Gok Wan: ‘I’m not wishing lockdown away’ plus more celeb news

How fashion guru Gok Wan broke the lockdown blues!

Your hair is holding up very well in lockdown! I’m calling it my ‘Iso-locks’! I’ve rebranded my own head. It’s so odd. I had a complete and utter breakdown the first two weeks – it was horrendous. Mine was coupled with the fact I never take holidays or time off work. I love working too much. I had decided to take five weeks off just as lockdown started – planned for a year travelling. All of a sudden I was on holiday with nowhere to go.

How did you snap out of it? I was on my own, depressed… just me and the dog, roaming around the empty streets like it was some apocalyptic Will Smith movie without the hot Will Smith and then all of a sudden I spoke to my sister and she said, ‘Get on with it!’ And I thought, ‘Right, let’s turn this into a positive.’ I thought, ‘I’m going to do as much as I can.’ I’m not a doctor, a nurse… but I wanted to do my little bit.

And now your weekly discos hosted online – Isolation Nation – have been a big hit… I’m naturally a creative person, an extrovert and socialise a lot, so like many people who are the same it was always going to hit us hard. It hasn’t been easy for anyone. All of the key things that defined me had gone away. A lot of people don’t realise that my DJ diary is very busy, and with the clubs closed I could easily have just got drunk in the kitchen on a Saturday night on my own but I decided to take the party to everyone else. I thought I’d be joined by 20 or 30 people – but within a couple of weeks it was around 100,000.

It’s turned into a public service! It’s great to do something that people have in common other than COVID-19. We have all these other things – like music – that we can talk about. I offer four hours of escapism.

So you’re optimistic about life? What’s really helped me is I have stopped thinking about what day it is because I don’t want to wish my life away in lockdown. It’s not good for my mental state. We are all in this situation and to accept the benefits of doing it will only make it a better experience.

Catch Gok cooking weekly on

This Morning and this month on Food Network with his new show, Gok’s Easy Asian