Chanelle Hayes - Baring My Heart (11 page)

T
he hours after I left the house were a blur. I was taken to a hotel near the studios in Elstree and had to see a psychologist again, who probably just needed to check I wasn’t about to top myself. All I wanted was to get home, back to my own tiny bedroom, and I kept crying and begging to see Mum and Dad.

‘They’re on their way,’ I was told. ‘They’ll be here soon.’

It was a hot summer’s day and I waited in the grounds of the hotel for what seemed like an eternity for them to arrive. Then suddenly, I looked up and saw them walking hurriedly across the grass towards me. I’ve never felt so relieved in all my life. It was such a corny moment – I ran into their arms and Mum and I were both sobbing, and even Dad looked teary-eyed.

‘We’re so proud of you,’ he said.

‘Really?’ I gulped. ‘But I completely lost it in there. I thought you’d hate me.’

‘It doesn’t matter, Chanelle. You’re out now and that’s the main thing,’ said Mum.

I instantly felt a million times better with them being there
and, from that moment on, my life became insane. That same day, I had to choose an agent and picked PR firm Neon Management, headed up by a guy called Dave Read. He was famous for turning Jordan into a hugely successful and very rich star, so I figured I couldn’t go wrong! It was all so alien to me though; I hadn’t planned or expected anything to happen after the show and thought I’d just be going home to Wakefield, back to college and to my humble little life.

But 10 minutes after I signed up with Dave, he took a phone call and then said, ‘Right, that’s your first deal done and dusted.’

‘What do you mean? What have I got to do?’ I said, baffled.

‘Oh, nothing much. You just need to do an interview and have your photo taken by the
Daily Star
newspaper and a couple of magazines like
OK!, new!
and
Star
.’

‘Right,’ I said. ‘That sounds good. How much do you think I might get paid?’

Hand on heart, I thought Dave was going to say something like £10,000. And that would have been absolutely fantastic. All I hoped for was a tiny bit of money to see me through the rest of college and to put towards university, so I wouldn’t have to live in grotty student accommodation. But what he said next almost gave me a cardiac arrest.

‘The deal is for £250,000, Chanelle.’

My mouth fell open. I couldn’t speak but Mum was sitting next to me and said, ‘What? You’re not being serious?’

‘I’m deadly serious,’ said Dave. ‘Welcome to your new life.’

I found my tongue and stammered, ‘But why are they interested in me? I just behaved like a total dickhead on national TV.’

‘No, Chanelle, you’ve got something that nobody else has. And after Ziggy comes out of the house, there will be another deal on the table for your first joint interview and shoot. You could both go far with this.’

It was utterly bonkers – especially as, at that point, Ziggy and I weren’t even on speaking terms. I’d left the house screaming bloody murder at him and, as far as I knew, he loathed me.

Later that day, in a bit of a daze, Mum and I went to Harvey Nichols in Knightsbridge for some serious retail therapy. I spent about £1,200 on Mac make-up, bought loads of Rock & Republic jeans and got Mum some nice clothes, as well as new jeans for my brother and an outfit for Dad. He tends to wear the same thing every day – one of his blue checked shirts with dark-blue jeans and brown shoes, so I got him a whole new set. It was crazy – we splashed about £5,000 in an hour. We’d only ever been able to window shop in Harvey Nics, so this was a dream come true.

I also needed to work out where I was going to live now I was out of the house because, if there was going to be all this work in London, there was no way I could commute from home every day. I’d been for drinks at the Sanderson Hotel a couple of times before and in that era it was the coolest place to hang out in London. You never knew who you might see sipping a cocktail at its famed Long Bar – everyone from Colin Farrell to Mariah Carey and Paris Hilton were hotel regulars. I had no idea about where to live in London and didn’t want to commit to a long rental period somewhere, so I moved into a suite there. I actually ended up staying about four months, which should have cost me about £50,000, but they gave me such a good deal that I only paid about £20,000 in total. It was incredible. My suite had two king-size beds and a separate living and dining area, as well as a huge bathroom kitted out with double sinks and a walk-in shower. I loved it there and the staff made such a fuss of me. They’d give me spare rooms for Mum and my friends and order me in pizza if I didn’t want anything off the menu. One day I was walking out of the lobby and saw Usher casually sitting there in a pair of flip-flops. Bounding over like an excited puppy, I
shrieked, ‘Oh, hi, Usher! How are you?’ and he was like, ‘Er, hello,’ clearly a bit perplexed by this weird girl jabbering away in a Yorkshire accent.

