Gail Porter says she doesn’t do jokes in her standup comedy. It’s all concerning the story. And the previous kids’s TV and High of the Pops presenter’s story may be very darkish certainly. She tells me how she introduces herself. “In the beginning, I say: ‘Hello, palms up who’s been sectioned.’” How do individuals react? “Often no one places their hand up. Other than this one lady who went: ‘Me. Seven occasions!’ And I used to be like: ‘Oh proper, you win!’”
There’s not a lot Porter hasn’t skilled in the best way of horror tales: anorexia, alopecia that did for her profession, severe psychological well being issues, homelessness and chapter. If she performed Unhealthy Luck Bingo, she can be unbeatable.
We’re strolling by means of her favorite outdated haunts in Soho in central London. In her heyday, as a dazzlingly fairly, pocket-sized dynamo, she used to reside right here. She factors out the bars, golf equipment and eating places she used to frequent. Porter nonetheless appears to know many of the locals.
It appears like a throwback. Oasis have simply introduced they’re reforming, and now I’m with Porter, who appeared to exemplify the hedonistic 90s of lads and ladettes, Britpop and boozing, when on a regular basis sexism was all the trend and stone-age values reigned supreme. The Gallagher boys might not have modified a lot, however Porter definitely has.
Once we get to her restaurant of selection, she hugs the homeowners and tells them she is determined to eat. They have a look at her disbelievingly. “In all these years, I’ve by no means seen you eat,” the boss says. “Does that imply you’re going to have a chip?”
“No, I need a cheese toastie.”
Now he provides her one other look. This time approving, fatherly. Porter, 53, says they’ve been mates for many years; he has seen her by means of the nice occasions and the dangerous.
When she was rising up by the seaside within the Portobello suburb of Edinburgh, she says she was a contented little factor. She liked college, the seashore and ice-cream. She was sensible, cute and content material. Life was an idyll.
Then she thinks about it, and says, effectively, possibly issues weren’t so good. She was bullied in school, for starters. “My nickname was Snobby Porter.” And was she a snob? “No, it’s simply that I used to be so desperate to please that I’d put my hand up earlier than Mrs Nesbit had completed the query. I simply assumed I’d know the reply.”
In her teenagers, Porter contended with a darkness that she couldn’t make sense of. Finally, she realised this was melancholy. After which there was the physique dysmorphia. Her father, who ran a small development enterprise handed down from his father, didn’t assist. “Dad used to say I used to be chubby. If I received unhappy I’d sit upstairs and hearken to the Smiths and eat a bath of ice-cream alone.” After which she would fear about it and cease consuming.
Porter studied for a diploma in movie and images and was decided to interrupt into TV. She labored in bars and babysat and despatched off begging letters to programme-makers she admired. After working as a runner on The Comedian Strip, she received presenting jobs on children’ TV reveals corresponding to Totally Booked, which led to High of the Pops. All of a sudden, in her late 20s, Porter was a star.
She was a pure on TV – cute, likable, ebullient. “I used to be having an absolute ball.” Whereas mates have been doing common nine-to-five jobs, she simply turned up, had amusing and received paid. However, once more, she admits that isn’t the entire fact. By now she was obsessed together with her weight. “I wasn’t consuming. I used to be burdened rather a lot, and other people have been saying: ‘You’re dropping pounds, you’re wanting nice.’ The thinner I received, the extra I believed I would get extra work and I would really feel happier. However it doesn’t work like that. It simply received uncontrolled.”
Did no one inform her she was too skinny? “Individuals have been beginning to discover however no one was saying something as a result of individuals didn’t know easy methods to take care of it. I had fairly huge boobs on the time [she later had a reduction], and if I went out I wore saggy trousers so individuals wouldn’t see me correctly.”
She stops to right herself. One individual did say one thing – her private coach. “I received barred from my gymnasium as a result of I collapsed there. I used to be on the gymnasium for 6am, then I’d not eat. She mentioned: ‘I’m not coaching you.’ Then she’d come spherical to my home and produce meals.”
Immediately, Porter is sporting black dungarees, a black prime and shiny yellow-and-pink trainers. Her inexperienced nails match her inexperienced specs, and her palms and arms are laden with chunky silver jewelry. As she talks, I have a look at her arms – the left is roofed in tattoos that cowl fading scars from years of self-harm. On her biceps is a pool ball with a quantity eight on it. “I received an 8-ball after my mum handed away as a result of my fortunate quantity was seven, however every little thing went mistaken and my hair fell out.” Did it change her luck? “No,” she says, selecting on the cheese toastie.
