OLIVIA Attwood does not mince her words.
She raved about plastic surgery and cosmetic procedures while most line-free celebrities were still claiming good genetics – famously ranting: “If I want my mouth to look like a swollen butthole, that is my choice.”
Speaking to The Sun exclusively, Olivia opens up on the scrutiny over her marriage[/caption]
She and her husband, Bradley Dack, celebrating her birthday in May[/caption]
She hit the headlines last week after partying in Ibiza with friend and radio co-host Pete Wicks[/caption]
And she’s never shied away from discussing the messiness of maintaining romance and friendships in the public eye.
So, as rumours spread last week that her two-year marriage to footballer Bradley Dack was in dire straits – following pictures of her partying in Ibiza with close friend and radio co-host Pete Wicks – the 34-year-old kept a level head.
“If I had something to say, I’d be saying it on my own [Instagram] story,” Olivia tells me, just a few days after landing home from Ibiza.
“All the gossip and stuff – people message me and go, ‘Oh, have you seen this?’
“And, I do, but I’m quite disconnected from that stuff. Because I just think that, if you’re in this industry – and believe me, there are so many wonderful perks, I live a very privileged life – it’s just a sidebar of this job.
“I just take it…”
Olivia and Brad, 31, have been challenged by some considerable setbacks as a result of their demanding lives.
Having taken the mantle of most of ITV’s TV programming, with shows including Bad Boyfriends, The Price of Perfection, Getting Filthy Rich, Loose Women, This Morning and upcoming cooking series The Heat, any semblance of work/life balance is a fallacy.
And when she does finally get home, she’s got nothing more to give.
“At the minute, in the last year, there’s been no balance at all,” she says. “I don’t say that in a way of trying to get my violin out. It’s been a conscious decision.
“I think that, when you want something quite extraordinary, you have to do the work. You have to show up, and that’s what I’ve been doing.
“But I wouldn’t be lying if I said it doesn’t have an impact. Of course it does. And me and Brad are in a place right now where we’re trying to work out how we can connect better.
“Because I give a lot of myself to this job. So, when I come back home in the evening, there’s not much of me left. So, we are thinking at the moment of how we can have that time together.
“Even if it’s a dog walk and we don’t take our phones with us.
Me and Brad are in a place right now where we’re trying to work out how we can connect better
Olivia Attwood
“With Brad’s job as well [he started playing for Gillingham FC in 2024], we can’t just book a week away. Logistically, it’s a f***ing nightmare.
“Again, I’m not getting my violin out, because we’re both incredibly lucky people. And it’s a small price to pay to do these amazing jobs.”
Sadly, another price to pay is the couple’s home base. In 2021 – a few years after getting engaged and while he was still playing for Blackburn Rovers – Olivia and Brad bought their dream house in Cheshire.
They then spent time and hundreds of thousands of pounds renovating it – with Olivia sharing snippets of the £1million mansion, which they share with their rescue dogs, Lola and Stitch, with her followers.
But in the past year, since Olivia’s London-based TV, radio and podcasting work went up 12 notches and Bradley’s job took him permanently to Kent, the place has stood like an empty relic to the life they were going to have.
Earlier this year, there was an attempted break-in on the property – which was thankfully thwarted by Olivia’s expensive on-site security team.
Olivia seen for the first time following her Ibiza drama with Pete Wicks[/caption]
Olivia and Brad documented moving into their dream house on Olivia Meets Her Match, but have now made the difficult decision to sell[/caption]
Footballer Brad’s now also based down south playing for Gillingham FC[/caption]
But that, and the fact they hardly ever make it back north, has left the couple having to make a sad decision: they’re going to sell up.
“The house is going to go on the market very soon,” she sighs. “Essentially, I had this apartment in London that I was just using as a base for filming. And that’s what it was meant to be, but now we’re living here.
“That’s our family home in Cheshire, but we’re not in it. So, we’ve been umming and ahh-ing, because we’re both kind of emotionally holding onto that house. We love it so much.
“It’s just that Cheshire doesn’t work for us anymore because we’re not there.”
Won’t stop partying
As for sharing snippets of her party life off-the-clock, Olivia has questioned whether she’s being too honest and transparent – especially now she’s fronting wholesome shows like This Morning.
“Sometimes I get these little voices in my head that go, ‘Oh, you’re now being referred to as a This Morning host, Maybe you shouldn’t post that crazy Ibiza reel where you’re falling off the back of a boat,’” she admits.
“But then, I’m like, ‘Well, no, because that’s what I do in my downtime – and actually, a lot of people on telly do that too. They just don’t show it. I feel like maybe I can be this new era of TV host when I have a really fun life outside of my job.