A couple of days after the initial excitement of leaving the
BB
house, Dave sensed a great PR stunt and flew me to LA to go hot on the trail of Victoria Beckham. She was now based there with David and their kids and, though it was basically a glorified photo opportunity, the tabloids loved it. I was taken to all the key Hollywood sites and to an LA Galaxy football match, where David had just started playing. Ironically, he got his first home goal for the club that day and the
Daily Star
ran with the headline: B
ECKHAM SCORES WITH
C
HANELLE
! Not something I ever imagined I’d read.

Sadly, I didn’t manage to hook up with Posh – I guess she might have been a bit busy! The trip was good fun but it was marred by the fact that I kept having anxiety attacks. Some days I didn’t even want to leave my hotel room. I guess it was because a lot was being thrown at me and, after seven weeks cooped up in
Big Brother
, all this newfound attention was hard to handle.

I returned home a few days later to a whirlwind of media appearances and photo-calls and suddenly all these lads’ mags were desperate to put me on their front covers. I think the first deal I signed with
Nuts
was for £75,000. It was mind blowing.

As the
Big Brother
final approached, I was asked to go back in for a secret task with Ziggy. Although I would never have agreed to return as a proper housemate, I was curious to test the water with him. So with a new hairdo (blonde crop à la VB, of course) and dressed to the nines in a strapless gold dress, I re-entered the house on day 89. Wearing a blindfold, Ziggy had to identify this ‘mystery guest’ by touch alone and he guessed straight away it was me. But when he took the mask off, he looked like he’d been winded and neither of us knew what to say or do. It was so
uncomfortable. After a couple of seconds, we hugged and he told me I looked sensational. So perhaps he did still like me.

‘So, is it worth us talking on the outside?’ he asked.

‘If you want to,’ I said. ‘I’ve missed you.’ And despite everything, I really had.

As we hugged again, I was told it was time to leave. ‘See you on Friday,’ he said, blowing me a kiss up the stairs.

At the final, lovely Brian Belo was crowned the winner, and rightly so. He’s such a genuine and sweet guy and was more than deserving of his victory. Still, everyone’s eyes seemed to be on Ziggy and me and it felt like the whole nation was waiting to see if we’d leap into each other’s arms again. As it turned out, he didn’t come near me all evening. It was as though I didn’t exist. His sister Zoe, who really hated me, was at the party afterwards and she was giving me evil looks all night. So I decided to leave after a bit and go back to my suite at the Sanderson.

He did, at least, call me the next morning to say he’d appointed an agent called Darren Lyons, more commonly known as Mr Paparazzi. Then he said, ‘I’m really sorry we didn’t get a chance to speak at the party and if I seemed a bit moody. But we’ve got a shoot with
OK!
magazine tomorrow, so I’ll see you there.’

We basically got paid £125,000 each to dress us up as Victoria and David Beckham and the magazine put us on gold thrones, with me wearing a wedding dress and Ziggy in a white suit. The headline they used was: C
HANELLE
AND
Z
IGGY’S
P
OSH WEDDING
! We were even asked how long it would be until we knocked up a ‘baby Chiggy’. We started at 7am and went right through to about 10pm but it was such an odd day. In front of the cameras, Ziggy was kissing and cuddling me but, as soon as they stopped, he went into another room and didn’t want to talk to me. I was so upset; I didn’t understand what was going on or why he was
being like this. I went back to the Sanderson knackered and confused and the next day I had my own individual shoot, so we didn’t speak.

But the day after that, he called me and his attitude had changed completely. He was being so nice and said, ‘I’m so sorry. My sister told me you’d been doing bad press about me and screwed me over. I hadn’t had a chance to read anything so I was being wary. But now I know you haven’t said anything bad and I really am sorry. I do want to see you.’

