It is 9.30am, in Spokane, a town an hour outside Seattle, and a chirpy Gail
Porter is talking about necrophilia.
We’re discussing her determinedly lowbrow television offering, Dead Famous,
“the celebrity psychic show” that is now on its third series. And somehow
the conversation has turned into a discussion about sex.
“Dead Celebrity Love Island,” the presenter hoots, as she wonders in what
other ways the deceased can be brought back for our entertainment. When I
suggest that the title might have some rather unpleasant connotations, she
stops laughing. “Oh yes,” she says, as realisation dawns. “Necrophilia Love
Island.”
Porter, the former pin-up from Portobello — most famous for having her naked
body projected on to the Houses of Parliament — is in high spirits. It’s
something of a transformation for the 34-year-old presenter, who has
recently undergone a very public battle with depression following the
break-up of her marriage to the musician Dan Hipgrave.
Shortly after the couple divorced, Porter swallowed more than 30 sleeping
pills at her north London home. She has since described the overdose as a
cry for help and claims to be bemused by the media attention it received.
But the suicide attempt was just the latest in a series of
mental-health-related illnesses that Porter has suffered. Two years ago she
revealed that she developed anorexia in her teens and twenties and that it
has left her in need of medication for the rest of her life. Then she spoke
about the crippling postnatal depression that followed the birth of her
daughter, Honey.
Now she is anxious to put her sadness in the past, stressing that she is once
again happy in her work and with her new boyfriend, James Lloyd, a
cameraman.
“Life’s like that,” she says, almost matter-of-factly. “People look at movies
and television and Hollywood stars — although I am not that famous — and
they say ‘she said she got depressed this year’ and it gets blown out of
proportion.”
But surely it was difficult to go through something so personal in such a
public way?
“I don’t know. I haven’t really found it that difficult. It gives you a good
kick up the arse. I think, ‘Am I being depressed? Why is everyone talking
about it?’ It gives you fight. I think, ‘I’ll show everyone’. I have had a
good upbringing. My mum is very Scottish. She says, ‘Get up dear, keep
going’.”
It is this attitude that is helping her through a second tough time during a
year that she will no doubt be happy to forget. One morning three months
ago, Porter woke up to find clumps of her hair had fallen out on her pillow.
As the hair loss speeded up and alopecia was diagnosed, she decided to
confront what was happening to her. In September, with the launch party for
her new television show approaching, she shaved off her remaining clumps of
blonde hair, leaving a mohican-style central band that she dyed bright red.
Then she stepped out and faced a barrage of press photographers.
Was that bravery or merely a resigned acceptance that as a celebrity, nothing
is private? She shrugs. “You either face it head on or you hide until
someone catches you.” Or to put it into the language of someone who loves to
shop, she adds: “You can cry or think, ‘Can I accessorise?’ I have earrings,
headscarves and make-up.”
She has also taken the opportunity to offer support to other women suffering
from alopecia in the way she knows best. Among her future projects is a
documentary for Channel 4 in which she will be followed around for six
months by a camera crew, recording how she deals with her condition.
Thinning hair is, as she points out, a common problem. Often caused by stress,
it affects one in four women in the UK and is usually spotted between the
ages of 15 and 35.
“I think it’s not easy for everyone. When you first come out with no hair, you
get shell-shock with everyone staring. But I have a good bunch of friends
around me. I have lost my hair, but I am still the same person,” she says.
Just before heading off to America for work, Porter’s mother, Sandra, came
down to London to collect Honey and take her to Edinburgh. It was the first
time she had seen her daughter up close with no hair.
“She saw me for the first time face to face when she came down on Friday to
take Honey up to Scotland. I went to her, ‘Are you okay with my hair?’ She
said, ‘Yes, you are still you’. And then she said, ‘It’s a mix between
chemotherapy and Matt Lucas’. I replied, ‘So not Natalie Portman and Sinead
O’Connor?’ If you can deal with that, you can deal with anything.”
There is also the distraction of work. Porter says she is happiest when she’s
at work. “I think so. I do like work. Now I have got Honey so it is always a
work day.
“She comes to the US, she has been out 20 times and she’s only three. She
loves it. But when she doesn’t come I miss her. She is at that age where she
prefers going to grandma. I say, ‘I am going to the US’, and she says, ‘Yay,
I’m going to see grandma. Bring me toys from America’.”
Honey has also been a source of strength for the recovering Porter. She was
worried how her daughter would react to her bald mother, but she took it in
her stride.
“My daughter says, ‘You’re bald’, and I say, ‘Well you’ve got a snotty nose’.
She thinks that’s funny.”
Porter’s latest television venture has the editorial thrust of a special
feature in The National Enquirer. It centres on the notion of tracking down
the spirits of dead celebrities. Previous targets have been predictable
enough, including Al Capone, Marilyn Monroe, John Lennon and Elvis, while
this series will pursue the troubled spirits of James Dean, Clark Gable and
Judy Garland.
Porter says she is a sceptic, but is insistent that some experiences caught on
camera have left her feeling a little less cynical. “It’s difficult, you
know? I do want to believe and we do hear things. Sometimes you get spooked
out and then other times you think this is a bit funny, hang on a minute —
50% of the time I am going to get spooked. I want to believe in different
things.
“I think that’s one of the good things about this television show, there are
always questions at the end. There are things that are completely
unexplained.
“It is intelligent television. I think there’s a lot of s*** on TV, so to come
up with something different, something with substance, rather than someone
running around and jumping in the dark — it is nice to do something that
makes you think.”
What Dr Jacob Bronowski, the presenter of the acclaimed 1973 BBC television
documentary The Ascent of Man would make of this particular brand of
“thinking television” is anybody’s guess. For Porter, though, the
opportunity it has offered has helped her escape the bimbo tag attached to
many of her fellow blonde female presenters. Her track record has included
stints fronting shows such as Top of the Pops, The Movie Chart Show and the
sports reality show The Games. She also took part in Masters of Combat, in
which she demonstrated her skills as a black belt in karate.
So does she have an instinctive intelligence when it comes to choosing popular
television shows? “I don’t think I am any more intelligent than anyone
else,” she says.
“You should do things because you want to do them, even if people give you a
hard time. People say, ‘Why are you doing modelling?’ and you say, ‘Cash.
It’s that simple. I’ve got a nice bank balance now, thank you’.
“I haven’t really cared about what people have thought too much — you can do
too much of that in this industry. I used to hate it in television when they
used to say, ‘Where are you going to be in five years’ time?’ I used to
think, ‘Working and doing fun things’.”
Being dead famous has its benefits, but, as Porter has found out this year,
going through divorce, depression and alopecia in the public gaze, there is
a heavy price to pay.
She departs to film one of the links that will make up episode five, but later
on she sends me a text that reads: “Off to find Bing Crosby! What a life!”
- Dead Famous is on Living TV at 9pm from November 11
