent years sitting around doing nothing in particular.

  The next morning we got into Anna’s car and headed south to Dover. We were off to Belgium. I guess it was a strange place to take me but if they were looking for somewhere remote where there was no chance I would bump into anyone I knew or be found by the press, then the Belgian countryside was the place.

  Anna and I had a wicked time. We stayed in a really remote three-bedroom farmhouse which was part of an old castle. Cows were grazing in the fields outside but there was nothing else for miles all around.

  We joined a gym and a video shop in the nearest town and hired videos every night as I wasn’t allowed to watch television. We went to theme parks, hired bikes for the day and went shopping in Brussels and Bruges.

  One day there was a carnival in the local town and we had a brilliant time watching everyone singing and dancing. And one night we went to see a band play there and we got really drunk on cherry beer.

  It was one of the best holidays I’d ever had. Although it was like a girlie trip, I was still aware that at no time could I let my guard down to Anna, and I never let slip anything about my anorexia and childhood.

  We took it in turns to cook and I ate quite well, although after just a day my OCD became apparent when I kept having to wash my plate before every meal.

  ‘Do you think you’ll be OK in the house if you get like that,’ Anna asked me seriously. ‘Oh, I’ll be fine,’ I breezed. ‘You’d be amazed what I could cope with.’ She would have been amazed too!

  I really missed Mum and was desperate to speak to her. Although I’d been away from home for most of my childhood and teens, I’d never gone a fortnight without speaking to her and it was killing me.

  Sometimes I’d look at Anna’s phone lying on the table while she was in the shower. A quick phone call to Mum wouldn’t hurt, I’d think. Big Brother would never find out. But if anyone had discovered where I was then, I would be instantly thrown off the show and I wouldn’t risk that, so I never picked up the phone.

  As the ferry docked, after two weeks, at Dover and we drove off the ramp on to the terminal and headed to Elstree.

  What I didn’t realise was that my name had already been in the newspapers in Britain as someone thought to be going into the Big Brother house.

  I’d left Mum with instructions to tell anyone who wondered where I was that I had gone on holiday to Tunisia. But it didn’t fool everyone.

  When Mum opened her paper one morning and saw my name printed there she nearly collapsed from shock. Then she had to lie her teeth off as she knew if she gave the game away I’d be pulled from the show.

  Mum even lied to Dad and Natalie, saying I’d gone to Tunisia on a late holiday deal with some of my dancing friends.

  Dad says he was never convinced because he’d known Mum long enough to know when she was lying. And he knew that going on Big Brother would be my dream come true. But Natalie believed her. I don’t think she thought Mum would lie to her like that. Dad took Nat to one side and told her what he had guessed, but I think she chose to believe he had got it wrong. For her it was too horrific to contemplate that I might really be going on Big Brother and creating even more disruption for our family just as things were getting back on an even keel.

  Back in London, Anna drove me to a Holiday Inn. There I had another medical check but it was pretty routine and they didn’t pick up on any of my former problems. I saw the psychiatrist again too, but again I sailed through it. I had all my answers off pat.

  The next morning I was woken up at 6am and driven to Elstree Studios, just north of London. There I was shown into a dressing room and told to change into a dressing gown while my suitcase was taken away to be delivered to the Big Brother house. The case was checked over and over again just to ensure I hadn’t tried to smuggle in anything that was forbidden in the house.

  Apart from clothes and toiletries, you could take in five photographs and I had included my favourite snaps of Mum, Dad, Natalie, Carly and another friend at the time. Those pictures were such a comfort to me on bad days inside the house.

  That day before we entered the house was so strange. I was exhausted because I hadn’t slept the night before and I lay down a couple of times to get a few minutes’ rest but then my mind would start whirring again and I’d be unable to drift off.

  The production crew were popping in and out all day too, filming segments for Big Brother’s Little Brother.

  As the hours rolled by before we would enter the house at 9pm, every second dragged. For the first time I sat there feeling utterly terrified about what I’d let myself in for.

  I knew loads of stuff was likely to come out in the newspapers – all about my anorexia and ex-boyfriends. But that didn’t really bother me. This was my chance to turn my life around. To seize it back after all that time stuck in the gutter and transform it into something amazing.

  I had to have the stereo in my dressing room turned up really loud so that I couldn’t hear any of the other housemates who were in other dressing rooms down the corridor. And if I even wanted to leave the dressing room to use the loo, I had to go with a member of staff and wear a plain white mask in case I bumped into any of the other housemates.

