RYLAN: I WAS EVIL
‘Devil child’ set fire to mum’s lampshade
READY Steady Cook host Rylan Clark-Neal says he was a little devil when he was a lad.
The TV presenter reckoned he was nicknamed Damien after the boy in The Omen films.
And he “got away with a lot” when he was growing up.
Rylan, 31, lived with his mum Linda and gran Rose in east London as a youngster.
The Supermarket Sweep host said: “My earliest memory of
Mum is when I set fire to the lampshade in our living room while she went to the loo.
“I was about five and I saw the lighter on the side and went for it.
“She came back in, saw it and I can’t repeat the language she used, but she went mad.” Rylan added: “I suppose I did get away with a lot growing up.
“There was my mum and nan and little old me in a council house in Stepney Green. We didn’t have money but I never went without. I wasn’t bad, but for a little while they probably called me Damien.
“I had the odd tantrum – I still do, to be fair.”
Mum Linda said she told her son not to “camp it up” on Supermarket Sweep, and told Rylan he should not try to be former host Dale Winton, who died in 2018. She said: “I do tell him not to camp it up. “When he was doing Supermarket Sweep I said to him, ‘You’re not Dale, be yourself.’”