Coarse and mouthy she may be, but Gemma Collins has something most celebrities lack: authenticity... and fantastically staunch views on benefit culture
THErE is something about Gemma Collins’s use — or misuse, as some have categorised it — of the word ‘hermaphrodite’ that makes me warm to this selfstyled Essex ‘Del-Girl’.
In a frank and at times rather heartbreaking episode of the Daily Mail’s Everything I Know About Me podcast, the reality TV star talks about a time in her early 20s when she fell pregnant by her stockbroker boyfriend.
She describes how he was less than thrilled at the news. (She later found out he was having an affair with a hairdresser called Clare, even though she and this man were living together.)
‘I went to the doctor’s — I can remember going on my own ’cause he just wasn’t about,’ she explains. ‘They said to me, “Oh, your baby could be, from looking at it…” Is it called a thalidomide? no — a hermaphrodite, a hermaphrodite — I mean, you can imagine, I didn’t know what the word was, I had to look it up.
‘I’d never been taught about hermaphrodites — didn’t know what they were, didn’t know they existed!’
The doctors advised her to have a termination, and she went ahead, recalling how after the operation her boyfriend just sat watching the TV series 24. ‘I can remember thinking, I’ve just had an abortion, you’re downstairs watching 24, you absolute piece of sh**’.
Inevitably critics have focused on her use of the word ‘hermaphrodite’, pointing out, somewhat sanctimoniously, that the accepted term is ‘intersex’.
no doubt some will also question her decision to have a termination altogether (she has since had several more), and others still may pick up on her misuse of the term ‘thalidomide’.
Indeed, that entire passage is so unconsciously un-woke it’s a miracle she hasn’t already been carted off by the PC police.
BUT if you take the time to listen to her talking, it’s clear that none of what she says is intended to offend. It is simply her account of events as she remembers them, warts and all. It may be shocking in parts, and lacking in the kind of finesse of self- censorship that we are used to from those in the public eye — but it is also authentic and relatable in a way that is increasingly rare these days.
Collins’s success and longevity in the business has been a topic of debate ever since, in 2011, she burst onto our TV screens in the second series of ITV’s The Only Way Is Essex (Towie).
But I don’t find her popularity that surprising at all. Yes, she’s coarse, yes she’s mouthy, yes she gets her thalidomides mixed up with her hermaphrodites. But at the end of the day she has something that so many of her slick, size 8, super-primped counterparts don’t have: she is real.
In a world of endless filters, where people are for ever trying to be someone they’re not, scared of saying what they think for fear of being characterised as bigots, her rawness feels culturally subversive, liberating even.
Her inability and unwillingness to disguise the less salubrious aspects of her personality renders her unexpectedly attractive as a person, even though outwardly she lacks many of the accepted attributes.
She is greedy, ambitious, ignorant, vulnerable — and she doesn’t try to hide any of it. She has a level of self-knowledge that is both refreshing and compelling.
She reminds me, in a way, of fellow reality TV star Jade Goody.
Another one who was reviled for her lack of refinement, who was ridiculed for her apparent ignorance — appearing on Big Brother in 2002, she thought Cambridge was in London, and when someone pointed out it was in East Anglia, she assumed that was somewhere outside the UK, and referred to it as ‘ East Angular’. When Jade ran the London Marathon, she collapsed, later confessing that she didn’t ‘really understand miles’.
Collins, 43, is a more sophisticated version of Goody (who tragically died aged 27 from cervical cancer in 2009) — but they are essentially cut from the same cloth.
They are both women who have transcended their perceived position in life, who have confounded society’s perceptions of what they ought to be, who have made something of themselves while staying true to who they are.
They are also the kind of women who attract a lot of misogynistic criticism, precisely because they fail to comply with the first rule of being female in a patriarchal society, which is to know their place. There’s an earthiness there, a lack of physical shame which runs counter to what so many of us are taught to feel about our bodies, which, while at times quite shocking, is also admirable.
WHEn I think of someone like Collins, with her raw honesty and unbridled lust for the finer things in life, I am reminded of that wonderful literary creation, Chaucer’s the Wife of Bath. Strong, independent, raunchy, outrageous, voracious — the Wife and Collins share many similar qualities. And just as the Wife shocks and excites her fellow pilgrims in equal measure, so Collins does the same to modern audiences.
Collins even opened up on Towie about her quest for a ‘ designer vagina’, an echo of the Wife’s gleeful reference to her ‘ Bele chose’. Six centuries may separate the two, but that bold female spirit remains.
And, like the Wife, no matter how outrageous Collins may be, what comes across most of all in this podcast is her genuine warmth and kindness. She’s got a tongue on her and she doesn’t suffer fools gladly (especially when it comes to that ex-boyfriend and his hairdresser girlfriend, and some of her former colleagues on Towie), but she is never mean for the sake of it.
Above all, she owns her failings and admits to her cock-ups.
She never feels sorry for herself, either, like so many self-indulgent celebrities do these days — even though she might have good reason to. Even when talking about her termination, she manages to find some humour in the darkness.
‘I always get the giggles when something’s bad,’ she says.
That approach extends to other things, too: she has no time for snowflakery. One of my favourite moments is when she’s talking about how important her work ethic is to her, and how she can’t understand why people would prefer to stay at home than get a job.
‘We are living in a society today where people don’t want to work. It’s so bizarre,’ she says. ‘Cut all the benefit. There should be a lot more people out there working. Don’t even get me started on that.
‘Since the pandemic people are offended if they’ve got to go into the office? Get a grip! This is life. Go to work. Get up if you’re ablebodied, and go and get a job.’ I couldn’t agree more.
next stop Westminster?