Denise: “It’s difficult when you don’t feel your best on camera”

Denise Van Outen opens up about her struggle with eczema and passing it on to her daughter Betsy

lam Denise Van Outen always G looks camera-ready, but all her life she has battled a secret war with eczema, the debilitating skin condition that can leave skin red, cracked, sore and itchy. It made the Essex beauty self-conscious. “I used to get it a lot on my face, and wearing make-up every day on TV made it sore,” Denise, 43, says. “It’s difficult when you’ve got a camera in your face and you’re just not feeling your best.

“I discovered there were certain makeup products I couldn’t use, particularly any containing nickel. I still don’t use them.”

feeling guilty

Denise’s battle with eczema started when she was a child. She says: “I’ve always had it. I used to think it was because of the food I was eating so, when I was a teenager, I tried cutting out different food groups, like dairy.

“As I got older, I realised that my eczema was mostly to do with the weather – in winter it would flare-up quite badly on my hands and around my eyes or mouth. I’ll get dry patches and my skin will occasionally crack if I don’t get it under control.”

Denise admits she felt guilty when she realised she’d passed on eczema to sevenyear-old Betsy, her daughter with her ex husband, Holby City actor Lee Mead.

She says: “Even when Betsy was just a few months old she had it bad – worse than I ever did. She’d cry when I put her in the bath and I’d take her out and realise it was because her skin was sore. And I could only cover her in a bit of thin muslin because bedclothes were so uncomfortable for her.”

finding the triggers

Denise scoured the net to find out how other mums were coping, and switched Betsy to soya milk to see if dairy was the culprit.

“It helped a bit, but later we were able to put her back on cow’s milk,” says Denise. Once Betsy could talk, she’d tell her mum that eczema felt as if her skin was on fire.

Denise says: “She gets it around her mouth and eyes and on her legs. She’ll come home from school and say: ‘My hands feel sore, Mummy,’ and when she has flare-ups she can’t go to swimming club. I always use Cetraben cream on her, which really works. It’s horrible to see your child in pain, but luckily there are things you can do to help.”