So this is what happens when you work out how to channel feminine rage: you find yourself topping the leaderboard of life.
Vicky Pattison, the undisputed star of last week’s Strictly Come Dancing, is elated. She tells me she is heading to a dentist appointment after our interview – she chipped a tooth when she collided with poor Kai Widdrington, her professional partner, during a chaotic Charleston in week three – and it occurs to me she won’t need drugs for the repair job because she’s on a natural high.
The reason? On Saturday’s Strictly, the woman who just a few days earlier was describing herself as an ‘uncoordinated little duck’ turned into a swan before our very eyes. An angry swan, granted, all sinew and fury. Vicky’s tango – powerful and passionate – stole the show, and got the highest score of the night.
The judges, who had watched her tremble and shake through early performances, were as stunned as she was. Anton Du Beke declared the dance ‘perfect’.
Hard-to-please Shirley Ballas gave a standing ovation and agreed. Motsi Mabuse told her: ‘You are on fire.’ Craig Revel Horwood, being Craig, had a tiny quibble about hand placement, but still awarded her a nine, giving an overall score of 39.
What had fuelled such an unexpectedly brilliant performance? ‘Feminine rage,’ she said, as she leapt around the Clauditorium in glee. She wasn’t entirely joking.
‘The tango is a dance that is full of passion and fire,’ she explains today. ‘Kai saw the theme of this dance as a difficult break-up and, for the couple we were playing, this was their final conversation before she was done with him for ever, full of – yes – feminine rage.
‘I feel like I have spent 20 years of my life being mad at men at times, so I just tapped into all that.
On the cusp of turning 38, Vicky Pattison says she is ‘proud of the woman she is becoming’
Vicky says she channelled years of being angry for her powerful tango with Kai Widdrington on the latest episode of Strictly
‘I’ve felt like a fish out of water quite a lot in this competition and it was nice that, even for a moment, I felt almost at home on the dance floor.’
She also says she has spent much of her time since bursting into ‘sporadic tears’. Happy ones, yes, but also tears of relief.
This is a woman who had a lot to prove – to herself as much as to others.
There’s a moment in our interview where she gets a little choked up, saying she is ‘proud of the woman she is becoming’. Given that she turns 38 on Sunday, this is a striking thing to say. Technically, she has been a woman for two decades, surely?
‘Oh I was a girl until I was 30. Until I was in my 30s, I didn’t know who I was. I’m still working out a lot of it. And I came into Strictly with zero self-belief. I never thought I would measure up. I worried I’d be the joke, that I’d embarrass myself, that I’d been too much for people. Too loud. Too . . . everything.
‘Most of the doubts were about the physical aspect – I danced like an ironing board with arms – but also the popularity thing.
‘The BBC is a relatively new space for me. Some of the people watching won’t know who I am; others are aware and don’t like me, or are unsure of my past. I can’t change their opinions.’
Those people, of course, will remember Vicky for all the wrong reasons. She came to fame, aged just 23, as ‘Queen Vicky’ – one of the most outspoken drama-magnets in MTV reality show Geordie Shore, set in Newcastle close to her hometown of Wallsend.
Pattison won the 15th season of I’m a Celebrity… in 2015 – now she’s aiming to lift the famous Glitterball
Pattison came to fame, aged just 23, as ‘Queen Vicky’ – one of the most outspoken drama-magnets in MTV reality show Geordie Shore
Vicky suffers from a condition called PMDD – premenstrual dysphoric disorder, a hormone-related condition that causes extreme mood swings, anxiety and depression
Back then she was a young woman never too far from a drunken fight, romantic hook-up or on-screen emotional breakdown. ‘Feral’ is how she describes her past self and, although she has worked hard to leave those days behind, you get the sense they linger in her own head.
For instance, she says she had ‘never danced sober’ before signing up for Strictly. She also worried that the ‘chaos’ she tends to bring with her would, literally and metaphorically, trip her up. Her worst fears seemed to be materialising, given how she collided with Kai during that Charleston.
‘I’ve never been a very graceful person. That’s not how anyone would describe me. I’m quite accident-prone, quite awkward and that Charleston did have a sense of chaos – at least the way I did it,’ she admits. ‘We went wrong into a lift and I collided with the back of his head, poor fella.’
