At his home in Essex, Rylan Clark-Neal has an assortment of flatscreen TVs all tuned to his current favourite reality TV show. No, not Love Island – BBC Parliament.
“It’s such a load of bollocks, I love it!” he says. “Have you ever sat there and watched it on a Wednesday? It’s hil-air-ious … how prime minister’s question time is not a show on terrestrial TV I have no idea. I’ve never seen more liars in one room!”
Channel controllers take note – after all, nobody understands reality TV quite like Clark-Neal. The 30-year-old first came to most people’s attention in 2012 as an outrageously camp contestant on ITV’s The X Factor who couldn’t really sing, but had a talent for annoying the judge Gary Barlow (and charming viewers in the process). A triumphant turn on Channel 5’s Celebrity Big Brother followed, which led to a presenter’s gig on the spin-off show, Big Brother’s Bit on the Side, then a stint as a showbiz reporter on ITV’s This Morning. Having completed a remarkable journey from national joke to national treasure, he can be heard in our front rooms in the Saturday afternoon BBC Radio 2 slot previously occupied by Zoe Ball. He says he has to pinch himself daily.
“Yesterday I went to interview Madonna; tonight I’m going to the Spice Girls, because Geri got me a ticket,” he says, by way of explaining his dreams coming true. Or, to put it another way: “Basically, 10-year-old me is having a wank.”
Today we are sitting in a quiet meeting room overlooking Regent’s canal in London. Clark-Neal, who admits that he spent the photoshoot grilling the photographer about who would be interviewing him (“I needed to check you weren’t an arsehole”), gleams so brightly that you worry about staring directly at him: not just because of the bright-white veneers, which cost him £25,000 in 2013, but thanks to the brilliant-blue eyes, too. He is funny – outspoken and outrageous. Yet there is a steeliness and seriousness to him (not to mention a sweariness). After years of doing staged showbiz interviews full of made-up anecdotes, there is a sense of catharsis to his conversation: “It’s nice to be honest for a change,” he says, before talking about his early years being bullied, the time off he took at the end of 2017 and the dawning realisation that fame hasn’t turned out to be all he had hoped.
Recently, he has turned his attention to another serious matter, one that may surprise those who know him best as the X Factor contestant who had a histrionic meltdown when Nicole Scherzinger told him she was putting him through to the live finals. “I’m obsessed with Brexit,” he says. Then, to prove his political knowledge, he performs an unlikely impression of the Labour MP Dawn Butler telling the Tory front bench to shush (“She’s my favourite; she lets the MP mask slip”).
Earlier this year he tweeted about Theresa May’s third meaningful vote, only to be met with a barrage of mockery from political journalists. He responded by offering to “Brexit talk anyone under the table”. In response, he says, “90% of them deleted their tweets … because I would come for them. You want to get people into politics and you think taking the piss is the way to do it?”
So, what is his analysis of the Brexit impasse?
“That all roads lead to shit. Every single possible outcome will cause riots. Whatever your position, whatever you voted, even if you get what you want, it’s still gonna be shit.”
Could he do a better job?
“I often think I could do a better job. Honestly, there are harder decisions to make during a series of Celebrity Big Brother than the ones they’re having to make.”
Clark-Neal credits his time in Big Brother with changing the public’s perception of him – “they realised I was normal” – and his adoration goes so deep that he has modelled his house on the set. Apparently, there are Big Brother “eyes” above each door and the garden has been landscaped by people who worked on the show. Sadly, he says: “The only place I’ve ever felt safe is the Big Brother house.” His house even has a diary room for him to sit in. What does he do in there?
“Think,” he says. “And talk.”
To whom?
“I can make someone listen if I want to.”
Really? How?
“I can set it up so other people in the house can listen … if I want them to.” He looks slightly bashful. “I live in quite a smart home. I built it from scratch, so I thought of everything … a lot of my doors are automatic; the whole house is voice-activated.”
