PRIZE AND DOLLS
As Rylan Clark-Neal takes up hosting duties on ITV’s new game show Babushka, the TV stalwart talks to KATE WHITING about drama, medicals and treating everyone the same
If you don’t like me, that’s your problem, but I’m nice to everyone... Rylan Clark-Neal on his personality
BABUSHKA ITV, Monday-Friday, 5pm
RYLAN CLARK-NEAL is attempting to list all 10 of his new co-stars: “There’s Anastasia, Katya, Svetlana, Tatiana, Anoushka, Viktoria, Olya... Did I say Katya?!”
But these are no ordinary women – they’re 6ft 3in robotic Russian dolls, who may or may not be concealing money.
It’s all to do with Babushka, the new game show Rylan’s presenting.
Though he admits he was a little confused by the concept initially, he says after being shown a demo with paper cups, “within minutes, I fell in love. I could not believe it weren’t a show already!
“It’s unbelievable! It’s brutal! I’ve had people break down in tears – and the audience as well,” he adds, bubbling over with excitement.
To explain then, there are 10 gigantic Russian dolls, concealing various amounts of cash – from £500 up to £10,000 – while two dolls contain nothing.
Pairs of contestants have to answer a true or false question; if correct, they can choose one of the dolls to open.
The first inner doll pops up showing either no money or £500, which the contestants can either bank, or opt to open up the next doll inside instead. And so it goes on, until they’ve opened eight different giant dolls, with a chance of taking home £44,000.
However, there’s a catch: “Get the question wrong, open an empty doll or push a doll too far until there’s nothing left, you’ll lose anything you’ve banked so far,” says Rylan.
“And it’s like Hunger Games, you have to play eight dolls, you can’t bank and then leave at any point – once you’re in, there’s no walking out.”
Such is the dramatic tension, the former model and singer, 28, was asked to have a full medical before work got under way.
“I was like, ‘Why?’ Then I did the first show and I was like, ‘F***ing hell!
Now I know why I needed a medical, they had to check I had an all right heart! Jesus Christ!’
“It was really hard for me,” he continues, eyes wide. “I was playing that game with them and I want them to win. I don’t know where the money is, I don’t know what’s in the dolls. I don’t know what the questions are until they come up on screen. So for me, it meant something, same as the audience. It was so tense!
“We’ve had people lose so much money. You go on that journey with them.
“We had one couple where £500 could change their life completely... And when I say the episode ended with the audience crying, them two crying, and me going, ‘I think I need to stop because I f***ed my make-up up’... basically, it was unbelievable, I’ve never done a show like it!”
With his perfect pearly white grin and mischievous twinkling eyes, it’s easy to see how the Essex boy has charmed his way from a hopeful on The X Factor to This Morning regular – and now chat and game show host – in just five years.
Shortly after making it to week-eight in the ITV singing show, the star – who ditched his real name Ross for the more “unusual Rylan” – managed to win Celebrity Big Brother, then scoop a job fronting Big Brother’s Bit On The Side.
Last year, he began hosting his Channel 5 chat show, Up Late With Rylan, and he and husband Dan, an ex-police officer, became the first gay couple to co-present an episode of This Morning.
Asked to explain his meteoric rise, he says: “I’m not an a**hole. I’m the same boy that was on X Factor as I am now, and I didn’t let anything go to my head and I didn’t spend thousands of pounds on flashy cars and clothes and renting penthouse apartments.
“I saved my money, stayed with my mum for two years, built a house and stayed grounded.”
Of his seemingly effortless ability to make friends and influence people, he adds simply: “You should treat others how you want to be treated.
“I don’t care if you’re a runner or an exec producer or the head of the channel, I will speak to every single person the same, I have the same sense of humour and I won’t adapt myself.
“So something I’d say that I think’s funny, I would say to my runner or Camilla Parker Bowles when I met her – I don’t care!
“If you don’t like me, that’s your problem, but I’m nice to everyone. But cross me and I’ll f***ing kill you!”
He describes life at home with Dan in their five-bed, 11-TV pad in Essex as “normal”.
“We’re so normal. I will row with him, but I love him. We’ve got a very normal relationship and I think that’s healthy.” And he’d “love to” have kids. “If it happens, I’d love it, if it doesn’t, that’s what’s meant to be.
“I’ve got Cameron (Dan’s son), who’s 17. We have a great relationship... when he’s not getting parking tickets!”
He’ll be back hosting Big Brother’s Bit On The Side later this summer – “I’ve never seen the house like that before, that’s all I can say” – but as for when he’s watching TV, not making it, it’s all about Prime Minister’s Questions.
“I love it when they pipe up, it’s like Celebrity Slanging Match! How that ain’t a show, I mean, it is a show, but how it’s not a show-show.
“It is literally like someone going to Theresa May, ‘Your Momma’s so fat, she got caught in the door!”’
Does a future career as the straight-talking saviour of politics beckon?
“Erm, yeah, why not? I probably wouldn’t, I’m too busy, but if I had nothing else on... I could be, like, the People’s Party!
“You don’t just have to do one thing,” Rylan concludes. “If you want to do everything, then do everything.
“But the second you stop enjoying it, stop it.”