Chanelle Hayes - Baring My Heart (12 page)

Deep down, I was thinking that Ziggy had probably got with a girl the night before and was still with her. While hideous enough to imagine, what was really going on was a million times worse.

‘It’s bad news, Chanelle,’ Dave said when he called me back a little while later.

‘Oh my God. What is it? Has he cheated on me?’

‘No, nothing like that. I’ve been trying to get hold of your mum and dad at home so they could break this to you but they haven’t been answering their phone.’

‘Never mind them, Dave. Tell me what the hell’s going on.’

‘OK, well there’s going to be a big story in the
News of the World
tomorrow.’

‘What about?’

‘You don’t come out of it too well,’ he said. ‘It says you’re violent and have been beating Ziggy up and threatening to kill yourself.’

I was speechless at this. I had no words at all.

‘And he’s broken up with you,’ Dave was saying. ‘So he won’t be coming to your party.’

Jesus Christ. Ziggy had stitched me up royally. The newspaper had gone to Dave offering me a right of reply but there was nothing we could do to stop them publishing the story. It defied belief. Ziggy and I had been absolutely fine the last time we saw each other and there was no hint of something like this brewing. What an absolute bastard. In a total panic, I tried calling his agent, a woman called Claire I’d always got on all right with.

‘It’s Chanelle,’ I told her. ‘I need to speak to Ziggy urgently. What the hell has he been saying to the
News of the World?
’

But Claire calmly replied, ‘Please don’t ever call this number again.’

Then she hung up.

It was so frightening. It seemed I had no choice but to wait it out and see what rubbish he’d come up with and, as you’d expect, I had the worst time at my party and felt sick all night. How could I let my hair down when the biggest newspaper in the country was about to print some mystery exposé on me that I had no control over? At midnight I went online on my Blackberry and saw exactly what he had to say about me. It was their front page story and Ziggy’s sad face was splashed next to this horrendous account of me being a psychopath who he thought was going to kill him! What the actual hell?

It really was the biggest load of crap I’d ever read in my life. He said that I repeatedly and violently attacked him, leaving him with black eyes and cuts all over his body. ‘If we’d stayed together, she could have killed me,’ he told the paper.

Not only that but he even said I frequently ordered him to beat me up in bed. He claimed:

I could not take any of it in. It was like he was ripping my heart out of my chest with both hands. And you only have to look at the difference in our sizes to see that was crazy; he’s a 6ft, strapping guy and I was a tiny size 8 who weighed less than 8st. As if I could beat him up or make him believe I’d kill him. I’d been to a few boxing classes prior to that and my trainer was in
stitches laughing for 10 minutes because I was so pathetically weak and feeble.

Yes, I threw stuff around in the flat when we argued and I did try to shove him in the heat of a row. I also admit I slapped him round the face once or twice – but that doesn’t mean I was capable of killing him.

As for things in the bedroom, yes, our sex life was uninhibited but plenty of people are like that. It doesn’t make you a psychopathic would-be murderer, does it? I also bruise very easily so, if things had been as aggressive as he said, I’d have been walking around black and blue, wouldn’t I?

He also said I’d threatened to take an overdose after we fought but that was just him manipulating the past because he knew about my previous experiences and used it to his advantage. That was so underhand and nasty.

The most laughable bit though was his claim that, if he wanted to talk to me, I’d pass him onto my PA to arrange a time for us to speak. What a load of utter bollocks! I’m from Wakefield, I’m not the Queen – I didn’t need anyone to answer my phone. It was permanently glued to my hand in those days.

The next day, all my friends came round to Mum and Dad’s for a prearranged champagne breakfast but I just sat against the radiator in the living room, crying inconsolably all day long. Nobody knew what to say.

How could he betray me like this? I was so confused. He was supposed to have cared about me. I knew we had big arguments and I had tantrums but you don’t do this sort of thing to someone you’ve ever had feelings for. Not in a million years. If I’d known he needed cash so badly, I’d have bloody written him out a big cheque myself.

I tried calling him on his mobile but he’d changed his number by this time. And Dave couldn’t offer me a shred of comfort.

‘I want to sue the paper,’ I told him.

‘You can’t do that, Chanelle. The
News of the World
is the most powerful newspaper in Britain. Do you really think you can afford to take them to court over this? Don’t be silly.’

