Anna: Cerys and Mark are happy
Friday, 18 Jan 2008 14:08
Anna and Biggins became the best of friends in the Aussie jungle.
Celebrities tend to opt for the rigours of I'm A Celebrity… Get Me Out of Here! because of the promise of a free holiday, with only some close encounters with creepy crawlies to spoil the fun.
But for two contestants on this year's series of the ITV1 reality show, life in the Australian jungle promised more than just bugs and bickering as an unlikely romance blossomed in front of millions of viewers.
While their relationship in the jungle might have made the headlines in the UK, the budding connection between Cerys Matthews and Marc Bannerman was a surprise to everyone in this year's camp according to Anna Ryder-Richardson.
inthenews.co.uk's Lewis Bazley spoke to the Changing Rooms star about life in the Antipodean wilderness, the glorious victory of Christopher Biggins and the dangers of paying attention to celebrity magazines.
So were you delighted that Biggins triumphed?
I was absolutely delighted. He's just glorious, he's one of the funniest, jolliest people I've ever met. And he certainly got me through my jungle experience.
And you recently did Who Wants To Be A Millionaire with him?
Yes, we did! Which was nearly as scary as jumping out of a helicopter but not quite. We were really lucky because we did it together. For people who have to do it on their own it must be absolutely terrifying. And you just, under those circumstances, even when you're just asked your name you have to think twice and say what it is. We were just desperate not to – well, to be able to answer the first question, actually! [laughs]
Seeing as you and your husband have just bought a zoo, presumably you weren't overly worried about the challenges presented by the snakes and spiders near the camp?
Yes, that's true we have just bought a zoo. And of course there are going to be rats there, but I won't have to sleep in a room – well a dungeon that’s 12 foot by 9 foot with hundreds of them – hopefully! It's going to be fantastic, I can't wait, I really want to live in the country. I adore animals and I just think it's going to be a great lifestyle for my children and I. And it's just up the road from Cerys, it's in south Wales.
Have you seen Cerys and Marc since the show?
I haven't, but I've spoken to Cerys a couple of times and from what I know they're very happy.
Did you and the other contestants in the jungle always think there was something going to happen between the two of them?
Well I must be very daft but you've got to remember it's not real in the jungle. The conversations are quite stilted, you think you're just chatting away and of course you have to think about things before you speak sometimes. And we were just all genuinely getting on very well, and it was only really when Marc went out that we suddenly thought: 'Oh, hang on a minute… '. I mean I don't know, from Cerys' point of view, what was in her head but certainly from mine I thought we were all just getting on very well.
Why have you chosen to get involved with the Kit Kat 107 calories campaign about breaking new year's resolutions?.
I think people think that I'm constantly starving myself and I'm always on a diet and I'm very conscious of my weight. And it would be wrong to say that I'm not conscious of how I look but it's more about being healthy and happy. And I think we fill ourselves with guilt and Christmas is a perfect time for that – you know, we've eaten too much we've probably put on weight; it's just excess, excess. And then we go and set ourselves these ridiculous goals which then we break. It's just a very nasty circle of constantly beating yourself up.
Why do you think people have a stick-figure image of you?
I think it's because… um, I'm slim. I'm not skinny but I'm not overweight. And I think we're obsessed by it as a nation, I think we really are. We're always looking at people's weight and I think we think we should all be skinnier.
Why is it that we're so obsessed with celebrity image and body size?
I don't know, I might be wrong here, but I think it's a woman thing. We just put all this pressure on ourselves that we have to be skinny. We want extremes, we want to be perfect – I mean, what is perfect? I think it would be very boring if we all were the same size, we all the same sort of faces and hair and that sort of thing. And I think the great part of the human race is we're all different.
But nobody should be skinny and I think the danger is the younger generations are growing up thinking they want to be a celebrity and to be a celebrity you have to be gorgeous and you have to be slim and you have to be skinny, because size-zero basically is skinny.
And that's not healthy. And also, from a girl's point of view, I don't think that's got what guys want to see either. They like a bit of shape, they like something to get hold of, don't they?
Lewis Bazley and Mathew Strowbridge
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