  As the time crept closer to 9pm I was finally allowed out of the dressing room and into the limo which was going to drive me on the 30-second trip to the official entrance to the Big Brother house.

  When the car drew to a halt, one of the Big Brother minders opened the door and I stepped out of the car to the loudest barrage of screaming and shouting I’d ever heard. ‘Nikki, Nikki,’ people all around me were yelling. I kept looking, thinking they must be people I knew, but they were total strangers. I couldn’t work out how they knew my name as I hadn’t realised Davina McCall had just announced my arrival as last housemate of the night.

  It was so overwhelming seeing all those people looking at me and screaming my name. I waved and stared, totally overcome by it all, and gradually I made my way up the red carpe
t to Davina, who took my hand and guided me up the stairs to the doors of the house.

  For a couple of seconds I stood there, breathless with excitement, before the doors swung back and I stepped into my new life.

  Then the doors slammed shut behind me. So here I was. Finally, inside the Big Brother house, being watched by eight million people from every imaginable angle.

  A couple of minutes earlier, 15 miles away at home, Natalie had been curled up on the sofa watching a Jimmy McGovern drama on BBC1. Then the phone rang.

  It was Natalie’s godmother, Julie. ‘Are you watching it?’ she asked urgently.

  ‘Watching what?’ replied Natalie.

  ‘Oh,’ said Julie, suddenly realising Natalie had no idea what was unfolding. ‘I think you should turn over to Channel 4 – your sister has just walked into the Big Brother house.’

  Lunging across the room for the remote control, Natalie changed channels just in time to see me standing at the top of the stairs waving at the thousands of people who had gathered below. She said afterwards that all she felt at that moment was pure horror.

  Natalie hated Big Brother anyway and loathed the idea of all the public scrutiny of our family which would inevitably follow my appearance.

  But nothing could have been further from my mind. Inside the house I tiptoed down the stairs and into the kitchen, where all the other housemates were already standing chatting.

  At first it was a horrible feeling, like arriving stone-cold sober at a party where you don’t know anyone at all. I looked around the room and couldn’t see anyone I fancied – or even anyone I could imagine being friends with.

  But I guess everyone else must have been equally nervous because we all chatted manically for hours through a mixture of excitement and terror.

  The most commonly asked question about Big Brother is, ‘Are you aware of the cameras all the time?’ For the first two or three hours I was and felt I had to be on my best behaviour, but after that I totally forgot about them for the rest of my stay. If you didn’t forget about them and tried to think about everything you said and did in advance to make sure you always looked good, you’d go utterly demented.

  And it didn’t bother me being watched all the time at all. I was used to it after spending months and months on total supervision, so having no privacy wasn’t a problem for me.

  I did find claustrophobia a struggle in the first few days, though. At that time I was used to going out every single night, so being stuck in one place day and night for days on end was really tough.

  But after the first week I became institutionalised all over again – and I didn’t miss the outside world one bit.

  Back at home things weren’t so jolly. When Mum returned from Elstree Studios that first night, Natalie wouldn’t even let her in the house because she was so mad she hadn’t told her I was going on Big Brother.

  And already, stretching all down the road, there was a line of cars full of reporters and photographers trying to find out any nugget of information about me. Big Brother had sent an advice pack to families about how to deal with press enquiries but it was still daunting for Mum, and Natalie even more, to find themselves thrust into the spotlight like that.

  It took Natalie weeks to adjust to my being in the Big Brother house. For her it was bad history repeating itself. After years of working to gain her own identity she was back to being ‘Nikki Grahame’s sister’. Everywhere she went people only wanted to talk about me and she felt Mum was focusing all her attention on me again, dropping everything to make sure she was around on eviction nights and spending all her spare time glued to the live feeds on E4.

  It nearly pushed Natalie over the edge and she went a bit off the rails until finally she got the sack from her job as a receptionist.

  But I was unaware of any of that. Once you’re in the Big Brother house you could be on the moon, you are so disconnected from the rest of the world.

  I was certainly used to sitting around isolated from the rest of the world with nothing to do. I’d done that for years in different institutions. And I was used to living in communal groups, so I never felt bothered by the lack of privacy.

  There was always someone to talk to in the house, or a conversation that you could join in with. The tasks were fun and every night was a party. I absolutely loved it.

  On top of that there were none of the stresses of the outside world to deal with. They provided all the food, there were no bills and no job to turn up for every morning. It was like a holiday camp and I could have lived there for ever.

