UK NEWS

GOK WAN: I'M A HUMAN BARBIE

Gok Wan reveals his obsession with dressing up

Sunday February 7,2010

By Jane Clinton

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TV PRESENTER Gok Wan exudes confidence as he persuades women to learn to love themselves on his show How To Look Good Naked.

In his own life, however, he admits he has his body hang-ups, thinks he is thick and has obsessive compulsive disorder.

“I suffer from really bad clothing OCD and so on a Sunday I organise all my outfits for the whole week,” the stylist told BBC Radio 4’s Desert Island Discs. “That includes filming the show and also the personal stuff, going out with friends or going to a do in the evening.

“It works out at about 20 outfits a week. I log everything on the computer so I know the last time I have worn something and where I have worn it.

“Everything I do, down to driving my car, I will work out what will look better with the car. It is really bad, it’s terrible, but I love dressing up. I still do feel like a human Barbie.”

Even when he goes shopping, he will work out the best outfit according to the landscape, even if the backdrop happens to be a car park.

Wan, 35, whose popular show aims to empower women by luring them from their clothes, also spoke about his weight battle. He ballooned to 20st and suffered years of “social bullying” which still affects his confidence.

At the age of 20, he dieted and lost 10st in nine months.

“I still think I am really thick because I got told for so many years that I was thick, that I was fat and stupid,” said Wan, who chose Tracy Chapman’s song The Promise, Eurythmics’ Thorn In My Side and Roxy Music’s Jealous Guy.

“I was bullied. It wasn’t like a group of people who would beat me up, it was a constant social bullying that I went through – constant name calling, always being the butt of everyone’s jokes, always being told that I’m ugly, fat, weird, Chinese, gay, queer.

“It was a constant, constant badgering and a lot of the hang-ups throug being bullied I still carry with me now and I think I will always have hang-ups about my body. I had to go through How To Look Good Naked personally by myself for a long time.”

He also admitted he has a troublesome relationship with food. “I still love food,” he said. “I have quite a complex relationship with food and it was hard to admit it was so bad, because the memories I have of it are amazing, but it was my worst enemy at the same time.”

At one stage in his dieting, he had just two spoonsful of honey a day, forcing him to nap mid-conversation because he was so exhausted. A self-confessed workaholic, the presenter said compulsive working had replaced his compulsive eating and that it would be the death of him.

“If I had to name what will kill me, I think it would be success or the pursuit of it,” he said. “I work 100 hours a week. I am still trying to be successful, I am still trying to put to bed the little fat boy who wants to be liked.”

Even though he is a household name and has styled famous people such as singer Bryan Ferry, Wan insisted the most successful person in his family was his English-born mother.

“She set out to have children, to have a family and to love her children and she has accomplished all that,” he said.

Desert Island Discs is on BBC Radio 4 today at 11.15am

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