She hoots with laughter. ‘I hope I’ll just need a bit of composite filler, and I’ll get my Hollywood gnashers back.’
The non-dentistry reinvention of Vicky Pattison has been happening for at least the past decade, though. She left Geordie Shore in 2014 but the following year won I’m A Celebrity, charming the public with her sense of humour and unfiltered personality. Since then, she has become a Loose Women panellist and fronted a series of documentaries, one exploring her father’s alcoholism and her own drinking habits, another looking at the deep fake porn industry.
All have required a turning back to reflect on her own life and career with the benefit of maturity.
She seems fully aware that she’s still a Marmite personality though, someone people either love or loathe. ‘I’m not everyone’s cup of tea – but I am some people’s shot of tequila,’ she quips.
What’s remarkable is that at some point on her journey, she’s turned into a bona fide campaigner on women’s issues. She laughs a little today at how people still hesitate to use the ‘f’ word (feminist) when describing her.
‘I’ve been with my husband Ercan [Ramadan] for eight years now, and I’ve always been vocal. One day I was going on about something and I could see him looking at me out of the corner of his eye and he said, “You’re a feminist, aren’t you?” and he was saying it as if it was a bad thing. But yeah, I f***ing am. And I’m proud of it. He knows now that I won’t stand for disrespect, for sexism, for any of it. I’m very lucky to have found a man who supports me in that.’
What happened before Ercan? ‘Well, I’ve definitely had a chequered dating history,’ she says, which is a neat way of summarising the very public car crash that was her love life. Her past relationships have included an engagement to Geordie Shore co-star Ricci Guarnaccio (which ended with him asking for his ring back), a break-up with ice hockey player James Morgan (who was later arrested and jailed for two years for a house robbery) and a fling with fellow reality star Stephen Bear (who was jailed in 2023 after sharing a sex tape without the consent of his then-girlfriend Georgia Harrison).
On that one, Vicky once reflected: ‘Love is blind or, in my case, blind, deaf and stupid.’ Among the ones who got away was Spencer Matthews, whom she met on I’m a Celebrity. Although they enjoyed a date, after which he bought her 100 red roses, the union was doomed, reportedly because he couldn’t understand her accent.
She had all but given up on men when she was introduced to Ercan – a builder, turned reality star on The Only Way Is Essex – by friends. Last year they got married, but it has been a roller-coaster ride.
Vicky suffers from a condition called PMDD – premenstrual dysphoric disorder, a hormone-related condition that causes extreme mood swings, anxiety and depression. For her whole adult life, she had been unsure whether the regular ‘lurching’ into darkness had a physical or psychological explanation. She was convinced it was the former, even if the medical establishment didn’t agree.
‘I saw five doctors over five years before anyone took me seriously,’ she says. ‘I was told everything from “women’s periods get worse as they get older” to “try losing weight”.
‘I’d leave appointments crying. I was offered antidepressants. It makes you feel insane – like you are weak, or can’t cope.’
She learned about PMDD through social media and sought a private diagnosis. ‘When the doctor said “yes, this is real”, I cried with relief. I finally knew I wasn’t broken.’
If Vicky’s ‘feminine fury’ hadn’t been acknowledged before, it was now. She started to investigate what support there is for women with PMDD and other female reproductive health issues, and reached out to others on her social media accounts. Women got in touch, in their thousands, telling horror stories. ‘I could afford to go private. I had a supportive partner and flexible work. What about the women who don’t?
‘One of the things that really made me angry was discovering that we spend more money on researching male pattern baldness than we do on women’s reproductive health.’
Last month, she took her findings – including other women’s stories – directly to Wes Streeting, the Health Secretary. ‘Honestly, I didn’t expect him to take me seriously,’ she admits. ‘I’m just a lass from Wallsend, not a politician or a doctor. But he did. He listened.
‘He’d had a family member go through something similar. He told me he wanted to help tackle medical misogyny in the NHS. I came out of that meeting thinking, “This is what I’m meant to do.” ’
There is no ‘cure’ for PMDD, but the ability to cope with it comes in understanding the condition and explaining it to others – husbands, children, employers.
