‘It’s not about what I look like any more’: Kelly Brook on ditching her diet, new love and that ‘engagement’ ring
Loved-up Kelly also explains why she'll never apologise about THAT digitally edited Instagram photo
WHAT at a difference a year makes in the life of Kelly Brook.
When Fabulous last encountered the former glamour model, she was the new body of Atkins, starring in her first big US TV show – NBC sitcom One Big Happy – and living in health-obsessed LA.
Hooked on daily boot camp workouts plus strict, carb-free eating, Kelly shrunk her famous figure from a size 14 to an 8.
Today, however, she’s back where she belongs: a curvy size “10 to 12”, and looking remarkably happier for it.
When asked if she and Atkins are still enjoying a love-in, Kelly, 36, laughs: “Well, I’ve got two sugars in my tea and I’m eating a croissant, so no.
“As soon as you come off it, you go back up. Not hugely. I’m always between an 8 and a 12. But it was a really good challenge for me – I’d never been on any diet in my life, so the fact that I did it was amazing!”
Returning to the UK after One Big Happy was scrapped last May was Kelly’s catalyst to change her body – and her lifestyle.
“It was easy to do when I was in Los Angeles because you’re so health-conscious out there, but as soon I left, my focus changed,” she explains.
“It wasn’t so much on my diet and exercise regime – it was more on enjoying my life a little bit more. My boyfriend [model, actor and judo instructor Jeremy Parisi] is Italian and lives in France, so I cook a lot of pasta and we have croissants most mornings.
“I’m more accepting of myself. You’re skinnier and toned when you’re younger. When you’re older, you have a few too many glasses of wine and too much chocolate cake.”
This perhaps explains why Kelly felt the need to digitally edit her Instagram photographs last November to make her already svelte waist look smaller – a trick that has seen other celebrities, including Britney Spears and Lindsay Lohan, lambasted for duping fans.
Kelly remains unapologetic.
“I’ve never said I’m perfect and I’ve never said I’m a skinny girl. Sometimes if I see a picture and I can make it a bit better then I will, like everyone else does. I’ve been Photoshopped in every picture since I started modelling. I [don’t] see any problem with it.”
Celebrities including Meghan Trainor and Iggy Azalea do. Last month, Meghan pulled the video for her latest single Me Too, claiming she’s “sick” of being Photoshopped without her consent, while Iggy hit out at a fashion magazine for slimming her thighs.
“What? Calling someone up and going: ‘You’ve over-Photoshopped me, I look too good.’ Hell, no! Ridiculous. I’m like: ‘More, more!’” Kelly laughs.
Jeremy, her boyfriend of 14 months, seems to have no complaints about the unairbrushed Kelly.
Judging by the number of pictures of her adorning his Instagram feed, he’s just as loved-up as she is.
But despite wearing a platinum diamond ring on her engagement finger and plenty of reports to the contrary, Kelly is not, repeat not, engaged.
“He’s not asked to marry me,” she says, explaining that the sparkler “only fits the fourth finger of her left hand”.
“Look, I’ll prove it,” she says, sliding it on and off her other nine digits. “See, it doesn’t fit on any other.”
Given Kelly’s fondness for getting engaged (she’s been fiancée to actors Jason Statham and Billy Zane as well as Marine-turned-Gladiator David McIntosh), when Jeremy posted a picture last year of Kelly flashing the ring, the press swiftly reported: “Kelly Brook Gets Engaged For The Fourth Time!”
“I think it’s more than that, actually!” squeals Kelly, adding that she has no desire for Jeremy to make an honest woman of her.
“Not really. He’s so relaxed and laid-back, we’re just quite happy as things are. We never argue or fight, he’s not jealous or competitive with me. He’s just nice. He’s perfect.”
Kelly wastes no time explaining further why her 31-year-old beau is different from her exes, who also include rugby ace Danny Cipriani and ex-Scotland rugby star Thom Evans.
“He’s so lovely and family-orientated. He’s not got a big ego. His priority is family, it’s not career or work, which is what I’ve always found in the past. You just know when you come first? I know it’s me and him first, then everyone else comes after.”
Marriage may be off her radar, but what about kids? After enduring two miscarriages during her relationship with Thom, Kelly spoke of
a desire to one day have a baby.
“I don’t know if I want [children]. I haven’t made that decision yet,” she confides now.
“At the moment, I don’t see where that will fit into my life because once you get there there’s no turning back.
“I’d rather have a dog first. I’d definitely have a dog over a child.”
During some celebrity interviews, discussing matters of the heart can be like pulling teeth. But from the off, Kelly’s an open book about romance.
This certainly bodes well for the producers of her latest gig, Channel 5’s new relationship and dating panel show It’s Not Me, It’s You, which will see Kelly leading a team of celebrities and going head-to-head with I’m A Celebrity! winner Vicky Pattison.