‘What am I supposed to do then? I can’t believe I’ve been so vilified – it’s completely unfair.’

‘You’ve just got to ride it out,’ he said. ‘It’ll blow over. Tomorrow’s fish-and-chip paper and all that.’

As it happened, Dave did arrange for me to tell my side of the story to another newspaper and magazine but what could I really say to stop the damage to my reputation? It had already been done as far as I was concerned.

For the next few days, I was so depressed I couldn’t even go out of the house and I lay around in my pyjamas full of despair. Mum and Dad were understandably devastated too, as Ziggy’s actions had also heaped shame on them.

Unsurprisingly, I never heard from him after all of that. Not a whisper. And it wasn’t until a couple of years later that our paths crossed again. We were both in Marbella with groups of friends and, when I saw him, my stomach lurched – not in a good way. Seeing him brought back such awful memories and, though I had nothing to say to him, he came over to speak to me.

‘Hi, stranger,’ he said. ‘I haven’t seen you in a while.’

I felt like it was some sort of piss-take and that I was being filmed for
Punk’d
.

‘Oh, hi,’ I said, as nonchalantly as I could.

‘I just wanted to come over and clear the air,’ he said. ‘Things got really twisted in that interview and they made out it was much worse than it was. I was really mad about how they made you look.’

I was not in the mood for this. ‘Don’t bother,’ I told him. ‘I know you got more than £100,000 for that interview, so of course you had to say certain stuff.’

He looked at me gratefully but I wasn’t finished yet.

‘If you want to be a man and apologise, fine but don’t lie to my face because I’m not stupid.’

He held his hands up and said, ‘OK, I know. I’m sorry. I was young and foolish and I was getting bad advice and hanging around with the wrong crowd.’

That fleeting little apology could never undo what he did. Nothing could.

‘Well, I’d like to get on with my holiday now,’ I said, walking away. ‘See you later.’

I just couldn’t be bothered to waste my evening talking to a drip like that all night. And he still hadn’t cut his ridiculous hair!

You might imagine that was the last I ever heard from him but, some time later, I got a text from him, which said, ‘Hi, it’s Zach ‘Ziggy’ Lichman.’ Like I’d ever forget that name.

‘I was just saying hi, I wanted to see how you were,’ he wrote. ‘You’re looking amazing at the moment.’

I could only assume that his money had dried up and he was trying his luck.

‘Your career’s going really well too, isn’t it?’

‘Yeah, things are going well,’ I said, trying to make light of it. ‘You actually did me a real favour selling that story.’

Then he asked if I was planning any trips to London and if he could take me out for dinner if I came down. Who the hell was he kidding?

‘No, I don’t really fancy that,’ I texted back.

‘Oh. Why not?’

‘I’m just not interested.’

‘Come on, just as friends having a catch-up.’

‘But we’re not friends, are we?’ I said. ‘We’ve got nothing in common.’

His ego was really that big that he thought I might consider
seeing him again. The gall of the man was astonishing. In the end, I told him not to contact me again. This was one can of worms I really didn’t want to open.

Still, Ziggy wasn’t the only guy to ‘kiss ’n’ tell’ on me. While I was in
Big Brother
, my old flame Spencer decided to tell a rather different version of my abortion drama, saying we’d been through a miscarriage together and that he’d loyally held my hand all the while I’d been in hospital.

When I read that, I was like, ‘Wow. Just wow.’ I confronted him and he said, ‘I only did it because I didn’t want you to look bad for having an abortion.’

To be fair, part of me understood his logic, as many people have very strong anti-abortion opinions. But to say he was right there with me, dabbing my face with water and stroking my hair as we lost our child, was so insensitive. How could he say all that when he’d put me through hell?

In the interview, he also said that we’d been together when I went into
Big Brother
and that he now wanted to beat Ziggy up. This was the final straw for me and I wrote him a letter, which I posted through his door. It said something like, ‘I think what you’ve done is disgusting. I’m really upset that you’ve made yourself out to be such a nice person when, in reality, you almost ruined my life. You can’t muck about with these issues, especially when someone’s life has already been so messed up.’

After he read it, he dashed round to our house. I wasn’t there but he told Mum, ‘Christine, I’m so sorry – I never meant to put her through that. I was young, I didn’t realise what she was dealing with. I just want to do the right thing now.’