I did understand where he was coming from because being in
Big Brother
makes you paranoid and you think everyone is out to use you and make a quick buck from you. So we agreed to forget about it and make a fresh start.

‘My friend’s got a hotel in Bayswater. Do you want to come and stay with me for a couple of weeks?’ he said.

‘OK, why not?’ I said.

I was quite lonely on my own and at that stage I really did want to give things a go with him, so I got a bag of stuff together and went over there.

For a while, things were really good. We became a proper couple and went out for lots of lovely dinners and on romantic mini-breaks.
OK!
magazine also took us to Dubai for another £100,000 shoot but that was a disaster, as I had food poisoning and was horribly sick for the whole five days we were there. I actually panicked that I was pregnant and so took a test – which, thankfully, was negative. There were loads of stories that we’d got engaged out there, which was just silly. There was never any talk of that. I was only 19 – far too young to think about getting married.

Another time, I took him to Center Parcs and he came up to see my friends and family a lot. Although we did argue and had big scenes just like we’d had in
Big Brother
, we regularly told each
other we loved each other and it was definitely not a sham. Not on my part anyway.

After a few months, I started renting a plush apartment in Maida Vale, which cost me £4,500 per month, even though it was tiny. If you did a 360-degree turn in the kitchen, you could touch every appliance! But I loved it. The fixtures and fittings were gorgeous and it had beautiful high ceilings and a massive bedroom.

Ziggy moved in with me for a bit but it was around that time that our arguments really started escalating. The biggest problem was that we both got really jealous of each other. We had our own friends and moved in different social circles and, when one would come back from a club really late, the other would automatically be suspicious and start flinging around wild accusations. More of a party animal than me, Ziggy went out almost every night and, of course, girls were throwing themselves at him wherever he went. I lost count of the number of screaming rows we had at 3am. Our poor neighbours.

I guess the fiery side of our relationship did spill over into the bedroom. Our sex life was pretty full on and passionate, which made things exciting, but I didn’t think there was anything unusual in that at all – and I still don’t.

We kept our rows behind closed doors though and we worked hard to maintain our image as a couple because that’s what people seemed to want. We’d learned the rules of the media quickly and I can’t deny that the relationship did wonders for my career.

Having said all of that, there were genuine feelings there and Mum and Dad always welcomed him with open arms. It wasn’t quite the same story with his family though – they seemed to look down on me and I don’t think they thought I was good enough for Ziggy. There I was with my broad Yorkshire accent, like I’d popped straight out of
Emmerdale
, and they were living a very different, affluent life down south.

It used to cause a lot of friction between us. One night I went out to a club in Soho and, by pure coincidence, Ziggy was there with his sister Zoe. It was really tense and, as I tried to have a conversation with him, she started shouting, ‘What are you doing with her after all that’s gone on?’ She stormed out of the club and Ziggy went after her – proving to me exactly where his loyalties lay.

Things were very up and down but, that November, everything changed and he broke my heart in the worst way imaginable.

With my birthday approaching, I’d been making plans for a big party back in Wakefield that Saturday night. I’d booked out a bar called Beluga and arranged hotel rooms for my friends and a lovely suite for Ziggy and me. Loads of my family and friends were coming.

But on the Friday, as I was getting ready to go home, Ziggy said, ‘Oh, babe, I’ve got some family stuff to sort out today. I’m going to stay behind.’

A bit disappointed, I said, ‘Oh, OK. When will you come up then?’

‘I’ll follow you up tomorrow,’ he said.

‘Well, don’t be late for my party, will you?’

‘Of course not,’ he insisted. ‘Don’t worry – I’ll be there.’

Next morning came and, when I hadn’t heard anything from him, I tried calling. No reply. I thought it was weird, especially as we hadn’t spoken on the Friday night either, which was rare for us. I tried calling and texting him all day long but could never get through and he didn’t reply to my texts. Eventually I rang my agent, Dave Read, in a bit of a state.

‘Dave, something’s going on. Ziggy’s not taking my calls and he’s ignoring my texts.’

‘Calm down, Chanelle, he’s probably hungover in bed,’ said Dave.

‘No, this isn’t like him. Something’s happened.’

‘All right, leave it with me, I’ll call you back,’ he said.