SHE was the girl next door who captured the heart of the nation – and of Ordinary Boys frontman Preston. But neither romance was set to last.
Chantelle Houghton was sent into Celebrity Big Brother in 2006 to trick her famous housemates into thinking she too was a star.
And the bubbly Essex girl soon became one, commanding six-figure sums for magazine interviews and marrying Preston in a gown made by Princess Diana’s wedding dress designer.
However her marriage crumbled after just ten months and Chantelle ended up struggling with her fluctuating weight and working in The Body Shop.
But now Chantelle, 40, has never looked or felt better — having ditched the fame game.
“I needed to step out of the spotlight for my mental health,” she says, from the couch of her pal’s house in Battersea, South London.
“I was going through a really awful time. I was abused for a very, very long time.
“I lost myself in a lot of misery and I’m getting myself back bit by bit and enjoying being the person I always was.”
With Big Brother returning to our screens this Sunday, now on ITV, Chantelle has been reminiscing about the show that changed her life.
She had been working as a temp at NatWest when she was thrust into the spotlight on the celebrity spin-off’s fourth series, posing as part of fictional girl band Kandy Floss.
She appeared in the famous house on Channel 4 alongside showbiz names including Michael Barrymore and the late Dead Or Alive singer Pete Burns.
Viewers fell in love with her overnight and she emerged the winner, having struck up a romance with fellow housemate, pop star Preston.
After their divorce in November 2007, Chantelle went on to have several high-profile relationships, including with TV presenter Rav Wilding and cross-dressing cage fighter Alex Reid — with whom she shares 11-year-old daughter Dolly.
Fans were transfixed not just by her love life but by her struggles with her weight, and she became known as a yo-yo dieter.
She explains: “I wasn’t eating, or only eating when I was starving. And then, when I was starving, I was eating anything I could get my hands on. I’d stop at McDonald’s or get a bag of crisps or a bag of chips.”
Having gone sugar-free, vegan Chantelle has now lost five stone in two years and says she’s feeling better in every way.
She says: “I’ve lost it really healthily, not on any crazy diet. It’s been a complete lifestyle change.
“I’m completely sugar-free and I don’t eat any processed food, just really healthy, eating the right foods, getting the right nutrients.
“I feel so much better, health-wise, mind-wise and body-wise.”
And it’s not just Chantelle’s weight that has significantly changed from when we last saw her on our screens.
When she entered the Big Brother house she had blonde hair extensions — but the signature look made her locks fall out.
Now she has ditched the hair add-ons and embraced her natural brunette colour.
She says: “Because I was so blonde, and due to the pull of the extensions, I ended up with so many bald patches.
“So I had the extensions all taken out, went dark and just do weekly Kerastase treatments on my hair and I take care of myself now.
Chantelle had applied for Big Brother at a “crossroads” in her life.
While she was rejected from the sixth series, producers liked her so much they cast her as a wild card in the celebrity version.
“I didn’t really know what I wanted to do, so it was a bit of a lifesaver,” she says with a laugh.
“I’d imagined walking through them doors so many times because I’d got so close to going in the year before, on the normal Big Brother.
“But it was a dream come true, an ‘Oh my god, I’ve done it’ moment.
“It was incredible. The memory for me is still so alive in my mind, it’s like it was yesterday.”
Meeting Preston, now, 41, remains Chantelle’s favourite part of her experience on the popular reality TV show, even though their relationship wasn’t to last.
She says: “Being in the house and meeting Preston was a whirlwind. It was such a happy time. I finally got over the fact I was the only non-celebrity, I’d passed the task, and then I was just slowly falling in love with somebody.
“It was a dream come true, it really was wonderful.”
Chantelle hasn’t seen Preston in three years, but they still talk and are on good terms, and she says they’re “really good friends”.
And she puts their marriage ending down to their ages and the publicity they were getting at the time.
She says: “I’ve still got so much love for him. We were just so young, and it was so full-on.
“It was like a holiday romance, but it was so much more intensified.
“We moved down to Brighton. I didn’t have any family or friends that lived down there and there was a huge amount of pressure on him because he was the only person I knew there.
“It was so magnified, we were in the Press a lot of the time and we were babies.
“I’ve absolutely got no regrets and I still adore him.”
Since divorcing, Chantelle has been engaged twice, to Alex Reid in 2011 and property developer and alloy wheel repairer Michael Strutt, who she split from in 2021.
But she has never made it down the aisle again.
However, she is not currently looking for love.
She says: “I’m not dating, but I’m not open to dating. I’ve no time for it and I don’t want to be going out just for the sake of dating.
“If I met someone and I really liked them, I’d love to go on a date but, right now, I haven’t met anyone who I’d like to pursue.
“But who knows? Maybe he’s out there, maybe he’s not.”
In an emotional Instagram post last November, Chantelle opened up about the fact she had suffered “narcissistic abuse and coercive control” in a past relationship.
She wrote: “For so long I felt alone and isolated and I felt like no one knew what I was going through or how I was feeling.” Telling the world about it was “healing”.
Now Chantelle says she has emerged out the other side.
She says: “Right now all I care about is that I’m happy with me.
“Years ago, I would always think ‘you’ll find your happiness in someone else, someone else will fix you, make you happy’.
“But actually I’ve realised that it’s yourself that you need to be happy with, and I’m happy on my own.
“Years ago, if someone said I needed to find myself, I would have been the ignorant person replying, ‘Where are you going to be? In Tesco?’ But I totally get the meaning of it now.
“When you go through trauma and hard times, you understand a deeper level of things, and I found myself and I know who I am and where I want to be.
“I’m in such a great place now, I’ve got a plan for my future and I’m excited about the next chapter of my life.”
And with Big Brother’s imminent return, the recollections of her time in the house have come flooding back.
“I look back on my time in Big Brother with such fond memories,” she says. “I do feel like it was a different life, but I feel like I’ve lived so many lives.
“What I’ve been through, I can’t really speak to anyone, because it’s crazy, right? There’s no job like that at the job centre, is there?
“It’s given me so many opportunities I’m so grateful for, the countries that I’ve been, the food I’ve been able to experience eating, just great times.”
Chantelle, who returned to the house in 2010 for Ultimate Big Brother, finishing third, is one of the favourites rumoured to be going back in. And would she?
“Hell yes, I’d do Big Brother again, I’d be running there,” she confides.
“I mean, it’s however many weeks of no bills, no food shopping, no responsibility.
“You get fed, you get watered, you play games, you might even come out the winner — so yeah, absolutely. I’d go back in!”
