Patsy Kensit still haunted by weight jibes 20 years after hitting 11½ stone after she turned 30

PATSY Kensit has revealed she is still haunted by weight jibes 20 years after being labelled ‘Fatsy Patsy’ but says she can laugh about it now.

The 48-year-old said the mean nicknames about her four stone weight gain were “painful” at the time as she used to worry about supermarket assistants judging her for buying treats.

The former Emmerdale star spoke to Best magazine and said she’s more comfortable in her body now than she was in her thirties.

She said: “A woman’s approval means so much more to me than a man’s these days.

“When I turned 30, I went up from 7-and-a-half stone to 11-and-a-half stone, and it became a national obsession to get a picture of me.

“They called me ‘Fatsy Patsy’ and ‘Patsy Scoffs-It’. It could have given me agoraphobia.”

She continued: “I can laugh about it now, but it was painful at the time.

“Doing the food shop for the boys and seeing magazines with my big fat a*** on them, and then having to bring apple pie to the checkout and see the assistant looking at me and wondering if I should have bought more lettuce instead… that was difficult.”

The Tina & Bobby actress also revealed how movie bosses told her to drop the pounds when she was a teenager.

Patsy explained: “One of the most damaging things that ever happened to me was when I was 16.

“I’d got a part in the David Bowie film Absolute Beginners, went off on holiday and put on some weight.

“When I got back, a director showed me something they had filmed with me during screen tests and said: ‘If you don’t get back to that [weight], you’re out’.”

Her latest role sees her playing Tina Moore’s mum Betty Dean and Patsy said she loved working with Michelle Keegan on the ITV drama.

She said: “I instantly clicked with Michelle. She’s just a diamond – I don’t think she has a bad bone in her body.

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