I’m not a vapid, talentless celeb. It’s time I was taken seriously V
Geordie Shore star Vicky Pattison tells Hannah Stephenson she wishes people could see past her reality TV persona, why she’s freezing her eggs and her biggest regret
icky Pattison is well aware that being a reality show star holds her back from more serious projects.
The Geordie Shore star, I’m A Celebrity winner and Ex On The Beach contestant said: “Coming from a background with reality TV, people aren’t in a rush to take a chance on me to do something different. People are under the assumption I’m unintelligent, vapid or talentless. But I’m hard-working, polite and respectful and I’m the first person in at work and the last to leave.”
Vicky, who holds a degree in drama, reinvented herself as a TV presenter with her own show Judge Geordie and was a panellist on ITV’s Loose Women for nine months but it’s still an uphill battle to lose that reality TV tag.
She said: “I wouldn’t be where I am without reality TV, I’m very grateful for the platform it’s provided butI just want different things now.
“I admire people who are doing investigative journalism and documentaries. I’d love to be doing Stacey Dooley-style docs. I’d love to look at issues affecting women – contraception, periods, synthetic hormones. Those issues need more coverage.”
Vicky revealed that she will be doing a documentary this year but remains tight-lipped about new projects. She started a podcast The Secret To... during lockdown and in 2021 promoted body positivity in lingerie for a campaign with fashion brand Pour Moi.
For now, she’s pursuing the self-help path with her latest book, The Secret To Happy, in which she explores heartbreak, loss, body positivity and mental health, and offers advice based on her own experiences.
She’s been living with ex-Towie star Ercan Ramadan, 28, for more than two years.
She said: “I’d love to be Ercan’s wife (he hasn’t asked her yet).
“But what I took from lockdown is that I’d probably been going through life so fast, just wanting the next thing ticked off, like the bigger house, the next relationship, the next job.
“Now I realise success is being happy, contentment. Every day we are so excited to see each other and we’ve still got things to talk about and he still makes me smile. I consider that to be a win.”
At 34, Vicky feels that her biological clock is ticking. She said: “I do feel the pressure, especially when I see other people of similar ages in my industry knocking out three kids. I think, ‘I need to get a move on’.
“In that sense, I’m getting left behind. Most days I’m OK but some days, I feel a bit sad.”
She has decided to have her eggs frozen to allow her more time to follow her dream.
She said: “I feel like most days I want to be a mother but other days I think, ‘Have I got space for that?’ I’m still feeling conflicted.
“I’ve always thought freezing eggs was somehow conceding defeat, that it was in some way saying, ‘You are not having kids’. And for me, who does want to be a mother, that’s a difficult pill to swallow. But ultimately I still have days when I’m so not ready (for kids). There’s still a lot of growing up I have to do.
“I have no qualms about being a mother at 40. As long as I’m still healthy and happy and can be the best mother I can. Didn’t Rachel Weisz have a child when she was 48?”
Lockdown has helped to strengthen her relationship with Ercan.
She said: “I fell in love with him more. I spent the first year-and-ahalf of our relationship being a very fast, very busy, very determined woman going from a photoshoot to a fancy event, to filming. There was always more of that glam version of me.
“Then, for a year Ercan got this small boy-looking version of me who ran around in three-day-old pyjamas with hair on top of her head and not a scrap of make-up. He still looked at me in exactly the same way as when I was on a red carpet. He just loves the real me.”
Vicky is at a very different stage in her life from the one she was in during her 20s, when she had sex on TV in Geordie Shore (under a bed cover).
One of her lowest points came when she ended up in court in 2014, admitting one count of assault and one count of common assault after she threw her shoe at a reveller and a bouncer in a bar brawl. She was ordered to do 180 hours of unpaid work and pay £4750 compensation to the victims.
In the book, she talks about having suicidal thoughts in the wake of the incident and of the support her sister Laura and a close friend provided.
Therapy and life coaching has also helped her mental health over the years.
She said: “I’m a different person now. I’m a lot older and a lot wiser. I’ve removed myself from situations like that, both professionally and personally. But I still hold a certain amount of guilt and remorse for what I did.
“I can blame as many outside influences as I like but there’s a huge part of me that feels so contrite. I don’t know if there will ever be a time when I fully absolve myself of that guilt.” There were other dramas as she hit her 30s – splitting from her ex-fiance John Noble in 2018 after pictures were published of him appearing to cosy up to a mystery woman on a night out in Dubai.
Despite all the brickbats that the fame game has thrown at her, Vicky remains grateful for the platform reality TV gave her.
She said: “Yes, this job comes with pitfalls – everything you do is public knowledge and everyone’s going to have opinions and not all of them are going to be nice – but I have a very charmed existence.
“I can take my mam on holiday now. I travel and I can pick up the bill for my friends on a night out.
“I wouldn’t be able to do those things had I not done Geordie Shore and I’m A Celebrity...” l The Secret To Happy by Vicky Pattison, published by Sphere, is available now, priced £16.99.