In all honesty, I don’t think he’s a nasty person; he just wasn’t ready to be a dad and, in blind panic, tried everything he could to stop the situation going any further. I’ve seen him a few times since and he’s helped me out with a couple of odd jobs at home.
He probably still feels guilty, so I’m sure he’ll always help me out in future if I need him. Perhaps I almost sound a bit too forgiving of Spencer but I guess it’s easier that way than to hold a life-long grudge. Life’s too short for so many enemies, isn’t it?

T
he post-
Big Brother
whirlwind continued and a steady stream of work came my way – including loads of raunchy glamour shoots. People have often asked me how I feel about doing them and I often get accused of being a slag for stripping off. But it’s a job like any other, isn’t it? And it happens to be one that pays very well, so I’ve never been ashamed of it. If my body helps sell magazines, who is anyone to judge that?

I was obviously a bit nervous about what Mum and Dad would think in the early days, especially about some of the ‘
girl-on-girl
’ type pictures, but they’re shrewd enough to know why I’m doing it. They’ve also kept every publication I’ve ever been in so, if their house ever burns down, about £10,000-worth of magazines will go down with it! And I think Dad genuinely feels proud that his daughter is a model and loves hearing compliments about me – even if it is in relation to me having my boobs out!

In November 2007 I filmed a reality-TV show for VH1 music channel, which was called
Wannabe
(what else?). The presenter,
Toby Anstis, and I had to find a new girl group similar to the Spice Girls and it was a sort of downmarket
X Factor
. But sadly, the band we created failed to achieve quite the level of world domination of Posh and her girls. You win some, you lose some, I guess.

Soon after, I got my beloved dog Crumpet, a ginger Pomeranian who I just adored. She was a little cheer-up present to myself after I had my fingers burned by a footballer called Seb Hines, who played for Middlesbrough.

He’d got my number from a club promoter I knew and, after we’d been out a couple of times, the newspapers cottoned on to it. Nothing had happened between us – we’d only been to the cinema and for a bite to eat but the next minute there was this big story in the
News of the World
, saying he had a kid and a girlfriend who was pregnant with their second child!

What on earth had I got myself caught up in? As far as I was aware, Seb was totally single and he’d never mentioned a child at all.

I called him up in a state and said, ‘What the hell is this about? Have you got a girlfriend?’

‘Er, yeah but we’re in the process of breaking up,’ he said lamely.

‘Oh Jesus, Seb, this is not on. Please can you tell her that I never knew about this?’

After that, I wanted nothing more to do with him. I’d thought he was a bit of a drip anyway and we didn’t have much in common, so I called it all off before it got any messier.

The weekend the story came out, I was at Center Parcs with my friends, Alison and Zoe, and I was so fed up about being portrayed as this trampy girl who broke up people’s relationships that they took me off to Manchester to buy Crumpet. She definitely made me feel a lot better – and then,
soon after that, she made her TV debut in the second show I did for VH1, called
Wannabe Popstar
. This one followed my bid to release a single called ‘I Want It’. Although I am actually a good singer and did really well at GCSE Music, it was so hideously embarrassing and cheesy. Saying that, it got to No.2 in the UK dance chart and the remix went to No. 5 in Russia, so it can’t have been that terrible.

I got paid about £75,000 in all to do the song, which included a nationwide tour as well as a music video. And that was the bit I absolutely hated. During filming, they put me in a tiny corset and knickers and bra and I just wanted to cry. But for that kind of money, I could hardly complain, could I? That was my life now: Dave would just tell me what I was doing and I had no say at all. For instance, if Victoria Beckham changed her hair, he’d book me an appointment at a salon and tell me to get exactly the same style. I know I was doing very well out of it but it was like he had power of attorney over my whole life.

So there I was in this video, gyrating all over the place and looking like a right tart. And watching it back, all I could think about was how fat I looked.

‘Look at my bum – it’s disgusting,’ were the first words I said.

Straight afterwards, I went and had liposuction done on six different areas of my body – including bum, thighs, arms and tummy. It was silly really because I was only a slim size 8–10 but I had begun to see myself in a whole new light.

This, I’m afraid, is where I started to experience the real pitfalls of fame. I’d started feeling very body conscious as soon as I’d come out of
Big Brother
and hit the trail of celeb parties and events. Dave had a lot of models on his books, and I was constantly comparing myself when we all went out, thinking I was too chubby next to them.