‘Before I knew what it was, I spent years trying to be the cool girl – to look like I had it all together,’ she says. ‘But I’ve realised there’s real power in vulnerability. We tell women not to be emotional, not to cry, not to be “too much”.
‘But being open about what hurts you doesn’t make you weak; it makes you human. Now, I deal with it by talking about it, telling my manager that if we can move that big meeting it would be great.
‘Maybe let’s not have any live TV experiences at a time I know will be problematic. There are things that help – clean eating, exercise. The best way I’ve heard it described is that you spend your life building this sandcastle of good habits, then your PMDD wave comes and sweeps it all away. And all that’s left is hopelessness and despair. And every month you have to rebuild.’
At her lowest point, PMDD has led Vicky to have suicidal thoughts. She details one episode that happened in the very recent past – even, shockingly, as she was preparing to go on Strictly.
‘There was a night, earlier this year, when I was alone in the house with the dogs,’ she recalls. ‘Ercan was out playing football with his mates. I had to ring him and say, “I don’t know what I am capable of right now.” He stayed on the phone, reminding me of all the good things in our life – the dogs, our holidays, our family. I couldn’t see any of that in that moment. I was lost.’
She didn’t have a specific plan of how she was going to hurt herself, or worse, she says, but is convinced that Ercan keeping her on that phone saved her life.
‘I felt that the world would be better off without me,’ she says, quietly. ‘It wasn’t that I wanted to die. It was that I couldn’t imagine living like that any longer.’
How has Ercan learned to cope? ‘He’s never had depression, so he can’t fully understand, but he tries. He’s learned to see when the fog is coming – that’s what I call it – and he’s patient. When I’m not myself, he reminds me that it’s not me talking, it’s the condition. That’s love, isn’t it? To stay steady when the person you love disappears for a bit. I couldn’t do this without him. He’s the calm in my chaos.’
It seems a bit flippant to ask about the Strictly experience in all this, but surely the pressures – not least of live TV – must add to the stress? ‘He’s been brilliant. When I come home from rehearsals knackered, he’s got the dinner on and a bath run.’
Their relationship has, inevitably, been the subject of tabloid speculation, especially after she joked in one interview about being ‘too tired for sex’ during Strictly. ‘Poor Ercan,’ she cringes. ‘He’s very private and I’m a foghorn. ‘There’s no “sex ban”, and I still fancy the pants off him, but I’m just shattered. When I get home at 10pm, I just don’t have the energy for the old Mattress Mambo.
‘Maybe I should be the sort of woman who says, “Oh yes, I get home at 10pm to make a home-cooked meal and read stories to the kids and make sure my husband is happy in all regards, but that’s not me, mate. We don’t pretend to be perfect.
‘There are compromises. There are weeks we barely see each other. But we’re a team. He’s proud of what I’m doing — even when I’m moaning that I’ve got blisters and have chipped a tooth.’
Actually, they don’t have kids. Once, she would have seen the fact that they don’t have children as a failure. In her hometown, she says, it was ‘expected that you’d get married and have kids by 30, and if you didn’t you’d have failed’.
So she found turning 30 ‘hideous’. ‘I’d just come out of a relationship. I’d been conditioned to think everything was going to go downhill – looks, fertility, career. But my 30s have actually been the best years of my life.
‘I met my husband, I bought a house, I adopted my dog, I found a career I’m proud of. I was a girl until I was 30 – now I’m a woman, and I like her. Society scares women into thinking life ends at 30. It’s rubbish.’
In 2022, Vicky made the momentous decision to freeze her eggs, a process she shared with her five million followers on Instagram. She was trolled by some, but still believes she did the right thing partly because Ercan is five years younger than she is and ‘wasn’t ready’; partly because she herself was dealing with quite enough. ‘I want to be the best mother I can be, and it’s given a sense of liberation not to be beholden to someone else’s timeline.’
Her success on the dancefloor – and all this talk of her ‘feminine fury’ – has turned her into something of a heroine. Her social media is awash with fans posting content with captions like, ‘This is what women in their 30s look like when they stop apologising.’
Vicky smiles at that. ‘I love that people see me that way. I want women to know they don’t have to have it all figured out. You can still surprise yourself.’
For confidential support call the Samaritans on 116123, go to samaritans.org or visit a local Samaritans branch.
