Fragile

by Nikki Grahame

  Mum also came under attack in the media for letting me go into the house, but there was never anything she could have done to stop me. From the moment I applied it was my dream to be selected and there is no way I would have let her stand in the way of that.

  Being in the house was everything I had ever dreamed of – and more. There were parties and tasks and fun. And, of course, I loved being with Pete.

  Then, around the seventh week, my ankle and foot became so swollen from doing my daily stepping exercise that I was walking around limping. I had to go to the diary room to see a doctor and he advised me I had to rest my foot. And as soon as I stopped exercising I rapidly felt I was losing control of the entire situation and began feeling very oppressed by the house. It got me down and I became preoccupied and withdrawn, unable to interact with the other housemates. I started eating less and less at mealtimes and could feel things sliding away from me.

  After a few days I went into the diary room and begged them to let me have a cross-trainer so I could exercise. At first they wouldn’t do it but by then I was crying and begging for any means to exercise. ‘If I don’t exercise, I’ll leave,’ I cried. ‘I’ll have to walk out.’

  Then I told the Big Brother producers everything – all about my life and the anorexia and the obsessive need to exercise. I didn’t know whether Endemol would go mad at me for not having told them earlier, but I was beyond caring. I just desperately needed to exercise.

  They listened to everything I had to say and were really supportive and promised to sort things out for me. There wasn’t a single word of reprimand for not having been honest with them. And they didn’t televise that diary-room conversation either, which was a huge relief.

  Each time I was up for eviction Mum would travel to the house and wait outside with all the thousands of fans. She was really missing me and although she wanted me to stay in there for as long as possible, she was desperate to see me again too. I missed Mum badly as well.

  On Day 58, when I was nominated for eviction for the fifth time, I was finally voted out of the house with 37.2 per cent of the public vote.

  ‘And the seventh housemate to be evicted,’ Davina said in her most dramatic voice, ‘is…’ – and then there was a pause that seemed to last a lifetime – ‘…Nikki.’

  At first I couldn’t believe it. I’d known for weeks that it was a possibility but now my dream was over it came as a horrible shock. I desperately hadn’t wanted it all to end. And the thought of leaving Pete was agony.

  None of the other housemates could believe it either and they all gathered around me, hugging me and saying how shocked they were.

  I changed into my eviction outfit – denim hotpants and a white blouse – and prepared to leave the house. Then, shortly before I had to walk out of the door, I suffered a panic attack, hyperventilating and crying uncontrollably. I’d heard the crowd booing when other housemates had been evicted before and I was terrified they would do that to me. What if they throw things at me? I thought. And what if Mum isn’t there to meet me?

  Again, just like at the point of leaving all those other institutions and hospitals I’d endured earlier in my life, suddenly the thought of facing the outside world was terrifying.

  I kissed everyone goodbye, before a final hug with Pete which I never wanted to end. It was so sad leaving him there in the house and not knowing when I would see him again.

  Finally I summoned up all my strength and climbed the stairs out of the house and waited for the double doors to shoot open to reveal the outside world once more. When they opened I was nearly knocked sideways by the noise. On my way into the house the screaming and shouting had been loud but this time it was utterly overwhelming.

  I stood paralysed at the top of the stairs, initially unable to work out if they were booing or cheering me. Too scared to walk down the steps towards that throng of people, I just wanted to go back into the house, where I knew everyone and where I felt I belonged now.

  But in front of me were thousands of people shouting, ‘Nik-ki, Nik-ki,’ and everywhere I looked they were waving and holding placards with my picture on them. I just couldn’t understand what all these people were doing and why they were screaming for me.

  Then I saw a banner which said, ‘Nikki to win,’ and I thought wow, in total amazement.

  I started crying from all the extremes of emotion and really didn’t know what to do. I put my hands over my face, wanting to hide myself from the madness in front of me.

  In the end Davina had to come up the stairs and pull me out of the doorway and down the steps away from the house. All the way I was desperately scanning the crowd, searching for a glance of Mum, but I couldn’t see her anywhere.

  At the bottom of the steps we walked through the Big Brother fans and the photographers all trying to get a snap of me for the next morning’s papers.

  Then we reached the stage and I sat down opposite Davina to be interviewed about my time in the house. At the end of our chat they flashed up my ‘best bits’ on a huge screen behind me. I was overwhelmed as I saw myself in the house.

  From the studios I was driven straight to Sopwell House, a beautiful hotel in St Albans, where I was told I’d meet my family, Carly and my other friend, Alana.

  It was a warm, mid-July night and when I jumped out of the car and knocked on the door of our apartment in the grounds of the hotel, I felt invincible. As if things could never get any better than this.

  Mum opened the door and for a second we just stood there grinning at each other. Then we hugged and it felt like we would never, ever let go.

  ‘I’m so proud of you,’ Mum said.

  And that is all I had ever wanted to hear. I had finally achieved something Mum could be proud of. Yes, I thought. I’ve done it.

