New Huge Brother host AJ ODUDU reveals her physique hang-ups and why staying match is so essential to her

It is startling and in addition unhappy to listen to that, for years, TV presenter AJ Odudu was insecure about her physique. 

‘I had so many hang-ups,’ she says. ‘I had this athletic determine – petite, broad-shouldered, flat-chested – which wasn’t seen as female. Everybody needs the large bum and massive boobs. 

‘Once you’re younger you simply wish to slot in. However we’re all so arduous on ourselves, it is ridiculous. Life is just too brief to be nitpicking in regards to the physique you had been born into.’

Definitely if Odudu, 35, ever disliked what she noticed within the mirror then there’s little hope for the remainder of us.

 The host of a few of our hottest reveals – from Channel 4’s The Huge Interiors Battle and The Biggest Public sale, to the revamped upcoming Huge Brother on ITV – she’s at present sitting on a bench on a roof terrace outdoors the studio the place the YOU photoshoot passed off; 5ft 8in tall, with ski-slope cheekbones and ideal pores and skin. 

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She’s carrying a hoodie over a slip costume that reveals off infinite limbs, about which Odudu solely sees the downsides. ‘I’ve acquired the shortest torso,’ she cackles. ‘My legs come as much as my chin.’

We noticed loads of these legs, flashing and pirouetting throughout the stage throughout her extraordinary run in 2021’s Strictly Come Dancing when – regardless of having no dance expertise – her strikes noticed her by way of to the ultimate. 

However simply beforehand she injured her ankle and needed to withdraw, to her seen devastation. ‘I danced so arduous, I danced my ligament off,’ she says in her broad Lancashire tones with a blast of her throaty chortle.

‘Thank god I can chortle about it now. On the time I used to be crying on reside TV for months each time somebody talked about it. I might been working so arduous, working muscle mass I by no means even knew I had. 

‘My toes had been sore, my ankles had been sore, my bum cheeks had been sore each single day. However as soon as the mud settled I seemed again and mirrored – these had been a few of the finest days of my life.’

She’s proven the identical resilience with each setback she’s encountered. Key to guiding her by way of her profession’s many highs – but additionally lows – has been Odudu’s bodily health, which has helped her face up to infinite knockbacks.

‘I should be robust sufficient to cope with all the things life throws at me,’ she says. ‘My business’s riddled with rejection. Everybody sees the highlights, and everybody pushes by way of the lows. 

‘However I really feel I’ve labored arduous and frequently picked myself again up and that is all the way down to how bodily health has emotionally empowered me and taught me perseverance.

‘I really feel so robust seeing what my physique can do and the way rapidly I can get well from issues emotionally and bodily. Understanding I can cry however then get again up once more and into the ring is a big supply of confidence for me.’

Odudu is now fronting so lots of our TV establishments – she lately hosted Comedian Reduction and The Huge Eurovision Welcome and competed in Celeb Bake Off – it’s straightforward to overlook that, ten years in the past, her profession appeared on the rocks after she was dropped from Huge Brother spin-off Huge Brother’s Bit on the Aspect after only one collection and changed by Free Girls’s Carol McGiffin.

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With no gigs on the horizon, she determined to qualify as a private coach as a way to arrange a channel on YouTube for making health tutorials and exercise movies. 

‘I needed to get again into tv, however at first I did not really feel emotionally robust sufficient. It was health that helped me get my mojo again.’ Two years later she was on display screen once more, internet hosting a junior model of The Voice.

The daughter of James, a joiner-turned-bus conductor, and Florence, a cleaner, Odudu grew up in Blackburn, Lancashire, the sixth of eight kids crammed in a three-bedroom terraced home with a tiny again yard – AJ is an abbreviation of her full identify, Onatejiro. 

On the native Catholic complete, her 4 massive brothers and one elder sister had been all super-sporty. ‘The boys had trophies for soccer, my sister had one for badminton. I simply needed to do what they had been doing. They had been like, “Decide a sport and be good at it.”

‘So I picked athletics – I simply cherished operating, although I by no means gained any medals.’

Over time, Odudu has run a number of half marathons and in 2017 she accomplished the London Marathon. ‘I am as a consequence of do one other marathon, it has been some time,’ she says, sounding doubtful. 

‘Ever since my Strictly harm I have been a bit scared to run lengthy distances. I am such an energetic individual, at all times on my toes on a regular basis, even for my job. I simply do not wish to find yourself on crutches once more.’

