Essex Boy: My Story (16 page)

‘The only fights I’ve ever had have been on the street, mate.
I haven’t got a clue how to box, so stop worrying!’
I promised him.

And I meant it.
I didn’t know how to box properly.
The only time I had set foot in a ring before my fight with Mark was when I had a lesson with a cage fighter, which was filmed for
TOWIE
as a bit of a laugh.
It was a three-minute scene and that was all the training advice I’d ever had!

The day before the fight, Mark went to see my dad and pulled him into the office.

‘Mick,’ he said.
‘I’m a bit worried.
I know Kirk is a bit of a live wire, and I don’t know how to fight.
This is only a bit of fun for charity, and I want Kirk to
remember that.
Can you remind Kirk it is only for TV so not to go in the ring all guns blazing?’

So Dad called me up and said, ‘Look, Kirk, don’t do what you normally do and go mad, ’cos Mark’s a bit scared.
Pace yourself with him.’

And I felt bad that Mark was worrying, and said of course I’d take it easy.

The morning of the fight I got to the venue – the City Pavilion in Romford – and found the headgear that had been sorted out for me.
Then when I went to say ‘hi’ to Mark,
he didn’t want to talk to me.
He was trying to be the man and psych himself up, and psych me out.
But even then, fucking stupid me didn’t clock what was happening.
I felt sorry for him
as I thought he must be shitting himself and this was all part of his act.
I’ll be honest, I thought I had it in the bag.
I thought it would be a bit of a light-hearted spar, and when it came
down to it, I would easily win.

So I got in the ring first, then he made his entrance and proper squared up to me, all aggressive.
But what I was really noticing was his headgear.
While I’d been given one that went above
my eyebrows and past my ears and left my whole face uncovered, he had got one that came under his eyebrows and covered his cheekbones, jaws, the lot.
There was practically no way to punch his face
with that on!
But I thought, well, it doesn’t matter too much.
If he doesn’t know how to fight, I will still win.

Then the bell went, and bang!
First punch, Mark broke my nose, then bang, bang, bang, he was straight in there smashing me again!
My helmet split and I couldn’t see, so they had to pause
the fight.

Back in my corner, my man told me, ‘He is a proper boxer, mate.
You’ve been had!’

I went back out there and swung like mad and took him to the floor.
But I was shaken from the start, my helmet was falling in my eyes every two seconds and I could hardly see to fight back.
I
was covered in blood, disorientated and so angry I couldn’t think straight.
The fight went to the full three rounds, and by the end I looked a mess and Mark was judged to be the winner.

Afterwards I found out that Mark has been boxing since he was four.
His dad was an amateur boxer, and his granddad Eddy was a professional.
Boxing is in his blood.
The way I see it, Mark set out
to make me look stupid and himself look good on TV by pretending he couldn’t fight and had never boxed before.
That is sly – it’s like stabbing a man in the back.
I sat for a few
days and fumed about it, going over and over it, how if I had fought properly I could have beaten him any time, and if we had a fight on my terms, I would tear him apart.

Eventually I rang him up and said, ‘Right, Mark.
You were bang out of order.
Let’s meet up and have it out.
I want a proper fight with ya, not some poncy little set-up that you
create just to make yourself look good.’

But he just laughed and said, ‘No, I already had a fight with you!
I beat you, and I don’t want to do it again.
Just drop it.’

And that was it.
That was the last time I spoke to Mark.
And good on him, he has gone on to do well, and I’ll not knock it.
It is good to see anyone from
TOWIE
do well but I will
never forgive him for that fight.
It took my pride away.
That was the only thing we had where I grew up: our toughness.
Round my way, when you had a fight you had to win or you lost all
credibility.
So losing that fight really knocked my self-esteem and my pride.
I never regret anything, but losing that fight to Mark near on fucking killed me.

In the meantime, Sugar Hut was massively benefiting from the show.
Not only was
TOWIE
reminding the locals that the club was up and running again, but people were now
travelling from elsewhere to visit.
Fans were coming to Brentwood to see what the place was like, and to try and catch a glimpse of some of the cast, because we were all in there partying a fair
bit whether the cameras were rolling or not.

But on a personal level, I was suffering.
My anxiety was getting worse and worse.
I had never liked the idea of people talking about me or looking at me, and now they really were.
Of course I
always imagined the worst.
If I was walking down the road and heard someone laughing, I would be sure it was at me, so I’d do one of two things.
If I was feeling aggressive, I’d turn
round, and say, ‘What the fuck are you laughing at?’
And most of the time that left the person looking shocked, because it was nothing to do with me – they’d just been
laughing at something with their friends.
I’d feel really bad for being so aggressive, and a bit stupid.

Or if I was feeling especially insecure, I’d have to go into the nearest shop and take my coat off to check no one had pinned something on me, and look in the mirror to make sure there was
nothing daft about me they could be laughing at, like bird poo on my hair, or my jumper being inside out.

I hated going anywhere on my own.
If there was someone else there at least I had a distraction, so if I wanted to go to Lakeside or shopping or whatever, I had to take someone with me.
At the
very least I’d have to be on the phone so that I could at least feel there was someone with me.