  The only downside was how nasty and bitchy people could be to one another. I quickly realised it was a very false environment and that people could be acting as your friend one moment, then nominating you for eviction the next. I could always tell if someone had nominated me because they couldn’t look me in the eye. But it was still tough to come to terms with. I’d struggled for years with low self-esteem and having people explain publicly what they thought was wrong with me was never easy.

  Most of what they said, though, I only discovered after I came out of the house and saw some of the recorded clips. Perhaps it was for the best that I didn’t know when I was in there.

  At first I stuck with Leah, a model and mother figure, Richard, a gay Canadian, and Glynn, a slightly gormless kid from Wales. The four of us really clicked and would laugh at the silliest things for hours on end.

  Then, about halfway through my first week, it hit me out of the blue – I’d fallen in love.

  CHAPTER 22

  THE MAGIC AND THE MISERY

  Pete Bennett was warm and gentle, with a spiritual side to him. I could tell he had been one of life’s underdogs and outsiders because I had too. He suffered from Tourette’s Syndrome – a disorder which meant he had uncontrollable tics and verbal outbursts – and I’d had anorexia. Because of this, of all the housemates in Big Brother, I could relate best to him. I felt close to him from the very beginning.

  One day we were sitting in the house and Pete told me that he had seen his friend die when he was electrocuted on a railway line. It had clearly had a terrible impact on him and I thought, This guy is special, he really is. From then on we spent loads of time together and I totally fell for him.

  Nothing ever happened between us before I was evicted from the house but it was clear to everyone that we really liked each other as we’d spend hours talking about our lives and thoughts.

  I even told Pete a little about my anorexia, although I didn’t mention it to anyone else in the house. My eating in there was fine so long as I was able to carry on exercising, which I did by pacing up and down on a step in the house.

  But my OCD remained an issue. I had to wash my own plate and cutlery before eating and I wrote my name on a mug in nail varnish so no one else would use it.

  ‘I’m just a bit funny about germs,’ I explained to the other housemates one morning. I didn’t want to tell them everything about my life but I needed them to be aware of my problems as we were all living together so closely.

  My tantrums and histrionics, which Mum and Natalie had been subjected to week in week out at home, quickly became a national entertainment. I became the most talked-about contestant in Big Brother history.

  My diary-room outbursts, shouting, crying and throwing my arms and body around in that huge, gold padded chair, were getting record viewing figures for the show. I was being discussed in newspapers and on radio shows even though I was only behaving the same as I always did.

  We’d been in the house four weeks when a new arrival, Susie Verrico, nominated me for eviction. I was furious and went into the diary room to vent my anger. ‘Who is she?’ I kept yelling at the camera, flinging my arms around in outrage. ‘Who is she?’ Even now people come up to me in the street and say how funny it was.

  Another time we had to do a task where we had to dance for as long as we possibly could wearing masks and mp3 players – except mine wouldn’t work. I went mad about it and when they called me to the diar
y room I became hysterical because I thought I was being disqualified. People who watched it tell me it was hilarious – but that is really just the way I was when things are going wrong for me.

  For another task we had to pretend to run a recruitment agency and I was the PA. I couldn’t work out how to use the typewriter and that whole episode was pretty funny too.

  People that I’ve spoken to since my time in the house have said that watching my outbursts on screen were hugely entertaining. They were able to see I had an anger and frustration inside me which could build up to such a pitch that I would be unable to control it and it would physically overtake my body.

  One minute I could be acting like a petulant child and the next I was showing genuine feeling for Pete. And the next minute I’d be dancing and laughing my head off.

  I think that is what the viewers found extraordinary about me – that I could change so much and there were such extremes of emotion which could spill out in such a violent fashion at the slightest provocation. The weird thing is that I’d never felt special in my whole life before Big Brother. I’d never felt I fitted in or belonged anywhere really until then. But finally I did.

  I’m sure some people think I faked those tantrums and hysterical outbursts for the cameras, but that really was me. Mum and Natalie (who calmed down after a couple of weeks and agreed to watch it) say they could always see one of my fits of temper or crying coming on screen long before the other housemates had realised what was about to be unleashed. And although they found it entertaining on the good days, it was deeply distressing for them on the days when I was obviously low.

  I was nominated for eviction five times and each time was a huge blow to my confidence and took me longer and longer to bounce back from. It was just so hard knowing that people I had thought of as friends actually wanted me out of there.

  When stories came out in the press about my anorexia there was criticism of Endemol, the production company, for selecting me and endangering my ‘fragile mental state’. But it wasn’t their fault – I’d lied to them about my past. Besides, I didn’t feel mentally fragile at all – I was having the time of my life.