Welcome to My World. Coleen McLoughlin

and it was you!’ I told her I felt embarrassed. Stuff like that just makes you think, ‘That’s so ridiculous!’ It’s madness. What most people don’t realize is that there are now literally thousands of untrained guys out there with cameras calling themselves paparazzi. Many of them have never even sold a picture, but they keep on trying to make money by stalking celebrities 24 hours a day, hoping something will happen that will make their fortune. A lot of them are good guys, but some are really intrusive and even try to wind us up just to get a picture and story showing Wayne or me getting cross. Which anyone would if they were wound up like some of these guys can do.

      When we were in Germany the press stalked us everywhere. We’d step outside the hotel to go to buy lunch or just to go for a walk and they’d be with us all the time. In the end, I used to ask them, ‘Aren’t you bored? Aren’t people in England bored of us? It’s ridiculous.’ Believe it or not, there are even times when I feel sorry for them and I think they’re just doing their job. But then in other situations, like when we’re on holiday, I wish they would go away, leave us in peace and give us a bit of privacy.

      We’ve been sitting on beaches in Dubai and Barbados and we can see the paparazzi there, twenty or thirty metres away, just waiting to get a shot of us. It’s a public beach so there’s nothing we can do. I try not to let it affect me but I’m totally aware of the kinds of shots they’re after and, like any girl, it does make me feel self-conscious about my body. I find myself breathing in a bit when I stand up so I end up sitting down on the lounger all day. Otherwise, I take a walk down the length of the beach and there will be a load of them following me. It just means I’m on my guard all day. However hard I try, sometimes I can’t avoid giving them the shot they’re looking for.

      I’d rather just go on holiday and be myself and not care what everyone thinks.

      We were on a beach in Barbados once, with a few friends, and I stood up to remove my shorts because I had my bikini on underneath. As I was taking them off I accidentally pulled the string of my bikini and they came down a bit. I just panicked thinking that was the picture that would be in the newspapers the next day.

      The alternative to all this is to agree to do a ‘set up’ with the photographers. If we agree then they promise to leave us alone for the rest of the day. Celebrities do this all the time. The picture will appear in the newspaper and readers think it’s a genuine paparazzi shot, but in reality it’s all been posed and agreed on. More often than not the photographic agencies will pay money for the picture and often split the proceeds with the celebrity. You can always spot the beach set-ups in the newspapers. They’re the ones with the soap stars looking all beautiful and toned, or splashing about in the sea. They’re not the ones of them sitting on their sun-loungers eating a burger, or where they have a few rolls of flesh on display. I couldn’t pose for one of those photographs. I’d rather just go on holiday and be myself and not care what everyone thinks.