I’m A Celebrity winner Scarlett Moffatt opens up about her childhood bullying torment and how she would hide in Asda car park until it was home time
JUNGLE queen Scarlett Moffatt has revealed the true extent of the bullying hell she kept secret from her parents.
In part two of her only interview since winning I’m A Celebrity . . . Get Me Out Of Here! she reveals her school allowed her to leave ten minutes early to stop her being beaten up.
Despite the torment, she has come to terms with the experience that made her hate her childhood.
Scarlett told The Sun: “From aged 12 I just didn’t like life. I didn’t have the best time, really.
“But if I hadn’t had those experiences at school, then I probably wouldn’t be here. If I had just tried to fit in, I wouldn’t be the weirdo that I am now.”
Scarlett was forced to move schools in Bishops Auckland, Co Durham, and isn’t happy at the teachers’ approach to the bullies’ “threatening” behaviour.
In her most revealing interview ever, the Gogglebox favourite said: “The way the school dealt with it was that, ten minutes before the end of the day, I was allowed to leave early so I didn’t get beat up.
“I would just walk around Asda’s car park until three o’clock or up until the time I was meant to come home. I just felt so embarrassed to tell my mum and dad.
“I would pretend to my parents that I loved school. Sometimes I would sit in the toilets at breaks just so I didn’t have to wander around the playgrounds on my own.”
During her schooldays Scarlett, 26, was forced to have plastic caps on her teeth after being hit by a car while riding her bike.
The accident also left her with Bell’s Palsy, which caused one side of her face to droop.
I tried to fit in but failed miserably
She said: “I smashed my teeth and had all the nerves taken out, so I had a black tooth as well as a monobrow, and I was a little bit chubby, and then half my face was on the slide.
“There was just loads of things. One of the kids also saw me metal detecting with my dad, so you can imagine how that went down.”
Stifling nervous laughter, she adds: “I mean, it’s funny now. Jesus, it wasn’t funny when I was going into school. It’s worked out well now, it’s built character.”
Scarlett would make up stories about her day so mum Betty, 46, and dad Mark, 50, did not worry.
She said: “I just wanted them to think I was cool. I would go home and they’d ask, ‘How was school?’ And I’d say, ‘Really good’.
“I remember this girl coming back from dinner and saying they’d been to the chip shop, and the boys had been throwing chips at them at the swimming baths where they used to sit. I would go home and tell my mum that story as if I was there.
“I tried to fit in but failed miserably, so I just carried on being me as my dad said, ‘Just be you, just be yourself’.”
Scarlett’s life could not be more different now.
She is expected to make £1million in endorsements and TV work off the back of her jungle win on Sunday, with Channel 4 and ITV are fighting to sign her.
Going into the I’m A Celebrity jungle brought back feelings from her schooldays.
She said: “That was the big thing for me going in there, I felt like an outsider as all I do is watch the telly for a living.
“I was with people like Larry Lamb, Carol Vorderman. I was worried how these people were going to take me. It was just so nice to be accepted for who I am. It was just amazing.”
Just a year ago Scarlett was working as a student disability adviser. And her whirlwind rise to national sweetheart is not the only drastic change she has undergone this year.
She has lost more than three stone in less than six months, dropping from a size 16 to an 8, after being told by the doctor she was at risk of Type Two diabetes.
She said: “I felt so embarrassed having to go home and tell my mum and dad I was clinically obese.
“At the surgery I stepped on the scales and they said, ‘Right, we need to do some blood tests for diabetes’, and I was like, ‘Oh my God, I’m not overweight am I?’
“She said, ‘no’. I was like ‘phew’. But then she said, ‘You’re obese’. I was like, ‘You’re joking?’”
The stark realisation made her ditch takeaways and booze and embark on a fitness regime. She also felt she had been setting a bad example to little sister Ava, ten.
She said: “I was 31 on the BMI scale (24.9 is the top of the healthy range). I was so embarrassed. I thought, ‘I’ve got to do something now. There’s no excuse to be 25 and this big’.
“It’s just pure laziness. Until then I thought I was happy. I’m a lot more confident now but still happy.
"My main thing is to be a good role model to my little sister. I would go to Topshop but I would just wander around as I couldn’t fit into anything.
“Then, when I started losing weight, I could actually try the clothes on. I started crying in front of the whole shop.” Scarlett, who is releasing a workout DVD this Christmas, has been accused by some of going too far with her weight loss.
But she calls her current weight “healthy” and in the flesh she is 5ft and seems in perfect proportions.
She said: “I honestly thought I I had got to about 10st.
“But I was 11st 5lbs. I was like, ‘Where has this extra stone and five pounds come from?’
“Then I’d think back to everything I ate and think, ‘Oh, that’s why!’ It doesn’t take a genius to work that out.”
In the jungle Scarlett was particularly star-struck by radio veteran Danny Baker, 59, and former Countdown mathematician Carol, 55.
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She now plans to work with Danny on a sitcom, after he tipped her to be a future host of BBC1’s Have I Got News For You.
She said: “Danny is just a legend. I love writing. I’m writing a script at the minute. It’s like the Inbetweeners but a girl version. Danny is going to help me do some stuff.
“I’ve got some great contacts from this experience.”
She has also enlisted Homes Under The Hammer host Martin Roberts, 53, to help her buy a house.
But of her obsession with Carol she said: “As long as I could remember, when I’d get home from school me and my dad would get a notebook out and try and get the words and numbers.
“He’d always win the numbers and I would win the words. I once got that engrossed in Countdown that I was cooking potato wedges and burgers and they burned my mum’s kitchen down. They had to get a new one.
“It was so overwhelming being in there with her. She’s been on telly longer than I’ve been alive.”
Scarlett also backed Carol’s jungle flirting with comedian and runner-up Joel Dommett, despite their 25-year age gap.
She added: “They both love maths and they’re both genuinely lovely people. They would make a lovely couple.
“Joel is always off on his travels and Carol can fly. That’s a perfect pairing right there.”
- The Sun Online has launched its Block The Bullying Campaign with the NSPCC in a bid to stamp out the sharing of vile videos showing children being attacked.
Our aim is to educate children, parents and schools about the horrendous effect filming an act of bullying, then sharing it on social media, can have on children.
Click here to find out more about the campaign.
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