Ollie Locke - Laid in Chelsea - My Life Uncovered

This book is dedicated to each and every incredible girl and guy included in this book who has changed and shaped my life and made me the person I am today.

Also to the city of London, my ultimate inspiration and the setting that housed so many of these relationships.

Cover

Title Page

Dedication

My Greatest Thanks To … My wonderful and beautiful family: Mum, Dad, Amelia and James, and the memory of a beautiful grandmother who, thank God, will never read this book. You are all my rock through everything, always. Sarah Dillistone, and everyone involved in Made in Chelsea , for making everything possible and for changing my life. My Cheska, Binky and Richard, and the rest of the cast, for sharing an unbelievable experience together. My beautiful agents at Curtis Brown, Richard Gibb and Felicity Blunt, who save my life wherever I am in the world. Also, Jacquie, Jon, Gordon, Hannah, Becky and Fran for all being superstars. My fabulous and beautiful editor Anna Valentine, who has the job of taking out all the REALLY naughty, unpublishable stories, and to everyone at HarperCollins who has made this book possible. My best friends and one day best men at my wedding, Louis, Alex, Oscar and Richard, who have each made the last 26 years very amusing. My wonderful Pink Palace urban family, Emily, Sam and George, for the wine, the parties, the shoulder. You are the three people I know will always be there. Jordan, for everything, and for being my truly fabulous Bridget Jones. Jason Holman, for driving me around the world and giving me all the relationship advice I need. You know everything before anyone else! Jon and Matt at Insanity for all your help and support. Luke, Ryan, Jamieson, Rollo and all my closest Chelsea friends who have shared the last seven years of truly wonderful memories after midnight.

Foreword

1. And So it Begins …

2. Cigarettes and Alcohol

3. Candle in the Wind

4. No Pubes and a Soggy Biscuit

5. Valentine’s Day Disasters

6. Coner Boner and the Photo of Doom

7. Not-so-sweet Sixteen

8. Bad Influence

9. The Sex Door into Cambridge

10. ‘You’re Just Too Nice’

11. Inbetween a Heartbreak and the Cotswolds

12. London Calling

13. Rachel Stevens and Mopping Up Vomit (Not Hers)

14. A Fur Coat and a Colonic

15. Mamma Mia!

16. A Love Potion to New York

17. The Email that Changed Everything

18. Laid in Chelsea

19. The Secret

20. Hair Today

21. Hattie, TOWIE and a Triathlon

22. The Long Johns and Dutch Courage

23. Can’t Buy Me Love

24. Epilogue

Picture Section

Copyright

About the Publisher

My wonderful and beautiful family: Mum, Dad, Amelia and James, and the memory of a beautiful grandmother who, thank God, will never read this book. You are all my rock through everything, always.

Sarah Dillistone, and everyone involved in Made in Chelsea , for making everything possible and for changing my life.

My Cheska, Binky and Richard, and the rest of the cast, for sharing an unbelievable experience together.

My beautiful agents at Curtis Brown, Richard Gibb and Felicity Blunt, who save my life wherever I am in the world. Also, Jacquie, Jon, Gordon, Hannah, Becky and Fran for all being superstars.

My fabulous and beautiful editor Anna Valentine, who has the job of taking out all the REALLY naughty, unpublishable stories, and to everyone at HarperCollins who has made this book possible.

My best friends and one day best men at my wedding, Louis, Alex, Oscar and Richard, who have each made the last 26 years very amusing.

My wonderful Pink Palace urban family, Emily, Sam and George, for the wine, the parties, the shoulder. You are the three people I know will always be there.

Jordan, for everything, and for being my truly fabulous Bridget Jones.

Jason Holman, for driving me around the world and giving me all the relationship advice I need. You know everything before anyone else!

Jon and Matt at Insanity for all your help and support.

Luke, Ryan, Jamieson, Rollo and all my closest Chelsea friends who have shared the last seven years of truly wonderful memories after midnight.

It’s early October 2011. I’m sitting in my room surrounded by boxes of cigarettes and empty bottles of wine. It looks like a slum. My three flatmates are all out, and I have never felt so low in my entire life. I’m booked to do an appearance at a nightclub in Bristol tonight but I text saying I have been asked to film for Made in Chelsea so I can’t make it. I have quite honestly cried for 72 hours. Looking in the mirror I think I look like I have lost everything. In some ways I feel that I have. My mum is calling every half an hour and I have hardly eaten in four days. My phone rings from an unknown number and I ignore it.

Two minutes later it rings again … and again. On the fourth time I pick up silently and listen.

‘Your taxi is outside.’

I know I’m due on the T4 sofa in 45 minutes to give an interview about the next series of Made in Chelsea . I have no choice – I have to go.

I put on any clothes I find that seem clean and I get into a large Mercedes with tinted windows. I sit in the back of the car, expressionless, while we make our way across London to a shopping centre in Bayswater.

When I walk into the TV studios I’m shown to a dressing room, where I cry into a bowl of Haribos. But I don’t have time to dwell on my misery, as I’m quickly taken into another room, where I am covered in make-up to hide what I actually look like.

I then find myself standing on the edge of the set, waiting for my interview. I force myself to smile, knowing that I have to be on Ollie form for the next 20 minutes. I have to laugh and chat about how excited I am that filming for the next series is about to start. I have to be the Ollie from Made in Chelsea that everyone knows. But at that precise moment, I couldn’t have felt any further from that. Inside I was dying and so far away from being Laid in Chelsea.

I had just gone through one of the hardest break-ups of my life. Whether she thought that way about it I don’t know, but I felt as if I had lost everything.

Looking back at that moment now, I realise that no matter how bad it seems, no matter how bad the break-up, you can always bounce back. I’m now in a happy place – yes, I’m single and fairly sexless, but I believe in love, and I’d like to believe that the person I’m going to spend the rest of my life with is out there somewhere. It’s only time that is holding back that moment when we will meet – probably when we’re both least expecting it.