CELEBRITY CarolineCELEBRITY Flack Her body, career and relationship status have been tabloid catnip for years. Now, for the first time, she puts every rumour to rest › Words LOTTIE LUMSDEN hits Photographs IAN HARRISON 3636 · COSMOPOLITAN back “i dOn’T CELEBRITY CARE WHAT a hosting stint on The X Factor in 2015, it made us feel uncomfortable. Same, too, when she was forced to hit back at bullies in 2012 after a One Direction fan magazine created a voodoo doll of her, and wrote about her “crow’s PEOPLE feet” and “zero engagement rings”, following the news that she was dating Harry Styles, 15 years her junior. It’s a bit like watching a school friend being bullied. Since her relationship with Harry was revealed five years ago, barely a THINK ANY week has gone by without headlines in the press shouting about some aspect of her life. So, with this in mind, we asked Caroline, who is back on ITV2 this month presenting a new series of Love Island, to talk us through the headlines to find out the truth MORE” behind the woman everyone seems says Caroline Flack, gesticulating for her new play perched on her lap, to think they know so much about… , , wildly with a pair of sunglasses. She she tells me everything from why she , ING ) has a habit of talking quickly, like an loves her “womanly” boobs, to how horts CK. R M. S excitable child, and has one of those she really fancies a Bloody Mary (it’s O .C S laughs that gets you on side instantly. only 3.30pm). But, no, we’ve actually L ravesto HO THROUGHOUT C DECEMBER 2016 G We’re sat chatting at Soho restaurant only met twice before and, as I’m NI Y ORN L’Escargot, but midway through quickly learning, this is just who Laura “Caroline Flack lets loose (W N harve telling me how her outlook on life Caroline is. Which is probably why W , £65, , £65, O at on wild holiday in Mexico as E S S C ’ L has changed lately, one of the most people (and that includes me) are A AI INE she downs giant cocktails L CKL beautiful-looking Mediterranean men a little bit obsessed with her. E . N CARO I have ever seen appears at our table In a world where celebrities learn and dances in a sombrero R , £140, , hirt with the steak and chips we have to be so guarded, Caroline, 37, refuses INGS S while partying with pals” OPSHOP ordered for lunch. Caroline turns to bother. She’s accessible (just take a , £30, T , £30, to me and whispers, “The French look at her Instagram account), makes R EFORE. B THIS PAGE: THIS PAGE: ). horts accent drives me insane! And the it known that she loves a good night “I don’t get what’s wrong with that! It , AS E . S C A one before him...” She drops her out, and is vocal about being as sounds like a bloody good time. I was AP CKL jaw, feigning shock, before adding, unlucky in love as the rest of us. And actually in Dubai, not Mexico. Gizzi E . N H THROUGHOUT “We were like...” That laugh again. it’s perhaps that vulnerability that Erskine and I had gone on a girlie C IT Anyone watching would think that makes her so much more relatable holiday and I didn’t want anyone to ORN & F (W IE I had known Caroline for years, to than any A-lister. She is every girl. know where we were, because [paps] N MB W O RO S ’ hear how uncensored she is today. And so when we saw her come will find you anywhere. So I put on C ER INE Dressed in tiny shorts, an oversized under attack from trolls about her my Instagram that we were in Mexico L › £58, AB CARO camouflage jacket, and with a script weight and presenting skills during – the next day we pretended we were G £16.95, T-SHIRT, PREVIOUS PAGE: 38 · COSMOPOLITAN COSMOPOLITAN · 39 CELEBRITY CELEBRITY over-learn things. When I co-presented the European Poker Tour [in 2004] with Colin Murray, I did an intense course so I knew what I was talking about, because I’m not very good at blagging. You’ve got to be prepared for when things go wrong. It has never worked against me, but it might annoy people a bit! At the moment, work is very busy with Love Island, and I’ve just taken on a lead role in a national musical theatre tour of Crazy For You, which means I have no weekends off until the end of the year. I don’t mind, though, it’s exciting.” NOVEMBER 2016 “I’ve taken a lot of Flack, but I finally feel comfortable “I don’t see in my own skin” myself as a “I guess I have [taken a lot of flack], victim – I have but I don’t see myself as a victim a good life” because I have such a good life. The media love a woman having a breakdown, and I can be sitting there at home reading that I’m going through one when, actually, I’m in my kitchen eating my cornflakes, about in Brazil. We just kept tagging different the way I think. I’m really social and a laugh today, go on my Instagram I love my work, and have always to go to the gym and having a right locations and nobody found us! still will be when I’m walking around and read the comments.’ This is just been a grafter. At school, I knew that laugh watching Good Morning Britain. After Strictly I wasn’t so lucky when with a zimmer frame going to bingo. JULY 2016 what happens with social media, and I wanted to work in TV, but I came There have been some hard times I went to Jamaica for New Year’s Eve But I definitely went through a crazy I’m used to it now. I don’t sit and from Norfolk with no connections, in my career, and it goes through “Love Island viewers accuse . , , E with my friend Lou. We were in this stage as a teenager. I left home at 16 C dwell on it. Instead, I’m more like, so I had to find a way to do it. When peaks and troughs. The 2015 X Factor A Caroline Flack of ‘flirting’ efore little hotel with hardly anyone there, to go to theatre school [the Bodywork B ‘Oh, here we go again.’ I moved to London aged 19 after was the most challenging because it CKL as E , with islander Alex Bowen in E . N and I said, ‘Do you think we could go Company] in Cambridge. I lived in C I didn’t fancy anyone from the theatre school, it took me nearly was difficult to fill somebody’s shoes A GE D topless?’ She said, ‘Yeah’. A few days a house with 20 girls. I’d never really front of girlfriend Olivia” CKL show last year and I don’t this year. five years to get my first TV job [she and Olly Murs replaced Dermot E FRI L . N later, her ex-boyfriend called up and been allowed out or tried alcohol. E You shouldn’t mix business with (as Bubbles on Leigh Francis’s Bo’ O’Leary] on a show that is so loved. S said, ‘Have you seen that your boobs The other girls were all 18 and they H pleasure, unless, of course, you fall in Selecta!). Until then, I had to do You couldn’t do right for doing wrong, Miss C IT are in The Sun?’ We had been followed took me under their wing. We didn’t “There was a furore after the last Monsoon love – you can’t help that, but I don’t every job I could get to pay the bills: or wrong for doing right, but you had & F , £32, , £32, IE the entire time. I learned a good lesson, have any money but we still managed show in the series [viewers went mad , £59, think that’s going to happen. I am I worked in Pizza Express, was a to go out there and put your show face MB RO horts PSUIT because there is nothing worse than to go out every night and somehow after Caroline uploaded a picture to C there to look after the contestants, and magician’s assistant (he actually on. It’s pretty hard to go in every week M . S U ER H J C being followed on holiday. I just want get drunk on £1… The others used Instagram of her and Alex hugging : see myself as an older sister to them nearly chopped my ear off), filmed and do your best when, sometimes, IT EFT & F , L to put my hair in a topknot and be to have to try and get me into at the Love Island wrap party]. It was , £58, AB all. It’s nice to work on a show with a self-defence video, made sandwiches that isn’t good enough. But you win IE MB hirt sweaty! The wild headlines are nightclubs, because I looked about silly, but funny, because his girlfriend page a bit of a buzz, and it was the same in a café and even picked daffodils. some and you lose some, and you’re S T RO X C exaggerated, but I do like to live life 10 years old.