Though she by no means formally labored as a mannequin, each time she was in a brand new TV present, males’s mags corresponding to FHM, Loaded, GQ and Esquire have been glad to interview her. However actually, greater than something, they wished a photoshoot. And most of all they wished her to take her garments off. In 1999, she did a nude shoot for FHM that went on to outline her – naked bum, trace of boob, tastefully de-nippled. The issue wasn’t a lot the photograph – it was the best way it was used. FHM projected it on to the Homes of Parliament in a guerrilla advertising marketing campaign, accompanied with a message to vote for her in FHM’s sexiest lady ballot. Porter says she didn’t have a clue they have been going to do that. “And it was Photoshopped to dying.”
Porter wouldn’t go away her home for days afterwards. And when she did, she discovered she was handled in a different way. “I received terrified of going out as a result of plenty of lads stopped me on the street going, ‘Weyheyhey!’” How did she reply? “I didn’t exit typically. I attempted to not exit at evening due to drunk individuals coming as much as you going: ‘I’ve seen your arse.’ It was fairly lechy,” she says quietly.
Did girls deal with her in a different way after the shoot? “Feminists undoubtedly did.” She says she was made to really feel a traitor to the sisterhood. “I believed, Oh God, I don’t need to get caught up in all this. I didn’t imply to do any hurt.”
Though Porter grew to become often called a ladette, she says she didn’t even know what it meant. “They only tarred us all with the identical brush. Me, Zoë Ball, Sara Cox. I’d met Zoë, however I didn’t know her, and so they made out we have been hanging out on a regular basis. They’d that image of Zoë together with her bottle of Jack Daniel’s, which they saved placing out over and time and again. That was at a marriage and she or he was having amusing, and it was like, ‘Ladettes! They’re all off their heads on a regular basis.’” The difficulty is, she says, that when she did have a drink it went straight to her head, as a result of she wasn’t consuming and since she was so tiny.
Some individuals additionally handled her in a different way on TV after the FHM shoot. I begin to point out a repellent second on the pop quizshow By no means Thoughts the Buzzcocks, when the presenter Mark Lamarr says … She finishes off the sentence for me: “‘In case you’re not going to indicate us your arse, what’s the purpose of you being right here?’ And that’s after he’d requested me out on the identical day, and I’d mentioned no.”
You seemed damaged after that remark, I say. She nods. “I used to be so shocked. It was a reside viewers, and I believed, Oh my God that is terrible. Everybody was laughing, and no one stood up for me.” Did she say something to him afterwards? “No, I simply left and cried my eyes out on the best way house.”
In 2001, Porter married the Toploader guitarist Dan Hipgrave, and she or he gave start to their daughter Honey in 2002. By 2004, she and Hipgrave had separated. A yr later, she was in Las Vegas making a TV sequence referred to as Useless Well-known during which she looked for the ghosts of well-known lifeless individuals, when her hair fell out. She had by no means heard of alopecia. Her foremost concern was that, when she received house, Honey can be spooked. And he or she wasn’t. “She simply checked out me and went: ‘Rock’n’roll!’” Actually, on the age of three? “Sure, she was very cool. She was saying all kinds.”
Porter didn’t need to put on wigs as a result of they have been uncomfortable. She requested her mates if she seemed bizarre, they mentioned, ‘No, you’re lovely’, and she or he was pleased with that. However the TV world wasn’t. The work dried up instantly. “I simply received requested to do interviews about being bald. They wouldn’t pay you since you’re speaking about an sickness, and I believed, effectively, I’m nonetheless coming into the studio and everybody else is getting paid. That’s once I began pondering: ‘Oh that is going to be a bit shit.’”
It’s round now that Porter additionally loses observe of time. After I ask for dates, she has no concept. Years of distress merge collectively as she suffered blow after blow. She had been making respectable cash, primarily by means of commercials, however that shortly went. She misplaced her home and ended up homeless. “I used to be sofa-surfing for six months and spent a few nights sleeping tough on a bench on Hampstead Heath.”
Nonetheless arduous she tried, she couldn’t get work. “I utilized for jobs in libraries and bookshops, and so they have been like, ‘You possibly can’t try this – you’re Gail Porter!’ I mentioned, ‘I’ll do something – please give me a job.’ So I did voluntary work in a charity store, after which I received slagged off within the papers for doing it. They’re like: ‘Look what’s occurred to her!’ and I’m attempting to do one thing good.”