But that concern hasn’t stopped Odudu exercising, even when – hearteningly for idle sorts like me – she typically struggles to suit exercises round her filming commitments. To this finish, lately she had a health club put in in the summertime home on the finish of the backyard of her three-bedroom home in Southeast London.

 ‘I’ve acquired a squat rack, all my resistance bands, a bench, a rowing machine, a skipping rope – I am actually fortunate, it is such a luxurious not even having to consider leaving the home.’

So does she roll away from bed each morning and begin pumping iron? ‘Nicely…’ Odudu grins. ‘You’d assume that. However there are at all times different issues to do than the health club – keep inside and watch TV, or go outdoors however sit on a bench and drink.’

To verify she makes use of it, she’s employed a private coach, with whom she does heaps of weight coaching to make sure robust bones, in addition to specializing in mobility. ‘3 times per week he is at that door whether or not or not I’ve had a drink the night time earlier than.

‘And there is nothing that motivates you greater than paying a private coach a wad of money as a result of whether or not you flip up or not, they’re getting paid. So I drag myself downstairs.’

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Odudu likes to work out on an empty abdomen: ‘As a result of if I’ve eaten earlier than, my abdomen’s doing somersaults.’ General, her weight-reduction plan is ‘very hit or miss, very excessive. It simply relies upon the place I’m and what I am doing. 

‘When my mum’s spherical it is wonderful, home-cooked Nigerian meals; when it is simply me by myself it is issues like eggs, spinach, tomatoes, toast within the morning and, later within the day, fish or meat and greens and rice – fast and simple however wholesome. 

‘However once I get busy at work, all of it goes out the window. I reside on meals from the service station.’

Odudu additionally takes an all-or-nothing method to boozing. ‘I am a basic binge drinker. It isn’t a wholesome mindset however I will have one glass of pink wine and will not be drunk, however I’ll have a headache the following day.

She’s lately she had a health club put in in the summertime home on the finish of the backyard of her three-bedroom home in Southeast London

‘Having a few glasses provides me a hangover so then I simply assume, “Oh, nicely carry on the cocktails”  as a result of if you are going to have a hangover you may as nicely have gone for it. 

‘However I by no means drink once I’m recording a TV collection, or [when I’m] alone, or out of stress. If I am hungover I have to have a contented, lovely reminiscence to connect it to, like a good friend’s marriage ceremony.’

Odudu’s a hoot to spend time with: frank, humorous and upbeat. She credit her constructive perspective to Florence, now in her late 60s, who grew up in poverty within the south of Nigeria and got here to England within the Seventies for an organized marriage with James, then a pupil, whom she’d by no means met. 

Mom and daughter are extraordinarily shut: it was Florence who urged her to disregard snooty executives who informed Odudu in her early profession she’d by no means get wherever with out firming down her accent. 

Her weekly appearances within the Strictly viewers, in conventional Nigerian costume, applauding wildly, had been among the many highlights of that season.

 They’ve introduced a documentary collectively, Manhunting with My Mum, after they tried and failed to search out Odudu a husband in Nigeria (for the file, Odudu will not reveal whether or not she’s in a relationship).

‘The older I get the extra I am in awe of Mum. She’s so robust: she lived by way of Nigeria’s civil battle, she married a person who lived in a unique nation the place she knew nobody and barely spoke English.

‘Then she acquired a job and introduced up eight youngsters. I at all times attempt to have her on jobs with me. She’s my armour that accompanies me. Actually, it was lately her birthday and I mentioned that, for her current, I used to be getting her flights to Nigeria.’

When Odudu was learning English and politics at Keele College after which in her first job at BBC Radio Lancashire, she and Florence would do Mr Motivator exercises collectively from a video cassette every time she popped again residence. 

Now, nonetheless, Florence suffers from painful arthritis. ‘It is so arduous while you see the bodily decline of somebody so energetic and younger and mentally sharp,’ Odudu says. 

‘That is one more reason why I discover it so essential to maintain match for so long as potential – since you by no means know when your physique decides you’ve got acquired one thing.’

No matter life brings, it is clear Odudu has the bodily and psychological grit to deal with it. To a lazybones like me, it is inspiring. 

‘The most important fantasy about health is it’s worthwhile to have a stage of health to begin with,’ she says. ‘I was like, “I would like all of the gear, I have to do a exercise DVD earlier than I am match sufficient to go to the health club.”

 ‘No, guys! You get slot in thegym. So simply go.’ 

After avoiding the health club my total life, I’d do exactly that.