I'm fat, but so what... I'm happy: She's a size 26 with a failed gastric band op behind her, but Alison Hammond says she doesn't give a hoot - because she's in love and living her dream on Strictly
Alison Hammond is the first to admit she isn’t exactly built for ballroom. Never will be. Never was.
‘Alison Hammond is never going to be a size ten,’ she says. ‘It’s not going to happen. I was always the biggest one at school. My mum used to say I had big bones. I’d think, “But Mum, when you look at skeletons they’ve all got the same bones,” so I’d ask her, “When I die, is my skeleton going to be fat?’’’
Alison giggles a jolly, larger-than-life giggle that starts out as a quiet chuckle and builds into a sort of huge Whoopi Goldberg-esque belly laugh. So how big is she?
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Alison gets glammed up: The This Morning presenter is loving her time in the spotlight on Strictly (styling: Desiree Lederer, hair: Michael Douglas, make-up: Emma White Turle)
‘Twenty-six,’ she says before digging into the fish finger butty she’s ordered for lunch. Size 26? Crikey. ‘I know, I’m obese,’ she says with such jollity you’d think she’d just been offered a star turn at the London Palladium.
We’re actually here in a Birmingham restaurant as This Morning’s bubbly showbiz presenter had been preparing for her latest round of BBC1’s Strictly Come Dancing.
‘Watch this,’ she says, playing me a video of the morning’s rehearsals on her iPhone that shows her swoop about the floor to Kate Bush’s Wuthering Heights with her dance partner Aljaz Skorjanec. ‘There’s a point in the middle when I start screaming because I love it so much.’ She does – quietly then louder and louder until she’s howling like a banshee.The handsome Aljaz is ‘a dream’, according to Alison, and as for the other contestants, well, her phone pings non-stop with text messages from them throughout our lunch.
‘There’s one from Fran [The Saturday’s Frankie Bridge], one from Pixie [Lott], one from Judy [Andy’s mum Judy Murray] and one from Caroline [former Xtra Factor presenter Caroline Flack]. We’re in touch with each other the whole time. We talk about what we’re doing and how everyone is getting on with their dance. “I don’t like my dance” or “I’m not feeling mine either” or “Are you coming out Saturday after the show?” – that sort of girlie talk.
Performing with her 'dream' partner Aljaz: Alison said she isn't flying the flag for 'big women' but 'all women' on the dance show
‘Look at me. I’m just loving this. It’s like a drug – not that I’ve ever taken drugs. It’s happy therapy. I feel just like a ballet dancer.’
Which takes us back to this not-being-built-for-ballroom thing. When Alison, 39, was a child she was desperate to be a ballerina. ‘I went to a ballet class but the teacher said I had a sickle foot.’ Sickle foot? ‘It’s where you’ve got really flat feet – no arch at all. [Sickle actually means in the shape of the crescent moon, when, instead of keeping the foot in a straight line with the leg when you point your toes, it curls around and inwards.] She looked at my feet and said they weren’t made for dancing.’
Alison shrugs. There are more than a few Strictly viewers who’d agree with her ballet teacher. Indeed, when the most-definitely-built-for-ballroom former rugby star Thom Evans was voted off the show a fortnight ago, while Alison remained in the competition, the internet was abuzz. ‘I know what’s being said,’ she says.
‘Yesterday I had a tweet saying I was fat but I’m kind of used to that. I just push it off. They’re not the people who I love. The only time I think I need to change something is if my mum says, “Alison, I think you need to sort that out.” Not everybody’s going to like you. Things like that make me stronger. I’d never turn round and say, “Oh, I’ve really had it hard because somebody called me Fatty.”’
In fact Alison, who landed her job on This Morning after appearing in the 2002 series of Big Brother (she was evicted in the second week), has tried just about everything to lose weight, including jumping on the gastric band wagon with former This Morning presenter Fern Britton eight years ago.
‘I was offered a gastric band around the time Fern was and tried it because I wanted to lose weight. I didn’t have the trigger to say I was full up, which is why I had it. But my body started rejecting it. I began to grow scar tissue around it so what happened in the end – sorry to be gruesome – is I couldn’t even hold water down so I went back to surgery and they said the best thing for me was to have it removed.
‘The doctor said, “Normally it takes 15 minutes to remove a gastric band but yours took three hours because of all the scar tissue,” so basically it didn’t work for me.’