  Inside the apartment, Mum, Dad, Natalie and I all hugged each other so tight. It was incredible, all of us together again like that. For a moment it was as if the past 16 years and all that bad stuff had never happened.

  Even Natalie had got over all her concerns about Big Brother and was delighted for me. She knew it had been my dream to do something special, and I’d turned it into a reality.

  We sat up all night, chatting, drinking champagne and eating cakes and crisps. I finally fell asleep at 6.40 in the morning. Then Mum woke me at seven, telling me there had been a phone call and I had to get back to London for a meeting with my new agent. Agent? Me? I certainly didn’t expect it.

  John Noel Management, a really well-respected agency which represents people like Dermot O’leary and Tess Daly, wanted to take me on.

  When I turned up in their smart London offices a couple of hours later, they had a pile of interview requests from newspapers and magazines on the desk as well as offers of work and sponsorship opportunities.

  A couple of hours later I was sitting in a trendy, bright photographic studio for a shoot and interview with the Sun newspaper. They treated me like royalty, with champagne and chocolate waiting for me when I arrived.

  I did exactly what John had told me and explained to the reporter all about my past – the anorexia. It was a real relief to get all that stuff out in the open, because that way it could never hurt me in the future. And I loved the photo shoot – it was so exciting trying on all those lovely clothes and posing for the camera.

  The next couple of days I spent doing back-to-back interviews and photographs with magazines, radio stations and televisions channels. I’d get up at 5am to do a radio interview, then the rest of the day it would be meetings about work projects or photo shoots.

  The best shoot I did was for Pop magazine. A really high-fashion affair by candlelight at the Café Royal, it was amazing. No other Big Brother contestant had ever done that magazine before, so it was a great honour to be asked. I also did front covers for New Woman and You magazines, and they turned out wonderfully too.

  In the evenings I was getting invited to functions with celebrities at nightclubs and posh restaurants. I went to the Cartier Polo tournament
at Windsor Great Park and even the film premiere of Miami Vice.

  I had gone from feeling I didn’t belong anywhere on earth and was a totally unimportant object to people stopping me in the street to tell me they loved me. It was beyond incredible.

  One day I had to do an autograph-signing event at Carphone Warehouse’s head office. When I stepped out of the car I was mobbed by three thousand people all taking pictures of me and trying to get my autograph. I couldn’t handle it and freaked out. I’m sure some people thought I was turning into some kind of prima donna, but at times I really did find the attention overwhelming. For so long I’d felt so shit about myself that it was very difficult to get my head around the idea that this was for real and all these people weren’t playing some huge joke at my expense.

  And my phone never stopped ringing. I had to change my number six times because all sorts of people I hadn’t seen for years or barely met came out of the woodwork. All of a sudden everyone wanted to be my best friend. But I wasn’t totally naive and I knew what they were after – invitations to smart parties, new nightclubs and premieres. No, I knew who my real friends were.

  I did 40 personal appearances in a row all over the country, from Scotland to Northern Ireland to Manchester and then on and on to other towns and cities. I lived in a car, going from one nightclub or shopping centre to the next. I’d be driven five and a half hours to somewhere like Aberystwyth, go to a hotel, fall asleep on the bed and then have to be woken up to go out to a nightclub where I’d have to do signings, have my picture taken with people and answer endless questions about Big Brother.

  Any spare moments I had, I’d be glued to watching the live feed of Big Brother on E4. I was desperately missing Pete and seeing him on television was the only way I could feel close to him again.

  One night he was shown on screen pining for me. Thinking that he might just feel about me the same way I’d felt about him made me love him even more.

  I’d been out of the Big Brother house four weeks when I got a phone call out of the blue from Endemol. Would I be interested in returning? They’d had an idea to give the closing stages of the series a twist by allowing the public the chance to vote four evicted housemates back into the ‘house next door’, a smaller new house adjoining the existing one. Then, after a week, one of the four would be selected to return to the main house.

  I didn’t have to be asked twice. I’d loved my time in the house so much I was desperate to get back in there. I was also delighted at the thought that I could be there on final night and even still in with a chance of winning the £100,000 prize. And of course seeing Pete again.

  I had just one day to get myself ready and ran round in a flurry of excitement, packing clothes and saying my goodbyes before the public vote.

  Sixty-three per cent of the voting public voted me back into the ‘house next door’ and I was utterly delighted. But it proved hard living there as it was even more suffocating than the original house, smaller, with no windows and absolutely nothing to do all day.

  At the end of the week the remaining housemates in the main house had to decide which of the four of us in the ‘house next door’ they would select to join them. They all knew how much Pete had been missing me and so they chose me so that we could be together again.

  As I stepped back into the main house six weeks after leaving it, I was walking on air at being given this incredible opportunity all over again.

  Pete came up to me, wrapped his arms around me and for the first time kissed me full on the lips. It was the first time I could be sure that he really liked me and I knew then we were going to be together. I was so happy.

  Back in the house, I was blissfully ignorant of the fact that Big Brother had been inundated with viewers complaining because they had changed the rules to let evicted housemates back onto the show.

