‘Why?’
‘Save your money.’
‘But it’s exactly the same price in London. I’m not abroad, do you know what I mean?’ If I go to my local Sainsbury’s in London and I buy PG Tips it’s exactly the same cost as if I go to the local Sainsbury’s at home. But he just can’t get his head round it, he really can’t.
He will call me and ask what I’m doing. ‘Just eating a peanut butter sandwich, Dad,’ I’ll say.
‘Bloody hell, how much did that cost ya once you bought everything to make it with? Bet it was twenty bar or at least fifteen quid.’
God bless him, he doesn’t have a clue. It’s all because one time I took him to Camden Market to get an ice cream and he asked for a Mr Whippy ninety-niner with monkey blood sauce and a flake and it cost £2.10.
‘How much? I’ll have my eyeballs back ta, pal, I mean how can it be a ninety-niner if it’s £2.10, mate?’
‘Dad, stop it now, you’re embarrassing me.’ Although to be fair he had a point.
When my dad isn’t phoning me up asking the prices of London stock he is normally asking how my weekend’s been and that involves me talking about either whatever I have been filming, bigging up the London sites or sometimes involving Ant and Dec (and Lisa and Ali). Whoever said you should never meet your heroes is talking crap. They’re genuinely the kindest and funniest people I have ever met, they even invited me over their house a few times for Sunday dinner – Stephen Mulhern comes too and we have such a giggle. Even if he does manage to baffle my mind with his magic tricks (I’m telling you now, Stephen is like Jesus, I bet if you asked him he could turn water into wine). We also go to their local pub and take the dogs and it is just so lovely because I feel like I’m at home again. Obviously the boys and Stephen are super busy filming lots of exciting things like Britain’s Got More Talent. So when I’m not stalking them lot I spend most of my days with Luke (when he’s not working). We love being tourists. We have done ghost-hunting trips, Madame Tussauds, the dungeons, Shrek world. We even bought a Union Jack umbrella to walk round Covent Garden with.
But I do seem to spend most of my days alone. I’ll be honest, though, if there’s one thing I’ve done in London which I never used to do up north, it’s spend time by myself. Now obviously we are all by ourselves sometimes, but I mean I am purposefully not spending time with another human being other than myself. I’ll text people and say I’m busy with work when really I just want a day all by myself. It is great, I love it.
This sounds proper big-headed but I have now realised I love my own company. I used to hate being left with only my own thoughts, I would get so anxious and overthink everything. But since I gained more confidence from the jungle I go for meals out by myself. It is one of my favourite things to do (as sad as that sounds) as I spend most of my time surrounded by lots of people constantly chatting so it’s nice to not have to interact with anyone and to be able to just appreciate what I’m eating (plus I don’t have to share any of my food or wait forever and a day for the other person to decide where and what they want to eat). I take long walks with my dog Bonnie and we sit on Primrose Hill and I read my books. I walk around Camden Market with a tray full of halloumi fries and I people-watch. In fact I make up scenarios about the people I’m watching. I make up a name for them, a job, how they met their partner, if they’re having an affair. Sometimes my brain makes up such a funny story about the person I actually laugh out loud.
Having a day by myself in my flat in London is the best. One of my favourite ‘alone’ things to do in the house is pretend I’m on Strictly Come Dancing. I even do the voices of the judges: ‘seven’. I put my Adele 21 album on full blast, put loads and loads of mascara on and then go in the bath and stare at myself in the mirror as the mascara runs down my face while I sing along, pretending I am in fact in one of Adele’s sad music videos. ‘Never mind I’ll find someone like you, I wish nothing but the best for you too.’
I sometimes order loads of food from Domino’s (I mean a large pizza, seven franks hot sauce chicken wings, four cookies, one big garlic dip and a 1.5 litre bottle of Coke Zero) and when the food comes I pretend to shout through to some make-believe person in the house so the delivery driver doesn’t think I’m greedy. ‘I think that’s our food that’s arrived. I’ll go and collect it, you get the plates out ready, thank you, sweetheart.’ Then I take great satisfaction in eating it all by myself while watching shit-your-pants scary movies on my Mac. Not caring how I’m eating with garlic sauce all down my chin (after all, calories don’t count when no one sees you eat them).
I will stalk fit girls on Instagram to the point where I know their life story. I talk to Bonnie (my dog) in strange accents and at least once a day I say the following, ‘Come on, Bonnie, you can talk to me, I swear if you speak in human language so that I can understand you, I will not, I repeat will not tell a single soul.’ All