“I don’t want to lose that honesty and transparency. I’m not pretending to be anyone I’m not. I’m not hurting anyone. I’m not doing anything wrong.
“And, when I come to work, I’m really professional. But I don’t feel like I need to make everything super vanilla to get booked for jobs, because I’m a fun girl to hang out with, but I am also really professional when it comes to work.”
Olivia made her debut guest hosting for This Morning alongside Dermot O’Leary this summer[/caption]
She’s also a regular panellist on Loose Women (pictured with Linda Robson)[/caption]
She says she’s not about to hide her fun and sexy side just because she’s on morning TV[/caption]
And it’s certainly not been plain sailing for Olivia and Brad up to this bumpy boat ride.
“The beginning of our relationship was messy,” she says. “We went back and forth, and there were people in between. So, you know, it definitely wasn’t a linear thing to us being exclusively together.
“So, you kind of pull back and you go, ‘OK, humans are flawed. As long as we’re all trying our best 99.9 per cent of the time. You’re never going to get perfect from anyone.’
“No one has a perfect relationship. And Brad and I have been up and down – we’re quite open about that.”
She certainly is.
Grafting hard
I first met Olivia in 2017, hours after she landed back on UK soil following her scene-stealing turn in season three of Love Island.
Back then, the ITV series was at its height of success, and Olivia – a former grid girl – made no bones about the fact that she’d love to segue into mainstream TV presenting.
Then, to use Love Island parlance, she grafted hard to make it a reality.
She and then boyfriend Chris Hughes, whom she coupled up with on the show, fronted their own fly-on-the-wall series, Crackin’ On.
The night before the press launch, they had an almighty bust up and broke up for good.
Unsurprisingly, Chris didn’t show up the following day. But Olivia did – alone – braving our questions and admitting it was slightly awkward to be promoting a show about their romance when they were very much over.
She’s since become ITV’s golden girl[/caption]
Celebrating the upcoming second series of Bad Boyfriends in London last week[/caption]
She was vulnerable, but candid. Again, honesty’s always been her MO.
It’s a policy that also makes her an excellent host and mentor for Bad Boyfriends, which we’re discussing today ahead of season two’s launch on Sunday.
As fans of the first season will remember, we see Olivia put a slew of so-called “bad boyfriends” through their paces, as the girlfriends that they’ve lied to and cheated on gather them under false pretences.
Then they put them through the wringer to change their ways.
I had my own bad boyfriend in Brad
Olivia Attwood
It’s something Olivia says – in the first few minutes of episode one – that she’s well adept to. As she herself says, “I had my own bad boyfriend” in husband Brad.
The couple actually dated before her Love Island stint, and Brad cheated on her – prompting her to get her payback by entering the dating show and snogging a load of men on national TV.
They reunited soon after she and Chris broke up, and haven’t looked back since.
It’s for this reason that she took a more nuanced approach to advising the embittered girlfriends.
“On reflection, this lot made season one look like angels – they’re a lot naughtier,” she says. “But the issues run deeper – and we dig a bit deeper too into why certain behaviours are happening, and why certain behaviours are being tolerated.
“The emphasis is very much on each partner: why are you in this relationship? Do you want to work it out, or do you want to walk away? Because it’s all well and good bringing your boyfriend into this situation, but then you also have to ask yourself: why are you there? Why are you tolerating that?
Enjoying a day off the clock with her dogs, Lola and Stitch[/caption]
Brad’s been supporting Olivia, despite the recent furore over the state of their marriage[/caption]
“I think that’s a really interesting part of human psychology. And it’s something that we can all relate to.”
Looking ahead, Olivia’s not letting her foot off the gas.
We’ll soon see her teaming up with chef Jean-Christophe Novelli to front the new ITV cookery contest The Heat.
We can then expect more TV, radio and podcasting work, and more snapshots of her party-filled life when she’s off the clock.
“I’m British, so I’m always going to be self-deprecating,” she says. “But I want to keep growing. I want to be that safe set of hands where someone makes a TV show and they think, ‘Oh, Olivia should host this.’ That’s what I want.”
And maybe – just maybe – she can find a way to marry her work and personal life by getting Brad, who makes an appearance on Bad Boyfriends, on camera beside her.
“I would actually be so down to do more together, and he’s definitely become a lot more comfortable on camera,” she says. “But long-term, would I be able to get him into a career where he’s not talking about football? That might be more difficult.”
Olivia Attwood’s Bad Boyfriends airs Sunday at 9pm on ITV2 and ITVX