How sex, rows and drink turned Jessie Wallace into her EastEnders character Kat Slater

JESSIE WALLACE’S ex has told how the EastEnders star went on three-bottle-a-day wine sessions and flew off the handle just like her soap character Kat Slater.

Builder Chris Osborn, 49, says she would pass out at home after “messy” booze binges, was gripped with ­paranoia and left him after three months when he asked her to pay back £10,000.

After seeing our recent pictures of Jessie, 46, lying drunk in a Soho street in London, the dad of four said: “She’s not changed a bit.

“Jessie used to get as p***ed as a pudding and in the end that was the thing that got in the way of us. Our relationship was 100mph.

“It ended when I asked for the £10,000 back I’d lent her.

"She went into full Kat Slater mode and yelled at me, ‘It’s the true “you” coming out now, isn’t it?’ We never spoke again after that.

“Looking back at it, she probably needed a bit of help as she was drinking almost every day. It was mayhem going out with her.”

Chris revealed how Jessie would down bottles of £30 Sancerre, jumped in holiday swimming pools with her clothes on and drunkenly ripped £50,000 paintings off a hotel wall before carrying them around over her head.

He also told how she accused Chris, from Enfield, North London, of installing secret cameras in their hotel room and would lose acting scripts.

The mum of two returned to the BBC soap for a third stint as Kat last month, three years after ­quitting Albert Square.

She and Chris were introduced by mutual friends at a party.

He said: “The first time I met her, I was a bit starstruck. I knew she was a live wire from what I’d seen in the papers. I was also a big EastEnders fan.

“She is exactly the same person we all see on TV. You can hear her a mile off.

"She loves ­screaming and shouting, effing and blinding. We hit it off straight away and arranged a date.

“That week I picked her up from her home and she was still drunk from the night before.

"We went for lunch in Epping. She brought her daughter Tallulah along and we drank two bottles of white wine.

“Then we went back to hers, put Tallulah to bed and got some champagne. We got on really well, it was like going out with your mate. It was non-stop laughing. I stayed over.

"The following morning, I was feeding her daughter breakfast. It was like we were in a relationship straight away.”

The pair would see each other three times a week and within a month went on holiday to Majorca.

Chris said: “We went as a group of 20. We tried to dash off for alone-time in the bedroom when we could but really Jessie loved drinking. She was drinking round the pool every day.

“Once we’d been on a coach trip and she came back at 2am and jumped in the pool wearing all her clothes. She was the drunken lout but she did it in good humour and she was good fun.

“On the same holiday, she accused me of bugging our room with cameras.

“She said, ‘You’re one of those sorts, aren’t you?’ and started believing dots on the walls were spy cameras I’d put up.

"She was trying to hide from them. She was paranoid because of the drink.

“Despite  that, we had a healthy relationship. We’d send each other naughty messages and photos. She was very cheeky.”

On the way back from the same holiday, Jessie — who had recently left EastEnders for the first time — lost a script for a TV show she was about to appear on.

Chris said: “I used to practise her lines with her but on this occasion she lost the script. We were searching all over the airport. She was so scatty. We never found it.”

When they returned home, Chris realised her drinking was “putting a barrier” between them.

He said: “She would be cooking ­dinner at home for me and the kids — something like her favourite, fish pie — and she’d be two bottles in and going for it again.

“She liked a nice glass of Sancerre. She’d buy £30 bottles and get obliterated at home rather than go out — probably because she knew she’d be pictured ­looking a mess.

“She’d get so drunk she’d fall asleep on the sofa and I’d go to bed after I couldn’t rouse her.

“Other times, she’d fall on the floor and I’d help her up, like in the recent photos.

“That’s why I wasn’t ­surprised to see Jessie in that state. I’ve seen it all before.”

That September, Chris took Jessie to her favourite hotel — The Rookery in central London — and booked a suite decked out with costly art.

Chris said: “It was a mad night and we’d drunk ­bottles and bottles of wine. There were £50,000 ­paintings on the wall and she was taking them off and running around drunk with them above her head. I was like, ‘Don’t touch them!’ Even the staff had begged us not to.”

Even so, Chris says Jessie was brilliant with her own kids and like “the Pied Piper to other people’s children — she was that fun”.

He said: “She was a great mum. She never let drinking get in the way of her family.

“She would always come armed with presents for the kids when she’d been away.”

But Chris said he would often be left picking up the bill for shopping as well as her mortgage repayments — and it was this that brought their relationship to a shuddering halt in October 2006.

He said: “We’d go shopping in Tesco, she’d fill the trolley and when it came to paying, she’d walk off and I’d pick up the bill.

“She also asked me for £5,000, then it was a couple of grand here and there.

"I’m not sure why, as she had her own cash. The bill came to £10,000 in the end and I asked her if I could have it back.

“She flew off the handle like Kat from EastEnders, shouting abuse at me. I said, ‘Come on, I’m doing you a favour’.

“It was over like that. She walked out and I never saw her again, although the money eventually came back to me in dribs and drabs.”

Chris, who is now engaged to fiancée Lucy, said he hopes Jessie has reined in her drinking after The Sun on Sunday found her unable to get up off a central ­London street last month.

He said: “I am fond of Jessie. The drinking meant things would never work for us but I hope she’s got the right people around her.
“There is only so long you can go on behaving like that. I hope she’s sorting her drinking out.”