The girls are yet to meet, but Kelly grins when we warn her about being led astray by the 28-year-old party animal and former Geordie Shore star.
“That’s the perception, but I’m probably more wild than she is. All the producers say she’s a real relationship girl and hasn’t had lots of boyfriends, and I’m like: ‘Oh my god, that’s not me!’”
With This Morning’s Eamonn Holmes hosting, the pair will tackle topics from dating dilemmas to drunken chat-up lines.
“‘You’re like a skinny, better-looking Kelly Brook’ – that would be a good chat-up line for me!” roars Kelly, before confessing she’s only ever made a play for one man – Jeremy.
“I found a video of him fighting and thought: ‘He looks like a good, religious Catholic boy that’s got some discipline, and he’s handsome.’ So I kind of went for it,” she says.
“I contacted him and said: ‘Hi, I’m studying martial arts, have you got any advice?’ Of course I wasn’t studying martial arts! But I took it up for six weeks, and I’d call him every day and be like: ‘I’ve pulled a hamstring today, what protein should I take to mend my muscles?’ and things like that. It was the first time I’d targeted someone rather than being targeted.”
While Kelly insists she won’t be spilling secrets about her celebrity exes on the show, which is due to air later this month, poor old Jeremy won’t be so lucky.
“The producers don’t really ask me about ex-boyfriends, they just ask me more about my relationship now and the mundane things that are hilarious. Like the other day, Jeremy was in the bathroom and thought that the moisturiser was toothpaste and started brushing his teeth with it!”
Kelly was sacked by The Big Breakfast and Britain’s Got Talent after short presenting stints on both, but reckons she’s suitably experienced
in romance to make a success of her new telly role.
“I’ve had a few, and all my relationships have been so different. I think I’m more in love with the experience of [relationships] than the person.
I go from one to the next like I’m playing a character.”
So is she playing a character now? And if so, which one?
“I’m more me than I’ve ever been because I’m a lot happier, I’m in my home. I’m not working away on location, and I’ve always been doing that
in relationships,” she says.
While an endorsement deal with footwear brand Skechers requires Kelly to work in LA “a lot”, she now splits her time between living at her farmhouse in Rochester, Kent, and Jeremy’s apartment in Paris, a city where she can wander unrecognised and he “takes the lead”.
“It’s a break from me having to make decisions,” she adds.
RELATED STORIES
Back home in Kent, Kelly’s big on horticulture, and a quick butchers at #KentLivingWithKelly – a hashtag she created for her Instagram – displays her green-fingered achievements on her five-acre plot where she grows apples and pears and keeps bees to make honey.
“I’m really good at growing roses,” she says, retrieving her phone from her black Chanel handbag to flick through her picture feed. “This is my wild flower meadow, that’s the apple blossom…
“The minute I post a picture of my garden, I lose 2,000 followers,” she says. “It’s hilarious! I have guys going: ‘Show us your t*ts, Kelly, we don’t follow you for that!’”
“But right now I’m in a transition of leaving that life behind and moving into another phase. It isn’t all about what I look like any more – it’s about my home, my boyfriend, my friends and my gardening.”
Not long ago, her name was in the mix for the new film version of Baywatch, but she insists there’s no chance of us seeing her jogging along
a seashore clad in a red swimsuit à la Pammy circa 1992.
“No, I don’t think that’s right for me at the moment. I’m not saying I don’t look good for my age or anything, but I kind of did that with Piranha 3D,” she says, referencing the comedy-horror movie she starred in six years ago. “I don’t need to play that role again.”
Another no-no is a follow up to her 2014 autobiography Close Up, which laid bare intimate details of her sometimes volatile relationships, plus “violent and horrific” childhood memories of growing up on a council estate in Kent.
One chapter revealed how she used to dread the weekends because of her parents drinking too much.
“It’s probably the thing I’m least proud of in my life,” admits Kelly.
“I felt like I had to sensationalise my life more than it was. I probably wasn’t that true to myself. I’m not saying it never happened, but it’s not really my upbringing to air my dirty laundry like that. I think that was a bad move. I kind of regret my autobiography.”
Kelly’s natural entrepreneurial instinct is taking her to new places in any case, because as well as having shares in London bar and restaurant Steam And Rye, she’s now cultivating big plans to launch a locally sourced beauty product range.
“It’ll be the first time I’ve gone out on my own and funded it myself, and I’m really excited,” she reveals.
“That’s kind of why I wanted to come back to England – I want my business to be based out of the UK. I’m constantly thinking of new ideas. It’s just about getting older and finding new ways to reinvent yourself.”
Which begs the final question. Like Cindy Crawford, who said she was stepping away from her modelling career after turning 50 earlier this year, has Kelly considered when she’ll do the same?
“No,” she says, sounding ever so slightly aghast. “I think I’ll keep going and evolving.”
It’s Not Me, It’s You starts later this month on Channel 5.
