Gail Porter exclusive: 'I'm Britain's 2nd Favourite Baldy'

By Richard Barber, sundaymirror.co.uk 10/08/2008

Gail Porter (Pic: Sm)

Gaze into Gail Porter's gorgeous green eyes - it isn't so difficult to do - and you'll see something amazing.

Delicate little eyelashes are starting to grow there. And eyebrows too.

It's the first hint that her hair might be returning, exactly three years after she suddenly lost all of it in a rare reaction to stress.

"Wow, isn't it fantastic," laughs Gail, 37, recently voted the nation's second favourite baldy after Little Britain star Matt Lucas.

"I have brows and lashes again, after so long. The fact is I've just been on holiday and I feel wonderful, I was so relaxed they started to grow back again. This is the calmest I have been for years. Nothing in my life seems to be going wrong."

And then she quickly reaches out and touches the nearest piece of wood in a telling moment of insecurity.

All of Gail's personal history suggests that she might never be far from tipping over the edge. Anorexia, drink, drugs, depression, a broken marriage and spells of selfharming.

Her life has see-sawed from one trauma to the next.

Already a TV presenter, she shot to fame when her giant nude image was famously projected by a lads' mag on to the Houses of Parliament.

But all the time she was collecting the scars, emotional and physical, as she reveals with raw honesty in her autobiography Laid Bare, just published in paperback.

And idyllic though her recent holiday has been - swimming with dolphins, with five-year-old daughter Honey - she confesses that she still depends on anti-depressants to combat her mood swings.

She blames herself for the collapse of her marriage to musician Dan Hipgrave while her relationship with film cameraman James Lloyd is a turbulent affair.

Last week it was off. This week it's on again.

Who knows what will happen next week.

She sighs: "He's away a lot working, so it's what you might call a stop-start romance.

He's coming back from Krakow tomorrow and he's already phoned to say he wants to see me in the afternoon. Before long, though, he'll be out the door again. He has a phobia about making a commitment.

"And me, I'm my own worst enemy. I'm forever asking him if he loves me. Blokes don't like that, I know. It is annoying.

"But I can't help myself. It's all part of my insecurity.

"He's great. Honey loves him. I love him. He's an adorable, useless boy and I'm just like every other girl I know.

The only difference, of course, is I'm also bald!"

Gail has demonstrated amazing inner strength in dealing with the dramatic change in her appearance, defiantly refusing to wear a wig. She is fiercely proud of how she looks and jokes about it.

Her hair loss, diagnosed as alopecia caused by extreme stress, happened to her overnight.

James woke up beside her one morning and almost all of her hair was lying on the pillow. He swept it away, not having the heart to tell her what had happened. It was only when Gail got up and went into the bathroom that she caught sight of herself in the mirror. She tries to make light of it.

"I was filming in America at the time, so no one knew who I was. I'd go to this really trendy club where everyone looked pretty bizarre anyway.

"I had a Mohican - it was all that was left of my hair - and people would ask if I was in a band. 'Yeah, I'd say, we're called the Alopecians!'

"Back home, most people thought I must be having chemotherapy.

"But looking on the bright side I don't have to shave my legs and I never need a bikini wax. However, I've got no nasal hair so when my nose runs, it's like a minor flood.

"I won't wear a wig because I don't want to. I tried a few, but in the end, I'd rather have my own hair or none at all."

When they separated Gail, overcome with bitterness, began selfharming. "I remember the first time," she says. "I came home and I was alone.

"I walked into the bathroom, found a razor and then drew it across my left arm. I liked the sight of the neat little bubbles of blood. No one had ever mentioned selfharming to me. It was just an instinct.

"And I really needed to hurt myself. It was a sort of punishment. I enjoyed the pain."

Along Gail's left arm, the scars are still visible from the many times she has abused herself. Why only the left? She smiles. "I'm right-handed," she explains simply.

To cover up, she has an elaborate tattoo of a koi carp interwoven with a floral design extending the length of her forearm.

She inflicted the most savage wounds after she had started going out with James, 34, who worked with her on her US series Dead Famous.

Rejecting the idea of a spell in The Priory after another bout of selfharming, she stopped taking her Prozac pills because she thought she could cope without them. But on a holiday in the Maldives, she began to panic at the prospect of her looming divorce from Dan.

"I had one of those all purpose knives with me, full of different attachments, and I thought I'd pulled out a single blade but it turned out to be a mini-saw," says Gail.

She drew its ragged edge across her arm in three parallel lines, still visible today. "There was blood pouring out, other stuff too, like shreds of skin and muscle."

James found her and rushed her to the local hospital. She needed 10 stitches to repair the damage. Doctors told her she was lucky to avoid getting gangrene, which could have led to her arm being amputated.

Looking back, she says her relationship with Dan, a guitarist with the band Toploader, had been too fast and passionate. They met in 2000 when she was presenting Top Of The Pops and within six months they were married.

"I was off my head at the time," Gail says. "I still can't remember who proposed to whom. We were far too quick and both far too fiery.

"When I found I was pregnant, it was the best surprise ever. But I put Dan through an awful time, I realise that now. I was pretty bonkers throughout our marriage. He didn't really know whether he was coming or going.

"He's very loyal but I think I drove him nuts and eventually drove him away. I was the one who called time on the marriage."

Ask her if she'd ever marry again and she looks scandalised. "Good God, no! Never, ever. Marriage didn't suit me at all. It felt claustrophobic."

Dan obviously feels differently. In November he'll marry Lynsey Horn, a travel and traffic reporter for Radio 5 Live, a blue-eyed blonde who looks disarmingly like Gail. Or rather how Gail used to look.

Gail believes part of her problem is a strong need to be in control of everything in her life "I remember when I lost a bit of weight, I liked the compliments I got from people, and I lost a bit more," she says. "Then I couldn't stop."

At her thinnest, Gail weighed little more than six stone. "I should have gone for help," she admits. "But I'm stubborn and I thought I could solve the problem myself. Then I woke up one day and I realised that I was the problem.

"I was diagnosed as bi-polar. What they used to call manic depressive. I had wild mood swings. I was either very up or very down. And there was no in between."

She says her upbeat mood today is down to several factors. Her medication of course, but also work. She's a regular on Channel 5's The Wright Stuff, she's up for a couple of documentaries and also has lots of voice-over offers.

But most of all there is Honey. "She's the best thing that has ever happened to me, and I love her to bits.

She just got a brilliant report card from school, which I carry around with me all the time as I'm so proud.

"Our holiday was in Florida and we had a great time. We saw dolphins and giraffes and elephants in the safari park.

Honey was really excited - and so was I!" It was a time to think, she says, about the good things in her life.

And just for a moment, you'd swear that Gail was fluttering her eyelashes...

features@sunday mirror.co.uk

Gail & Honey were guests of Travel City Direct (www.travelcitydirect.com) at Marriott World Centre & visited Worlds of Discovery in Orlando & Tampa Bay