Getting on famously: Alison with her Strictly co-stars
She laughs, but it’s not that Whoopi Goldberg laugh any more. She polishes off her fish finger butty, leaving the crusts. ‘The thing is, I love food,’ she says. ‘I’m not going to lie. I really do love it – I love pasta, I love rice, I love carbs.’ She giggles again. Thinks a moment. Stops. ‘I’m not laughing at the fact I’m overweight. I’d like to be a little bit smaller for health reasons. I do realise how unhealthy it can be. My mum’s a diabetic because she’s overweight. I’m a mum too [Alison has a nine-year-old-son Aiden from a previous relationship] and it does worry me, particularly if my back starts going and things like that. But I’m a fit fat.’
Fit fat? I thought there was only fat or fit?
‘I’ve got a cholesterol of 3.2 and my blood pressure is good so my stats are like an athlete.’ And your BMI – the universal fatness measure? ‘Oh we don’t want to go with the BMI. Let’s not talk about that. I just feel so good at the moment. I’m running upstairs and literally not even out of breath. No one can take being fit fat away from me.
‘I was talking about this with my boyfriend. He was saying, “Why are you so big, when you don’t really eat that much?” I said, “I think that’s the reason I’m big.” What happens is your metabolism slows down. He says I need to eat every two hours.’ Ah yes, the boyfriend. Alison met personal trainer Jamie Savage online seven months ago.
‘People are like, “Why did Alison Hammond do that?” But when you’re speaking to people online you can kind of work out what they’re after or if they’re more interested in your career than you.’ Does she have an example? ‘Like when someone says, “Can I get Holly Willoughby’s number?” then I don’t think they’re going to be an ideal match.
Fat but fit: She's a size 26 but Alison says some of her health stats are like an athlete's
‘When I was younger – straight after Big Brother – I used to like all the pretty men and they used to not be very nice to me. You’ve got to go through life, meet people who will use you because you’re a celebrity and, maybe one day, you’ll meet someone who is genuinely in love with you. I think I have. I wish he was here so you could see him. I feel like we’re soul mates.’ I take it she means her and the boyfriend, not us, although it’s difficult to keep up.
Alison has one of those minds that wander. Along with wanting to be a ballet dancer, she had ambitions to be a police officer.
‘Maybe it was because of the car chases and the fact I was really into Cagney & Lacey. I wanted to jump over car bonnets and things like that. I suppose I never really knew what I wanted to be. I was always wanting to be something else.’
The truth is it wasn’t always easy growing up and being bullied for her weight. The youngest of three children born to a single mum, she soon learnt a fast tongue and easy wit helped silence her detractors. ‘I was quite witty so if I was going to be bullied, people stopped because I could react with something funny. Then I remember at school hosting shows and getting a real buzz out of telling jokes and the audience just loving it.’
Once the sickle foot put paid to her ballerina dreams, Alison set her heart on acting and landed one of 25 places on a Central Junior TV drama workshop from the age of 11 to 18. ‘I got the odd part here and there. I went on Big Brother because I’d found myself in a little bit of debt so the idea was to win the £70,000. I got evicted but then This Morning happened. So, I wasn’t acting but I was still doing something in telly. I love every minute of it.’ Her eyes shine with such joy it’s impossible not to be pleased for her.
‘This is like a dream. I’ve always loved Strictly but never thought I could do it until I watched Lisa Riley [who was equally effervescent and larger-than-life on Strictly two years ago, and came fifth]. I thought I’d look a bit silly until I saw her. Then, when the offer came along, I thought, “There’s no way I’m giving that a miss.” You ask any celebrity. They all want to do it. Everyone on This Morning is well jealous. Ruth Langsford wants to do it. Emma Willis [BBC1’s The Voice co-presenter] would love to do it. I really am living the dream.
‘I don’t know if I’ve lost weight. I haven’t weighed myself, but people are saying I’ve lost weight on my face and my clothes feel baggier. But I’m not on it to fly the flag for big women. I’m flying the flag for all women to go and do anything they want to do – to say, “Don’t let anything stop you living your life.”
‘Look, I agree, I’m definitely not as good as Thom was,’ she says. ‘But it’s like Len [head judge Len Goodman] says, all those people moaning need to pick up the phone to keep their favourites in. It is what it is. I’ve worked really hard on my dances, so I don’t feel any guilt about still being there. Yes, I’m big at the moment but I’m not going to let that stop me from doing what I want to do. This week I felt like a ballet dancer. I always wanted to be a ballet dancer and now I have been. What can be better than that?’ What indeed – apart from pointing those toes, perhaps.
Strictly Come Dancing, tonight, 6.30pm, BBC1.
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