I remember moaning to one girl about my thighs on a night
out and she said to me, ‘Why don’t you do coke? It makes you lose so much weight.’

A lot of the girls in the clubs were really into it and would do it in the toilets of places like Chinawhite. I just thought it was a vile and disgusting habit – I’d far rather have a glass of Moët any day!

With a spiralling belief that I was too fat, it was around this time that I’d become good friends with the
Celebrity Big Brother
star Chantelle Houghton, who Dave also represented. She was the one who had gone in as a ‘normal housemate’ in 2006 but beat all the real celebs to win it. Chantelle married the Ordinary Boys singer Preston soon after meeting him on the show but it all fell apart in a matter of months and she became badly bulimic as a result. She very publicly admitted her issues and told how they’d go to posh restaurants where she’d eat huge bowls of pasta and then have a big dessert, before going home and sticking her fingers down her throat to bring it back up.

Now don’t get me wrong, I’ve always liked Chantelle and we had a brilliant time together a few years back. But I can’t deny that her eating disorder had a massive influence on me. I don’t blame her for one second – I was a grown adult and responsible for my own actions but it was hard to be around someone so hung-up on food and not get sucked in. After already dealing with mild anorexia following my abortion, I guess I was still susceptible to using food as some kind of control mechanism.

I didn’t know many people in London, so Chantelle became a close confidante of mine. But she was still openly bulimic and wouldn’t hide it from me at all. She was forever obsessing about what she ate and it made me really start thinking about what I was eating. We went on quite a few holidays together and, if we went out for dinner, she’d go back to our room and straight into the bathroom to make herself sick. She was losing weight so
easily and I remember saying, ‘God, I feel really fat compared to you. My arms look massive. I hate them.’

One day, I decided to try and make myself sick too. But it’s actually harder than you’d think. I tried with my fingers and it didn’t work; I tried using a toothbrush – that didn’t work either. I even used a chopstick but still nothing happened. I didn’t understand how Chantelle could do it so effortlessly. So I went on the Internet and looked at all these pro-anorexia and bulimia sites telling you how to purge yourself. It was very easy to find this information, which is so dangerous for young girls.

I made up some username like ‘Skinnydream’ and, using the guidance from one of these sites, taught myself how to do it. It was horrible. I really loathed doing it – I hate being sick, even when I’m poorly. And, while Chantelle could look completely normal afterwards, it left my eyes streaming and mascara running down my face and I’d be all sweaty and carry on gagging for ages.

Within a few days of making myself throw up for the first time, I thought, ‘This isn’t for me. There must be another way.’ So instead, I started really cutting down on what I ate and stuck to chicken with vegetables and no carbs. But as I got more and more obsessed, I began to dislike the feeling of having any food in my stomach at all. I invented a concoction made up of a tin of tomatoes and half a chopped pepper, mixed up with some Tabasco sauce and a clove of garlic. Some days that’s all I would eat. Occasionally, as a treat, I’d divide up a packet of Hula Hoops into three clear plastic bags and make them last for three days.

On that basis, you’d think I would have quickly started to waste away but the frustrating thing was that I was still going out a few times a week, so getting a fair amount of calories from champagne and cocktails. And if our crowd was going out for
dinner, I had to join in and actually eat. But, unlike Chantelle, I just couldn’t cope with regurgitating it all later.

That’s when I found my answer. I stumbled across some laxatives in my local supermarket and, amazingly, they came in the form of little chocolates, so it seemed like they were an actual treat. I’d put them in a Tupperware box and put them in my handbag and, if I ate one, people just thought I was having a normal chocolate fix. I got hooked on them immediately and, if we went out for dinner, I’d take several that night. The morning after, I’d be doubled over in pain on the toilet and wouldn’t be able to get up until the afternoon.

After a while, my cleaner, Jessie, started to grow suspicious. She was from Thailand and just the nicest lady. I always told her not to but she’d go above and beyond her duty, doing all kinds of odd jobs for me. She came in two mornings a week and each time would bring me breakfast in bed.

I’d say, ‘Oh, I’m so sorry, Jessie, I really don’t want anything. I feel really sick.’

‘Is your stomach playing up again?’