  Pete and I spent that week lying on his bed, cuddling and talking. I knew I’d fallen for him deeply. Some people think the producers were so worried that I might win, causing a public outcry about rule changing, that they deliberately put me in situations that caused me to have tantrums in that last week to annoy voters.

  The atmosphere was electric inside the house on the final night. And outside more than eight million people across Britain were tuning in to watch what happened. When Davina called out my name I was really disappointed to be leaving again but at least this time I knew I’d be reunited with Pete within a couple of hours. When he did emerge – as winner of the show – I was delighted for him and so proud of him. The next few days were a whirlwind of interviews and public appearances for both of us.

  Then, around that time, I started filming Princess Nikki, a series of programmes for Channel 4 in which I had to take on a string of really horrid jobs. The Big Brother producers had come up with the idea for the six-week series while I was still in the house. Apparently they’d been inspired by my working as a PA in the temping agency task in the house.

  They knew from the way I reacted in there that I would find it really hard doing disgusting jobs and would inevitably throw tantrums when things got difficult. But that’s what they wanted, as they knew it would make good TV.

  Because of my OCD, Princess Nikki was very difficult for me. The jobs I had to do included working on a sewage works, cleaning out an abandoned council house which was infested with rats and maggots and back-flowing sewage in the bath, cleaning up shit at a dog kennel, mucking out at a zoo, being a dustman and mucking out pigs on a farm.

  I can understand that they thought it would be funny for viewers to watch me have a screaming fit every time I had to do these awful jobs, but I hated it. I put my head down and got on with it, though, because the money was good and I was excited at the idea of working in television. The production team were really nice but I don’t think any of them realised quite how hard I found filming in those places and how real my problems with germs and dirt were. Even at the wrap party the crew bought me a cake in the shape of a turd. It wasn’t funny.

  Then, just at the time I was struggling with the demands of Princess Nikki, things were going wrong between me and Pete.

  When he first came out of the house I really believed we were going to be a proper couple and he could even be ‘The One’. He and his mum came round to visit me and my mum and we all got on really well. But within days things were becoming strained. Inside the house Pete had been gentle and spiritual but outside he could be self-centred and I felt shut out of his life.

  His friends didn’t like me at all and he was really influenced by his Mum too. We spent a few nights together at the Covent Garden Hotel but everywhere we went she came too.

  One morning I said to her, ‘Can you please give us some time together tonight on our own? We really need it.’

  Then Pete and I went out but when we returned that night his mum was fast asleep in our bed. So much for time on our own! In the end I had to get into bed next to her while Pete slept on the floor.

  Things came to a horrible end two weeks after we left the house when we had an all-day photo shoot with OK! magazine, followed by an appearance on Friday Night with Jonathan Ross. You would think it would have been one of the best days of my life. But it became one of the most miserable. Pete ignored me throughout the photo shoot, preferring to talk to the photographer and the make-up girl instead.

  So by the time we arrived at the television studios to film Jonathan Ross, things were already tense. It was OK at first and I was answering all Jonathan’s questions but then Pete lay down on the sofa with his fingers in his ears like a child so he couldn’t hear anything I was saying.

  It was utterly humiliating. He was making a fool out of me and himself in front of millions of people on live television. That was the final straw. We returned to our hotel that night in silence.

  The next morning I went home and that was pretty much it. I was devastated. I really had been madly in love with him. For me it was never a publicity stunt or to win votes in the house. I’d genuinely thought we could be to
gether in the outside world.

  All I wanted to do was lie down in a dark room. The newspapers were all reporting that we had split up and that I was heartbroken – and they were right. It was all so public and embarrassing.

  It wasn’t helped by reports in the papers about Pete discussing our sex life and saying that he’d found himself a new girlfriend within two days of our splitting up!

  For two weeks I couldn’t face leaving the house just at the time that all my offers of work were pouring in.

  I was sacked from presenting Celebrity Soup, E! Entertainment’s show based on reality-TV clips, with Ian Lee because I didn’t turn up for work. And one day when I’d made it in to film Princess Nikki, I locked myself in a toilet and wouldn’t come out. I was too upset.

  Perhaps I’m oversensitive and feel pain terribly deeply when things go wrong. And maybe that’s because of all the things I’ve been through in the past. But whatever the reason, it made that period, which should have been one of the best of my life, particularly hard.

  The only good thing was that I managed to keep control of my eating, and although I was still thin, I’d gained far too much by then to throw it all away by starving myself again.

  Then, at the beginning of October, came news which gave me a real boost. I’d been nominated for a National Television Award in the category of Most Popular TV Contender. This was a new category, so it was a real honour. But I was up against four other reality-TV contestants and didn’t really believe I had much chance of winning. I thought Pete would get it. But it was exciting just to be nominated and invited to the ceremony at the Royal Albert Hall.

  Mum and I spent ages wandering around London searching for the perfect dress until we finally spotted it hanging on a rail in the beautiful Betsey Johnson shop in Covent Garden. I’d never spent that much on an outfit before but this felt like such a special occasion that I had to go for it.