When did she attain her lowest? “Most likely sitting on that bench on Hampstead Heath pondering, I can’t do that any extra.” She thinks it was round this time she texted her then boyfriend saying simply that. He thought she was about to take her life, mentioned he’d meet her in a pub, however rang the police and mentioned she was a hazard to herself. “He panicked. I went to the pub, after which 4 law enforcement officials walked in and mentioned: ‘Are you Gail Porter?’ and I mentioned, ‘No!’ And so they mentioned, ‘Nicely, we all know you might be, and someone’s actually involved in your security, so we’re going to take you to hospital,’ and I simply kicked off.”
She ended up sectioned below a 28-day order in 2011, and says it was terrifying – drugged as much as her eyeballs and sharing a ward with two males who have been satisfied they have been Jesus and a few violent sufferers. “It actually was like One Flew Over the Cuckoo’s Nest.”
The way in which she tells it, the sectioning and homelessness go collectively. And in a manner they do, as a part of one sustained breakdown. However truly it was three years later, in 2014, that she discovered herself homeless.
In 2015, she appeared on Celeb Huge Brother. She mentioned it was worse than being sectioned, but it surely supplied her with sufficient cash to place down a deposit on a small flat in London, which gave her a level of stability. However in 2016, the taxman got here after her. For a variety of years when she was at her lowest, she didn’t fill in her returns. HMRC offered her with an enormous invoice, however she couldn’t pay it. Porter was declared bankrupt in 2017, which she says was a blessing. “It enabled me to begin once more. They mentioned, ‘You possibly can’t have bank cards,’ and I mentioned: ‘Nicely, I don’t use bank cards.’ I’m not an enormous spender.”
Since then, she has been rebuilding her life. Progress hasn’t been linear or easy. She nonetheless struggles for work, and once I ask what she tells individuals she does today, she says she hasn’t a clue. However she is doing loads. There’s the standup comedy, for starters, which she is taking across the nation. She has virtually completed her second memoir, which has already been optioned for a possible drama-documentary, and she or he works with a variety of psychological well being, poverty and homelessness charities. And, in fact, she is a mom. Porter is near Honey, who has simply graduated from college. “She received a primary in politics and criminology.” She beams with pleasure.
Immediately, she is selling the work of Truthful for You, an organisation that helps individuals struggling to afford fundamental family items. “They could have a house, however they will’t afford a fridge or a freezer – the issues that most individuals have. I believe it’s essential that I used to be homeless as a result of I do know what it’s like. I can say to individuals: ‘I do know the place you’re coming from.’”
In 2020, she made a documentary, Being Gail Porter, tracing her rise and fall. She was regularly in tears as she examined why issues went so horribly mistaken. She says she isn’t considering a analysis for her psychological well being issues, however within the present she visited a psychiatrist who mentioned he thought she had borderline character dysfunction (BPD). “Truly, I had 5 diagnoses,” she says, mock-boastfully. “BPD, bipolar one, bipolar two, manic melancholy after which the worst one was when he went: ‘I believe you’re regular.’ Regular! I used to be like, I’ve not been by means of all that shit so that you can name me regular! Jesus!” Porter is as humorous as she is fragile. “We received a Bafta for the documentary,” she says. One other beam.
Quickly after the documentary was aired, Porter’s father died, leaving her three small flats that wanted plenty of work however are actually offering her with a daily earnings. For the primary time in many years, she says, she has a level of monetary safety.
As for the melancholy, she has managed to maintain it at bay not too long ago. “Ninety-five per cent of the time I’m wonderful. I really feel wonderful in the mean time, and I’ve received my mates, and I’m not scared to inform individuals now that I’m having a foul day whereas earlier than I might by no means have advised anyone. I’d simply put that smile on, and go: ‘It’s nice!’”
Porter says she is finished with pretend smiles. She is finished with all fakery. One factor that she loves about her life now could be that folks simply need to discuss actual issues to her. And once they ask her how she is, they actually care. “I simply received a cuddle from a stranger. He mentioned he noticed me on the telly and wished to know if I used to be OK.”
It couldn’t be extra totally different from the dangerous outdated days when drunk lads approached her simply to say that they had seen her backside. “Individuals come up and discuss to me about issues they could not focus on with different individuals, whether or not it’s hair or psychological well being or struggles with cash. I get so many tales from individuals, and it’s very nice. I imply, I can’t assist everyone, however I like the truth that they really feel they will open up.”
Does it ever turn out to be a burden? “By no means!” she says, with a smile that verges on the ecstatic.
Gail Porter has teamed up with charity-owned Truthful for You, which helps individuals unfold the price of home goods.