The other day, his wifi went down. He is a little embarrassed to admit that he had forgotten how to turn on the lights like a normal person. “I was pressing random buttons and screaming for Alexa to help.”
As if to prove his hi-tech credentials, his watch suddenly starts buzzing to tell him his stepson, Cameron, is trying to call – in 2015, Clark-Neal married Dan Neal, a former police officer and Big Brother contestant, whose 19-year-old son now lives with them. “Do you mind?” he says, reaching for his phone. There follows an amusing conversation revolving around Cameron trying to access the house’s steam room. “If you go for a swim, be careful of the robot – it’s on a cleaning cycle. Oh, and dry the floor after yourself!”
How does he find being a stepdad?
“It’s the same as being a normal dad. He rinses me dry, I slap him about when he’s naughty … no, I don’t, obviously … but it’s the same as being a biological dad. He lives with us. I moan at him to clean up, he cleans up … he cuts the grass, I give him some money … it’s just very normal.”
Clark-Neal describes himself as the man in the middle – there are 10 years between he and both Dan and Cameron – but the closeness in age helps him with some difficult conversations. “I don’t like to talk about sex with Cameron, but I can,” he says. “But I do warn him – if you make me a grandad at 30, I’ll cut it off.”
Would he like more children?
“It’s not something I really talk about – although it always ends up in the papers anyway. But Dan’s done it all now, whereas I haven’t. So … I don’t know.”
Clark-Neal was born Ross Richard Clark in 1988, raised by his mum and his nan in a council house in Stepney Green, east London. He says his childhood was a happy, normal one, but he was bullied: “Of course I was – I was a chubby, ginger, gay kid: all I needed was a set of glasses for the full fucking set.”
There was a real community spirit on his street, but his mum moved the family to Essex after he was attacked at a local playground and put in hospital with a fractured skull. “Probably because they thought I was gay, although I don’t remember any of it. One minute I was on the rope swings, the next I was on the floor.”
Seeing two women bloodied and beaten in the news recently after an attack on a London bus, alleged to have been motivated by homophobia, didn’t surprise him: “I saw all the statuses saying: ‘I can’t believe this is happening in 2019,’ but every day on my Twitter feed I’ll get: ‘You’re gay, you’re a cunt, people like you should be killed because you’re gay.’ Will things ever change?”
In his teens, Clark-Neal dabbled in modelling, changing his name from Ross to Rylan to be more recognisable. He performed in boyband tribute acts, then signed up to The X Factor. But he doesn’t like looking back on that period of his life.
“I played a character when I was on there,” he says. “I knew I had to be the gay stereotype that was on the front of the papers every day. And I did my job well. I played the game.”
Does this mean that his hysterical crying in front of Scherzinger was all an act?
“No, that was true,” he says. “But only because we were drinking in the pool until about 7am and it was 50-degree heat and I’d had an hour’s sleep. I knew I only needed a week on the live shows to earn a bit of money and set myself up for a while. But you only saw a bit of the crying. It went on for 45 minutes and they had to call a paramedic. I couldn’t breathe!”
Clark-Neal says he watches the infamous clip once a year, just to remind himself how much it all means. He loves his job and he has worked ridiculously hard for it – possibly too much, at times. He recalls the day his nan died. They were incredibly close, but he still chose to present Big Brother’s Bit on the Side that night. “It was either that or sit indoors crying,” he says. “So I cried, went into work, had another cry, did an hour’s live show, then cried and went home. It’s just how I am … always at work, never stop.”
Does he worry that he is using work to deal with deeper stuff?
“One hundred per cent. But I know my nan would have said: ‘Go to work.’”
When Clark-Neal first found fame, he lived the celebrity cliches – even buying a customised Range Rover with the silver lettering changed to Range Rylan. But, he says, he misjudged what fame would bring. Even interviewing Madonna, he says he found himself getting mobbed more than the queen of pop. “Not because I’m more recognisable. I’m not under any illusion that I’m an A-lister; I don’t think I’m even on the alphabet scale. But I’m in people’s houses every day – I’m there when they wake up and there when they go to bed. So people think they know who I am. And, to a certain extent, they do.”
