GLAMOUR girl Jodie Marsh was driven to contemplating suicide – after years of
cruel taunts from bullies.
The former lads’ mag favourite broke down as she revealed she was left
terrified by constant jibes and aggression from fellow pupils at her
secondary school.
The 32-year-old told hosts Holly Willoughby and Philip Schofield on This
Morning that she was a grade A student before the terrifying abuse began.
At the age of eight, she broke her nose during a hockey match.
And when she went to high school, playground tormenters spat in her pencil
case, cruelly taunted her about her nose and kicked footballs at her head.
Jodie said: “They started picking on my nose, I got called ugly and big
nose and dodgy nose and all sorts of things right the way through secondary
school.
“They would kick footballs at my head, I was terrified. By the end of my
secondary school I didn’t have a single friend there.
“I didn’t eat any lunch, I used to go and hide in the library at
lunchtimes. I was a complete loner at school.”
On the verge of tears, Jodie revealed the daily torture of name-calling and
violence changed her entire life.
And she admitted contemplating ending her life “loads of times”.
Jodie said: “I only do what I do now because of being bullied, I decided
to become a model to prove to my bullies that I wasn’t ugly.
“It changed my whole life, it really did. I wanted to be a vet and I
would have gone off to uni and done that, that was my plan in life.
“And then I remember I was 15 years old when I wrote in my diary, I said
‘I’m going to be famous, I’m going to be a model because I am going to prove
to these people that I’m not as ugly as they say I am.’
“And that was it, my mind was made up at 15, I wanted to get onto the
front pages of magazines and I knew I wasn’t tall enough to be a catwalk
model so I thought I’m going to have to do glamour.”
Jodie told the day-time show that during filming for her new show, Bullied –
My Secret Past, she met a family whose little boy killed himself after
suffering from online bullying.
As tears rolled down her face, she said: “They showed me the abuse he
received on line and it made me feel sick. It’s the most horrendous thing I
have ever seen.
“I have been there, I’ve had that. I still get abuse now on my own social
networking sites.
“But with me now, I know I look like an emotional wreck but I am actually
the happiest I have ever been.”
Jodie Marsh: Bullied – My Secret Past is on Channel 5 on Wednesday at 10pm.
If you are suffering at the hands of bullies and need advice call 0845 1205
204 or visit