‘Yeah,’ I’d tell her. ‘I’ve got the worst cramps and diarrhoea.’

She eyed me carefully. ‘You’re always in bed and feeling ill. You should go to the doctor’s.’

‘I know, I will,’ I fibbed.

Bless her, she was so concerned and would shake her head: ‘You’re not well – this is not normal.’

One morning, she was emptying my bathroom bin and came out holding up several laxative packets.

‘What are these?’

‘Oh, they’re nothing,’ I said.

‘Have you been taking all of these, Chanelle?’

‘No, you really don’t need to worry about me.’

‘Come on, what’s going on? You can tell me.’

I made up some lame excuse that I’d found the laxatives in a cupboard and thrown them away.

‘But why are the packets all empty?’ she said.

‘Oh, I threw the actual tablets down the loo so I’d never be tempted to take them,’ I replied.

‘Hmm,’ she said, obviously well aware I was lying – but what could she do?

Gradually, the weight did start to fall off me and things then took a turn while I was doing one of my weekly shoots for the
Daily Star
with the photographer, Jeany Savage. Lying on the floor for a shot, I suddenly went really dizzy and my head hit the floor. It wasn’t like I’d fainted as such but I was really weak and lost control of my body.

‘What’s the matter with you?’ said Jeany.

‘I’m so sorry, I’m so hungover,’ I bluffed.

‘Right, let me make you a bacon sandwich,’ she said.

‘Oh, no thanks, I feel sick.’

‘What about some crumpets then?’ Jeany was so funny like that, always trying to feed me up.

Later, she said, ‘Have you been dieting, Chanelle? You look so thin at the moment.’

‘Really?’ I said and grinned. ‘Thanks!’

‘No, I don’t mean it as a compliment. Your ribs look disgusting. I don’t think we’re going to be able to airbrush them out.’

I just laughed. ‘You crack me up, Jeany.’

‘But I’m not joking, Chanelle, the
Star
aren’t going to like these shots. You’re too skinny. You need to put some weight on.’

The week after, Dave came with me on another shoot for the paper. As we were looking through the shots on a computer with Jeany, she said, ‘We’re going to have to make your boobs look bigger on these. You don’t have any any more.’

And it was true: my bra size had dropped down to an AA.

‘We’ll need to blend your ribs in too.’

But I just wasn’t getting it. ‘Do you think you can take a bit off my arms too? They look really big.’

Dave butted in and said, ‘No way. You’ve got nothing to lose off your arms, or any of you, for that matter.’

We were basically seeing a completely different photograph – one which I thought I looked massive in, even though I was only about 6½st. I was roughly the same size I’d been when I’d had my eating issues after the abortion but still I wanted to be thinner. My goal was to be 85lbs, which is about 6st.

As I was changing, I heard Jeany tell Dave, ‘The paper have seen the untouched pictures and they don’t like them. They think Chanelle’s too thin. She’s going to lose her contract if she doesn’t put on at least a stone.’

At that time, I was earning about £3,000 a week from the
Daily Star
, so to lose the contract would have been awful – for Dave as well as me.

‘You look horrible,’ he told me bluntly. ‘You’re not going to get any more lads’ mag covers unless you put on some weight.’

And he was right – curvier models do always sell better than the really skinny girls. These magazines do like the glamour girls to be womanly and have boobs and a bum. Something to grab hold of, as they say.

I was thrown into a panic by his words but he hadn’t finished yet. ‘You look ill, you’ve got bags under your eyes, you’ve always got stomach ache,’ he said. ‘It’s not professional to be like this on shoots.’

What could I say? I really did look and feel awful – but I still wanted to be slimmer. Living down in London, it wasn’t like I was seeing my family or friends that often, so I didn’t have anyone to tell me to get a grip and get some proper food down me. I was hanging out with all these models and, because I’m so petite at 5ft 3in, I blended in.

I’m not sure if Dave had any idea I was taking laxatives but I think he knew that Chantelle and I were in a bit of a competition to lose weight. So, from then on, he tried to separate us, assigning her to a different agent and making sure we didn’t go to the same events. It didn’t stop us texting, calling and meeting up though. She was still probably the only real friend I had down south.

But because I was scared about losing all my contracts, I did cut down on using laxatives, although it was hard because I was still convinced I was fat and hated myself whenever I went out for dinner.