I imagined that everyone hated me and thought I was an idiot and was laughing at me.
It sounds crazy, I know, but the fame made my insecurities a million times worse.
When you are on TV, every
bit of you is being scrutinized – people have a certain perception of you, and they judge you a lot more than they would otherwise.

I always made sure I kept the advice of two people in my head in those first few months of being known.
The first was from Dappy.
He told me, ‘Remember your fans, bruv – they are the
ones who can make or break you, so if someone wants to speak to you, do them the respect of giving them the time.’
And I had seen him do that when we walked through clubs – if anyone
wants to talk to him, he’ll stop and speak to them, even if it is just a few words.

The other bit of advice – randomly – was from Chris Moyles, who I bumped into at an event.
He told me, ‘Kirk, fame is the best and the worst thing ever, but whatever you do,
don’t let it go to your head.
Always stay humble.
Oh, and behave yourself, because if the papers pick up on anything bad, it can totally ruin your career!’

So from day one I did my best to follow that advice, while trying to keep myself happy and sane at the same time.
By the time series two was starting, Dad had decided he did want a piece of
TOWIE
after all.
And while I was happy for him to come on board because I thought it would be fun to film with him, I was less happy for two other reasons.
Firstly it meant my mum
couldn’t be on there any more, and while
TOWIE
didn’t pay us for the first series, by the second series we were to be paid £50 a day.
Not a lot at all, but that money
would have been good for my mum, and I felt like doing the show gave her a sense of purpose, and a way to put herself out there a bit, so I was gutted.
I also wanted to carry on showing the real me
– Mum was, and is, a massive part of my life.

But the other reason I wasn’t so happy about him coming on the show is that he wanted the world to know that Sugar Hut was his.
That would have been fine if it had been clear from series
one, but he had told me, ‘Go on, son, you pretend you own it.’
Now, though, that had changed.

I said, ‘Dad, if you come barrelling in now, as the big club owner, you’re gonna make me look like a right twat!’
But there was no way around it, and sure enough there was a
backlash and I took a fair bit of flak for it, with people thinking I was a pretender who in reality was living off my dad.

And then, right at the start of the second series, I did something I am really not proud of – I split up with Lauren on the show.
It was horrible and awful, and I never want to go through
anything like that again – or put anyone else through it.

This was the one thing she had always asked me not to do.
Whenever we talked about our relationship away from the cameras, she would say, ‘Please, Kirk, if you ever want to break up with
me, don’t do it on
TOWIE
, do it away from the cameras.’

The thing was, I had been having doubts for a few reasons.
First, I was thinking that while I did love her, that spark and the lust weren’t there any more.
I do think that matters, but at
the same time I didn’t want to lose her.
Yeah, I loved being near Lauren, and I wanted to touch her when she was around, but I didn’t want to grab her all the time and kiss her.

But also, our lifestyles were very different.
The age gap never bothered me – in fact I liked her being more mature.
But her friends are so different to mine.
She started modelling young
and made her money early, and became mates with a lot of the London West End glamour set.
I wasn’t comfortable in those circles, and she couldn’t come round to mine and relax with the
boys I grew up with.
She is a very talented career woman – although I don’t think this comes across properly on
TOWIE
– and she has worked her arse off, and her hair
extension company sells products by the thousands.
But it was like her life and mine didn’t fit together that well, and it was doing my nut in.
It also wasn’t helped by her friend
Maria, who I felt was forever interfering in our relationship.
Despite having set us up, it felt like she was jealous of the time we spent together, and would pick fights with me, or try and tell
Lauren I wasn’t treating her right.
I couldn’t stand her in the end, but because she and Lauren were so close it was sometimes hard to get away from Maria.

So with everything added together, I was thinking about breaking up with Lauren, but wanted to respect her by doing it off air.

The
TOWIE
producers would have regular meetings with us to find out what was going on in our lives, so they could work out what to film for the show.
I found it was always better to be
honest, otherwise I might end up being filmed doing something that wasn’t me.
So I said to one of them, ‘I might break up with Lauren.
I’m not sure yet, but I’m not that
happy.
I love her, but I don’t know if I’m in love with her.’

And straight away they said, ‘Great, well, this week we’ll film your break-up scene.’

‘No, I can’t do it on air,’ I said quickly.
‘The only thing Lauren has ever asked of me is not to split up with her on TV.
I understand where she’s coming from, and
I can’t do that to her.
Can’t I break up with her off-screen, then film a scene with my dad talking about it?’

But they pointed out that the relationship was being played out in real time on the show so they couldn’t have storylines happening off air – it wouldn’t make sense to the
viewers.
And this is what I had signed up for.

And when you are in that
TOWIE
bubble, well, you don’t feel you can say no.
Even though I didn’t like some aspects of being famous, it was my job, and I did enjoy it on some
levels, so I felt I had to go with what they said.

The problem with
TOWIE
is they like to take a relationship as far as it can go, and of course the fights and the anger that come out after a break up make good TV so they want that too.
They build it up, but they know that if it turns out it wasn’t right, people want to see it crushed.

I thought, ‘OK, I’ll have to go with this.
Lauren will understand because she knows how the show works, but I need to at least give her a heads-up to warn her, so she can get
prepared.’