My naked ambition
It can’t be easy being the child of famous parents like Richard and Judy. But has Chloe Madeley over-exposed herself to promote her career?
MOST of us would be in emotional tatters if we spent just an hour on the receiving end of the bile, loathing, jealousy and general trolling with which fitness expert Chloe Madeley is bombarded each day on social media. It starts between 5am and 7am, at the time when she’s doing her first cardiovascular workout of the day. ‘It’s as if they have to get it off their chest before they can get on with their day,’ she says.
There’s another burst mid-morning, followed by more vitriol trickling through in dribs and drabs for the rest of the day. It is all deeply personal — much of it criticising her muscled body, of which, as a result of countless hours of weight-lifting and high intensity work-outs, every sinew is clearly visible.
There’s one particularly evil person (described by Chloe as her ‘No 1 Troll’) who takes the depravity to a whole other level. ‘He or she, I don’t know which, threatens me with rape, death and pretty much anything you can think of in between. It’s very graphic.’
So awful, she can’t bring herself to elucidate. ‘I don’t want the words to come out of my mouth.’
It’s not just Chloe who is constantly under attack. Another target is her England rugby player boyfriend, James Haskell. He may be 6ft 3in and 18 stone, but on the internet he’s easy prey for cowards.
Also trolled are her parents, the television presenters Richard Madeley and Judy Finnigan, her three brothers and her friends.
All this is very damaging to Chloe, who runs a flourishing health and fitness business, for she is constantly being falsely branded ‘a fake, a phoney and on steroids’.
Typical of these cowards, to avoid detection they’ll delete their social media account and then open another one, launching yet more vitriol.
So, what has 28-year-old Chloe done to get such abuse?
Very publicly, she has posted a lot of photographs of herself on social media, displaying acres of toned flesh and a spectacularly impressive eightpack, in a series of minuscule gym outfits, all to promote her business, Fitness Fondue.
She is the first to admit the images are rather vain and narcissistic.
Her parents’ fame doesn’t help. either. Indeed, the worst abuse began two years ago just after Judy appeared on ITV’s Loose Women and commented that rapist footballer Ched Evans should be allowed to return to play for his team, Sheffield United, because the rape was ‘unpleasant’, but ‘not violent’.
‘It just blew up so massively,’ says Chloe today.
Her mother was forced to apologise and the media uproar soon died down. But the revenge trolling against Chloe continued.
‘And with this one person, it’s never stopped,’ she says. ‘When it first started it was scary and I worried about my safety.
‘Now, I block it. I don’t read the messages. I don’t engage.’
She says she’s glad it’s happening now, when she’s strong enough to deal with it, rather than ten years ago when it might have tipped her over the edge.
‘Back then, I was wound up and panicky, and was really struggling. I had very bad anxiety and was finding it hard to find my way.’
First, she abandoned her English degree at Leeds University after four months, saying she was ‘just so over the whole education thing’. She joined a PR company, then left that to follow her parents into TV.
As she embraced celebrity, her anxiety just spiralled.
‘It crept up and up. I felt I was out of control. I was desperately unhappy. I was so nervous all the time.
‘I kept thinking: “How did I come across? What did I say? Did I act like a spoilt brat?” It messed me up so badly…’
ONE of her first jobs was as a roving reporter on her parents’ TV show. Understandably, she was accused of benefiting from nepotism. She also became the face (or body) of Ultimo underwear, and appeared on a series of ‘celebrity’ reality TV shows.
‘Of course, my name helped 100 per cent in terms of money-making,’ she admits. But she claims it was a shortterm gain, because in the longer term few people took her seriously and many saw her only as the spoilt child of two celebrities.
Indeed, for a while her life involved a seemingly endless round of parties. She also jumped headlong into various doomed love affairs.
Next, she hit the headlines for drinkdriving and taking drugs. After a night out on cocktails, she flipped her car while almost twice the alcohol limit. She was also pictured smoking cannabis at a party.
This was particularly embarrassing, as her father, Richard, had proudly proclaimed her and her older brother, Jack, to be drug-free.
For her part, Chloe says there was no issue about the drug-taking. Indeed, she has stated that there is nothing wrong with smoking cannabis with friends.
But she conceded the drink-driving offence ‘certainly was’ a mistake.
Not surprisingly, media stories about Chloe’s misbehaviour led to her being compared to other celebrity children getting into trouble at the time.
