No.1 for Interviews - Gok Wan
Gok Wan

Obesity, bullying and anorexia – the UK’s best loved fashionista has experienced them all and for the first time he’s willing to talk about it, no holds bar

It’s 8 o’clock in the morning and it’s cold. Forget autumn, which lasted precisely all of one day, winter has arrived with full force. As a gaggle of journalists, photographers and film crews jostle for position, huddling a little closer than normal for warmth, Gok Wan walks onto the building site. That’s right you heard correctly, a building site. Fashion’s reigning style king is standing on the site of what will become the brand new Heart of Scotstoun Community Centre in the west of Glasgow and he genuinely looks thrilled (if not slightly under dressed for the weather in a thin T-shirt and cardigan!) to be there.
He’s in Scotland to launch Vodafone’s 2010 World of Difference programme – an initiative that offers 500 funded charity placements, so that individuals can work for a charity of their choice and get paid for it.

There are some celebrities who are nothing like their on-screen personas. When those cameras are rolling they are nothing but sweetness and light but when they stop, let’s just say you see more of Dr Jekyll than Mr Hyde. Gok does not fall into that category you’ll be pleased to know. He is just as warm, friendly and engaging as he appears on his hit shows How to Look Good Naked and Gok’s Fashion Fix, perhaps just not quite as excitable – but then it is 8 o’clock in the morning and he is there to talk about serious charity work not ‘bangers!’

Asking why he wanted to get involved his response is immediate. “I get so many requests from charities to help them out and unfortunately there just isn’t enough of me to be able to work with every charity I feel passionate about. That’s why working on a campaign like this is fantastic as it is potentially affecting 500 charities around the world.”

You instantly get the feeling that this means something to Gok. Helping charity isn’t just about gaining a few positive column inches – he wants to be here and he wants to give his support. “I love my day job,” he says, “And I love presenting on TV and working in fashion and I do feel that I help people through my work, but it’s amazing to be able to do something that helps people in other, really positive ways.”

His desire to “give something back” as he puts it, most likely comes from the fact that his own life hasn’t always been easy. Gok has made no secret of the fact that he was the victim of bullying when he was younger or that he struggled with a crippling lack of self-confidence brought on by his weight – at one time he weighed 21 stone. However, it is only now that he has revealed just how difficult parts of his life have been as he has just released his first autobiography, Through Thick and Thin. In it he talks openly about feeling different to his peers due to the fact that he is mixed race (his father was born in Hong Kong, and his mother is English) and because he knew that he was gay from an early age.

So did he find the experience cathartic? He has admitted that he didn’t. “Writing this book is the scariest thing I’ve ever done in my entire life. I started writing it at the beginning of the year and then I backed out. I wasn’t going to have it published. And then I thought to myself, ‘let’s just see what happens.’ I sat down one day and 10 weeks later it was done, so it was an intensive roller coaster.”

He continues, “It was absolutely horrendous and anyone who says it’s a purely cathartic experience is a liar. Writing about traumatic events in your life is actually much harder than being there the first time round because you have to relive all those moments and you know what the outcome is.”

One such traumatic time was when he moved from Leicester to London to study drama at the Central School of Speech and Drama. He says in his book, “I was big: a 21 stone larger-than-life force to be reckoned with. I had a bravado that allowed me to face any situation and ambition leaked out of every pore. But on the first day I took one look at everyone else and felt like I didn’t fit in. They all seemed to be beautiful, and of course, they were slim.”

Gok decided to tackle these feelings of insecurity by dieting and started on a dangerous path, the effects of which he lives with to this day. “I began my diet by cutting down but after a few weeks of insignificant results I grew impatient” he reveals in Through Thick and Thin. “I decided it would be better if I ate just enough to function on – and I started to take laxatives. A friend told me they were a quick way to lose weight and I assumed they must be harmless as they could be bought in every pharmacy.”

Gok began to see the weight drop off but very quickly he was having to up the dose of laxatives as his body was becoming immune. At one point he was taking up to an incredible 100 a day and his body, understandably, was in agony. “I’d wake in the middle of the night, bent over in pain, and the only way of stopping it was to punch myself in the tummy. But I was losing weight. I kept on taking the laxatives.”

By this point Gok was firmly in  the grips of anorexia and had lost nearly 10 stone in just seven months; his family were beside themselves with worry. Eventually he took up their offers of help and support and went back home to Leicester where they nursed him back to health. 

As his confidence began to grow so too did his career and he started styling some of the biggest celebrities at that time. In 2006, Channel 4 approached him to front How to Look Good Naked – and it was an instant hit. On paper it should never have worked. Here was a man telling women how to make the best of their bodies. How to embrace their stretch marks, how to accept their ‘baby bellies’ and thunder thighs. How to make the most of their ‘bangers’ (Gok speak for breasts just in case you weren’t sure) and above all, how to dress to impress. In reality, however, it worked a treat. Somehow Gok ‘gets’ women. He understands our bodies and how to make them look their best, and he understands the power that clothing which flatters can have on our confidence. Asking if he thinks it’s strange that women connect with him he replies, “No, not at all. I’ve always had an empathy with women, ever since I was a child.”

And in large part, it’s that connection with women that has made him so successful. It’s a testament to him that even though he’s been a constant fixture on our TV screens for the past four years, we still can’t get enough of him. But despite his unbelievable success, his past still comes back to haunt him. In November last year he was admitted to hospital with terrible stomach pains. A diagnosis soon revealed that he was suffering from two very worrying stomach ulcers. He says in his book, “I ended up in hospital for two weeks and during my stay I had six blood transfusions, two iron transfusions and was told if I’d ignored the pains, it could have been fatal.” The health scare was put down to the years of laxative abuse, but positively, it’s made him very aware of his health, and his condition now.

“Anorexia is with you forever,” he says. “But you do develop the tools to combat it. You have to make a decision about whether you want to suffer from it or not and I think over the years, fingers crossed, I’ve got it.”

He continues, “I’m sure there will be moments of darkness in the future. You go through break-ups and bad times, but hopefully now I understand it enough.” So what of the future? “At the risk of sounding like Miss World, I really want to do more charity work,” he says. “Oh and I’d like to fall in love, get married and have children too!”
It’s no wonder that he gets us women – he sounds just like the many of us on that score!

 

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