Clarkson’s daughter: I’d look in mirror and cry because I was big like Dad
AS the daughter of one of TV’s biggest names, she enjoyed all the comforts of a privileged upbringing.
But that did not guarantee a happy adolescence for Jeremy Clarkson’s daughter Emily.
Miss Clarkson, now 23, has revealed that at one stage she was so unhappy with her weight that she would eat – and then cry to the point where she was physically sick.
The episode happened around the time she started at £34,000-a-year Rugby School but believes it was ‘just unhappiness’ and was not bulimia.
Miss Clarkson says her father is partly to blame as she inherited the former Top Gear presenter’s solid frame.
‘I have an enormous father and some of his genes,’ she writes in her book Can I Speak To Someone In Charge?, which is published today.
She writes candidly about her struggle with weight, saying her desire to be thin was so strong that she would compare her body with those of her classmates who had not started puberty,
‘My classmates were all so much thinner’
and curse hers for not looking like theirs. She says: ‘I used to squeeze my eyes shut, cross my fingers and wish that when I woke up in the morning I would be thin. I did this every single night. Every day I would look at my reflection and grimace. Sometimes I would look at it and cry.
‘I would grab fat rolls on my stomach and squeeze them together so tightly there were finger marks. ‘ There were times when I was so unhappy that after eating I would cry to the point where I was sick.’
In the book, a series of open letters addressing the absurdities of modern life – some written to her 13-year- old self – she adds: ‘I wouldn’t call what I had bulimia… it wasn’t bulimia, it was just unhappiness, which thankfully didn’t last long and stopped before I had time to even tell anyone, let alone develop a problem.
‘It can’t have happened more than a handful of times but the constant unhappiness, the insecurities, the stomach-grabbing and fat-hating? That seemed to go on for years, to the point where I can’t remember when it stopped.’
Although now a size 10, she says: ‘I also know I will never be thin. I wasn’t built that way. I have bosoms, rather large ones.
‘I would look at my classmates, all of them so much thinner than me, and wish that I had their bodies. Did it occur to me that the reason so many of them were so thin was because they hadn’t hit puberty and grown boobs or hips yet? No… all I saw was ironing board upon ironing board.’
Miss Clarkson also reveals that she was diagnosed with gluten allergy in 2014. She bemoans the problems of being on a restrictive diet, adding that her pet hate is anyone who says they wish they were gluten and dairy intolerant.
‘Shut up. This is the single most insulting thing that anyone will ever say to you, short of slagging off your mum or making reference to your muffin top,’ she writes. Miss Clarkson, who lives with her musician boyfriend Alex Andrew in London, appears to have inherited her 57-year-old father’s outspokenness.
On her website, Pretty Normal Me, which she started three years ago, she has ranted about shallow stars flaunting unrealistic photographs of their bodies.
Jane Kenyon, founder of Girls Out Loud, a social enterprise aimed at empowering teenage girls, praised Miss Clarkson for revealing her body image issues. ‘Body shaming has no place in the classroom and being honest and open helps girls realise they are not alone,’ she said.
‘This is one issue where secrecy is dangerous. When girls recognise perfection is an illusion, their world improves tenfold.’
More than 1.6million people in the UK are said to suffer with an eating disorder. Recent studies suggest that 8 per cent of women have bulimia – in which sufferers binge eat then make themselves sick – at some stage in their life.