Her parents were furious. At the time, Chloe said that her father exploded with rage and called her a ‘f***ing idiot’.
HIS outburst surprised her, she says: ‘If there was ever ab******ingtob ed one ’, it was her mother who always did it. ‘I’m a real daddy’s girl — 100 per cent. Not in a spoilt way, but somewhere along the line my dad became my mate, while my mum always stayed as my mum.’
In turn, her stupid behaviour exacerbated her feelings of anxiety. ‘It was awful. I didn’t go out.’ And then, thanks to her boyfriend at the time, actor-turned-personal trainer Danny Young, she discovered extreme exercise and weight-training. The gym work exhilarated her. ‘I thought: “This is it!” It was so empowering. I got control back over my life.’
Eight months later she qualified as a personal trainer, then began a blog, set up a website and started selling supplements.
Next, she launched an app, 15 Minute Fat Loss Workout, and would regularly post photos online of her body as it hardened, strengthened and bulged.
‘I know how narcissistic and vain it sounds. But that’s my business,’ she says. ‘You have to be vain and egotistical to look in the mirror every day and think, aesthetically, how you can improve your body.’
Some of the pictures — especially those taken when she briefly made it down to 10 per cent body fat — are quite startling. Doctors recommend that healthy women have a ratio of between 15 and 31 per cent.
Chloe observes quickly that no woman should maintain 10 per cent body fat for anything other than a short time, adding: ‘You can’t stay at that level or you’ll start messing with your fertility.
‘I just love my muscles,’ she says. ‘Partly because I like how I look, and partly because weight training saved me.’
Flopping about in a vest and leggings, Chloe looks normal — nine stone, about 18 per cent body fat (low, but not fertility-threatening).
But look closer and she has an extraordinary physique: rippling muscles and power thighs that pop out
when she flexes. From a standing position she can lift 95 kilos (almost 15 st) — the weight of a large pig or a well-built man.
Yet an Instagram follower commented beneath one of her photos: ‘Disgusting! There’s nothing feminine about that!!!’
Unfazed, Chloe was quick to post a reply. ‘What’s disgusting is your brain, that has been brainwashed into thinking anything other than “feminine” is disgusting.
‘What’s disgusting is your ego, for presuming that you know what “feminine” is.’
Nevertheless, she says she understands there are differences of opinion and is passionate enough about her own fitness to know that what she wants for herself may not be what everyone wants to achieve.
But she wants to use her fame to speak out for others who are trolled and who are not as robust as she is.
‘It is not acceptable to come at fellow women you don’t know on social media and tell them they look disgusting — whatever they look like.’
She is not alone. Last week, Labour MP Jess Phillips said that she was subjected to 5,000 Twitter notifications of people discussing whether to sexually assault her. This included more than 600 rape threats in one night after she had exposed tweets from people ‘threatening to rape’ her.
She has since launched a campaign to end ‘sexist bullying’ online.
Chloe has the full support of her parents. She says that when she recently showed them highly sexualised photos that she’d had taken of herself, they thought they were ‘hilarious’ — particularly some of her ‘on all fours in a bikini’.
For the child of celebrities, Chloe Madeley is refreshingly straight. Yes, she is glossy and expensively educated, has enjoyed every break in life and still lives in her parents’ lovely house in North London.
But she works hard and is very driven. As a personal trainer, she was often working from 5.30am until 11pm. She talks a lot about ‘monetising’, ‘profit’ and ‘revenue streams’. Her father has been adamant that she stands on her own two feet financially.
As a family, they all support and protect each other. Over the years, they have endured many mini crises: from Richard Madeley’s endless onscreen oversharing of personal information (such as his admission he used Viagra as an experiment, and even when Chloe had her first period) and unkind rumours in the media about Judy’s heavy drinking.
‘I have never, ever been embarrassed by my parents,’ says Chloe.
‘At their best, I’ve always been very proud of them — and at their worst, they were hilariously entertaining.’
As for her England rugby international boyfriend James Haskell, she says that she ‘love, love, loves’ him.
They got together 18 months ago when he bombarded her with messages after seeing a video of her weight-lifting.
‘He was a complete pest — like a dog with a bone,’ she jokes.
That’s a cue for her to head back to the gym and work to maintain those fab abs — and, just as importantly, to keep up her strength to tackle all the abuse directed at her online by those vile trolls.