What did you miss?
Kelly Brook has spoken about what it was like to be the target of “scathing headlines” as a teenager, saying the early days of her fame felt like “another life”.
The former glamour model is competing on Celebrity Race Across The World with her husband Jeremy Parisi, a French model who said he had no idea of who Brook was when they first met.
In this week’s episode of the BBC One travel contest, Brook opened up to him on what it had been like to see newspaper stories accusing her of being “stupid” when she first found fame as a teen.
Read more: ‘It’s no wonder Celebrity Race Across the World is the number one TV show right now’
What, how, and why?
Kelly Brook has been in the public eye for most of her life but in this week’s Celebrity Race Across The World she opened up to husband Jeremy Parisi on how much she had been affected by her treatment in the press during the early days of her fame.
The former glamour model and TV star was just 18 when she first rose to fame, and told Parisi that she had been the subject of “scathing headlines” calling her “stupid and dumb”.
Earlier in the episode, the couple had learned to dance the Argentinian Tango at a dance class and over dinner Parisi asked Brook about learning to dance during her time competing on Strictly Come Dancing.
She said: “I always think it was another life really. You don’t know much about my history in the UK, like when I did the Big Breakfast. Some of these massive shows I’ve been a part of, it’s kind of an invitation for the media to have an opinion on your life and to write about you and comment on you.”
Brook continued: “Oh my god Jeremy, if I could show you the scathing headlines. They’d say I was stupid, that I was dumb, I couldn’t do my job, there was just no limit.
“As a young girl, you think, oh to be famous…then as soon as you are famous, you want to hide away. I’m sorry that I’ve had to drag you into that.”
Speaking to cameras about her experiences early in her career, Brook said: “When you’re in the public eye there’s going to be lots of opinions on who you are and you can’t really control that. If someone’s going to write a scathing headline about you and use a picture of you in a bikini on the front of the paper, that was just like a win-win for the tabloids because that’s what sold newspapers.”
Parisi told her: “When I met you the first week (the tabloids) messaged all my family, all my friends to ask about me.”
As Parisi explained there was not the same sort of celebrity culture in France, she replied: “To be honest Jeremy I don’t think anywhere else in the world has this culture.”
What else happened on Celebrity Race Across The World?
Things had been a little frosty between Brook and Parisi earlier in the episode after a disagreement about a budget hotel room where Brook branded herself “a miserable wife”.
Parisi had gone ahead and paid for a $40 cheap hotel room while Brook was still checking out the luxury alternative over the road.
She asked: “Is he checking in? Did you pay already? I just wish he’d slow down a bit.”
Parisi told her: “We need to be strong mentally because we can’t go in nice hotels.” But Brook shot back: “Why are we working? What’s the point if we can’t even have a decent bed and shower.”
“I’m just trying to do my best,” he claimed, as Brook replied: “You didn’t try to do your best, you ran into the first hotel you saw and just gave the guy some money. You’ve got a lovely cheap room and you’ve got a miserable wife, so well done.”
They weren’t the only pair to fall out, as Kola Bokinni left his passport on a bus – much to the annoyance of his cousin, Mary Ellen.
She complained: “Is it the fact he’s a celebrity and he has people holding onto things for him? What’s gone on? He never used to be this clumsy.”
Bokinni said: “If it’s the end of the race it will be hard to swallow, because it will be my fault.” Luckily, the passport was found by the bus company – although it meant that they had to cut short a day’s work to collect it.
Celebrity Race Across The World airs on BBC One at 9pm on Wednesday.