Listen to his show and it is clear why strangers view him as a friend: he is warm, witty and gets his mum to phone in and natter on about ham and cheese toasties. Still, isn’t it a bit rich complaining about fame when he went all-out in search of it?
“In the early days, it was all I ever wanted, more than the job,” he says. “I wanted people to know who I was. But now, much as I’m grateful for it, it’s the one thing I wish I didn’t have. Because I don’t leave my house. If I walk down the street, people will come up. And I can’t just go: ‘Get lost,’ because I’m not an arsehole.”
He recalls a family wedding the other week – lovely people, great conversation. Then the evening approached. “That’s when it started,” he says. “People who’d been there all day started asking for photos. It’s that constant reminder that: ‘Oh shit, you’re Rylan.’ I’ve lost a lot of friends over it. Especially in telly, I’ve got one handful of people I can cry down the phone to and know it’s between us.”
These days, he says, 90% of the people he meets are nice. After The X Factor, he got abuse, but if anyone tries that these days: “I’ll tell them to screw themselves. People might think I don’t have that in me.”
The Range Rylan had to go – too many eagle-eyed drivers started driving alongside him with cameras out, causing him to panic at the wheel. But he blames himself: “I sold my soul,” he says. “I went on X Factor and sold my soul … to the beast.”
I wonder how he feels about reality TV in today’s climate, in which The Jeremy Kyle Show has been axed and Love Island heavily criticised after people who had starred in the programmes had mental health problems and even killed themselves. Clark-Neal thinks the main problem is the way fame ends suddenly once you leave the shows. “The second you walk out, you are on your own. I was very lucky. After the X Factor tour, I went back home … it was the first time I’d been in a room on my own for eight months, without anyone watching me. I remember waking up at 4am and thinking: ‘It’s over.’ If the phone hadn’t rung with the Big Brother job a few weeks later, I don’t know what I’d have done.”
In fact, he has worked so much that at the end of 2017 he stepped back from his gig on This Morning to look after his mental health. He says he was getting up at 5am most days and not getting home until 2am. He was also struggling to deal with other problems, particularly his mum’s worsening health as a result of Crohn’s disease. Yet the decision drew criticism from some. “I remember seeing tweets from people saying: ‘Who do you think you are? I’ve worked for the NHS for 25 years and I’m not in a position to have time off.’
“But then other people will say: ‘I never knew your mum nearly died, or was linked up to an IV drip six nights a week because she can’t digest food any more.’ And that’s because I don’t go on telly and every magazine going: ‘Poor me, my mum’s not well, now give me a tenner for the interview.’
“Life is complicated,” he concludes, “but I’ve got a set of veneers that I smile through on morning TV.”
After sharing his feelings about always being on duty, I feel guilty when the interview ends and I, too, ask for a favour. But my wife’s grandma, who has been ill, is a huge fan, so … if he wouldn’t mind … could he just do a little video message?
“I’d love to,” he says. “What’s her name?”
Mildred, I say.
“Of course it is.”
He whisks my phone from my hand and starts recording: “Hi Mildred, it’s Rylan, I hope you’re well. A little birdie tells me that you listen to my radio show. Thank you, because it’s nice to meet one of the three listeners. I hear you’ve had a few little issues, so I’m sending you all my love. And whenever you want to come to visit Radio 2, let me know.”
It is nothing special, really, just a video message for someone he has never met – one of dozens he will no doubt do in the next few days. But it is so effortlessly sweet that I realise why he can’t walk down the street without being approached. And I think: whatever it was he sold to the beast, he definitely kept some of it back.
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This article was amended on 25 June 2019 to clarify that Clark-Neal’s show on BBC Radio 2 is permanent. Previously, it said he was standing in for Zoe Ball.
