Gemma Collins

Gemma Clare Collins (born 31 January 1981) is an English media personality and businesswoman.

Gemma Clare Collins was born on 31 January 1981 at Oldchurch Hospital in Romford, East London.

She is the daughter of Joan (née Williams), who worked as a part-time hairdresser and Alan Collins, the director of Unisystems Freight, an import-export shipping company.

She has an older brother named Russell, who is also a director of their father's company.

Shortly after her birth, the family moved from a house in Collier Row and Collins was raised in Rise Park where she attended Rise Park Infant School.

Collins described her childhood as being "filled with love" and said that although money was "tight", her father still managed to take them on family holidays and said she has "very happy memories" of her early years.

Collins then went on to attend Frances Bardsley Academy for Girls.

She enjoyed performing arts from a young age and attended dance lessons and stage school.

At the age of 14, she began attending the Sylvia Young Theatre School and successfully auditioned for a part in The Sound of Music.

Collins' mother was encouraging and said she knew that her daughter would one day become famous.

Collins was bullied at school for being outgoing and confident, and so following the success of her father's business, her parents decided to move her to Raphael Independent School, a private school, for her final year of education.

She left school at the age of 16 with a U in GCSE Maths.

Reflecting on her time at school, Collins said "I remember sitting in the exam room for my maths GCSE and thinking, "I'm going to be famous, I don't need maths."

After leaving school, Collins got a Saturday job in the clothes shop Warehouse before becoming a waitress at a local pub called The Orange Tree.

She signed up to a media studies course at South Essex College but stopped attending after a few weeks as she found it boring.

Collins returned to her job at the clothes shop Benetton before spending a few weeks working in a care home, looking after people suffering from mental illnesses.

Collins then worked at a recruitment agency in London before becoming a receptionist in a BMW showroom, where she retrained to become a sales executive.

Collins' first appearance on television was in the ITV documentary Snobs, which aired on 13 January 2000.

The series focused on people who believed they were a different class.

Following her appearance on the show, Collins visited an agent who told her that she "had charisma but was too fat to be on TV"; suggesting she should lose two stone.

She came to prominence while appearing on the ITVBe reality series The Only Way Is Essex (2011–2019). Collins went on to appear on various reality television shows, including I'm a Celebrity...Get Me Out of Here! (2014), Celebrity Big Brother (2016), Celebs Go Dating (2018), and Dancing on Ice (2019).

In 2011, Julie Childs, mother of Collins' friend Amy, suggested to producers of the ITV2 reality series The Only Way Is Essex that Collins, who was a used car sales woman at the time, would be an appropriate subject.

They went to Collins' house and then filmed her and her friends for two weeks.

After going back to work selling cars for a week, she was cast in the programme and began appearing in The Only Way Is Essex from its second series in 2011; her first ever scene was selling a car to Kirk Norcross.

Her mother Joan joined in the fifth series in April 2012.

In April 2013, Collins released her debut autobiography Basically...: My Life as a Real Essex Girl, which became a bestseller in its first week of release.

In January 2014, Collins took part in the second series of the ITV diving competition Splash!.

During training, Collins suffered severe bruising and admitted she had to overcome a fear of water.

She became the third celebrity to be eliminated after losing the splash-off to Michaela Strachan in the first heat.

In November 2014, she took part in the fourteenth series of I'm a Celebrity...Get Me Out of Here! on ITV.

After she refused to parachute into the jungle along with her cast mates, she withdrew after spending 72 hours in the jungle, which she said was due to health issues.

On 5 January 2016, she entered the Celebrity Big Brother house to participate in the seventeenth series.

On 2 February 2016, she became the seventh housemate to be evicted, having received the fewest votes to be saved, spending a total of 29 days in the house.

In October 2016, Collins appeared on Sky News where she was interviewed by Kay Burley about the campaign to remove the word "Essex girl" from the Oxford English Dictionary.

Collins described the definition, which stereotypes Essex girls as "unintelligent, promiscuous, and materialistic", as derogatory and suggested that the meaning be changed.

In January 2017, Collins took part in the second series of Sugar Free Farm, alongside five other celebrities as they attempted to live on a sugar-free diet.

During the show she attempted fishing and despite the strict detox plan, Collins admitted she actually gained weight during the process.

In June 2017, Collins returned to Big Brother, as a special guest for a shopping task, alongside fellow ex-contestants Marnie Simpson and Nicola McLean.

In 2018, she began starring in her own reality franchise, Gemma Collins: Diva, and the following year, she began hosting a podcast on BBC Sounds.

The expression was removed from the Oxford Advanced Learner's Dictionary (but not the Oxford English Dictionary) following the successful campaign in December 2020.