PREVIEW

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Headline: Rylan Clark-Neal speaks at Thread Talks

Caption: Rylan reveals he didn’t know Celebrity Big Brother was being axed, his favourite contestant on upcoming show Ready Steady Cook and how he’s happy being the butt of jokes The It Takes Two presenter and upcoming host of Ready Steady Cook, Rylan Clark-Neal, talking last night at Samsung KX’s ‘Thread Talks’ revealed his funniest, favourite and most controversial moments on Twitter along with juicy gossip including how he was only told about Big Brother’s axing the day before it happened. Held in association with Twitter, Thread Talks is a series of six intimate and exclusive ‘in conversation’ events in which comedian and host, Alex Zane is joined by some of the biggest names in journalism, sport, culture and comedy – taking place at Samsung KX, Coal Drops Yard. Designed to give guests the ultimate immersive brand experience, Samsung KX is a place where people are invited to discover, interact with and learn new skills in a dynamic environment through a range of workshops, events and performances together with local community partners. INTERVIEW TRANSCRIPT: Rylan was only told about Big Brother’s axing the day before it happened… and says the show is coming back “We never knew, genuinely, I’ll be completely honest, we never knew it was going. We’ve heard rumours that they were thinking about it, but we thought Celeb would stay. There’s no way that Celeb can go. It was a phone call, I got a phone call the night before it was announced to say it’s going and I had no, I genuinely had no words. In my house I had a diary room, this is how dedicated I am to this show. This is the truth; I have a diary room in my house and two diary room chairs I chored. But I do have to say something, I know it will come back, when and how, I don’t know. But I know it will come back.” Rylan’s uses cleaning to escape from the celeb world “Everyone always asks me; When you go home, what do you do to relax? This is genuinely what I do to relax, I have got the worst cleaning habit in the world, to the point where I’ve had to stop using things like bleach and have to use the eco things because I’m literally knocking myself out literally bleaching things. This is my life, my life is not glamourous, I don’t have a cleaner, I don’t do anything like that. I love doing it. I live a very lucky life with my job and I get to come in places like this and people clap me and I lap it up and I wave like I’m Meghan and Harry and I’m going back to my normal life now ‘Hello Canada!’ - and people think ‘I bet he’s a right diva, I bet he goes home and drinks champagne’. No darling it’s mew and minky cloth and a bottle of eco cleaner. That is my life. But do you know what. I would not want it any other way.” Rylan doesn’t believe in the block button on Twitter and likes reading his negative comments “I like to live in the real world and when I say the real world – I don’t believe in the block button and I get why people use the block button but I actually quite like seeing the tweets about me that are saying I’m talentless, I’ve got big teeth that I’m orange – which are all true to be perfectly honest... I like living in the real world, I don’t like a world where everyone loves me and I’m amazing and my head is like five times the size it should be – I actually quite like knowing that people don’t like me.” Rylan Clark-Neal loves being the butt of the joke “I did start off as the joke, but the thing was the reason why I’m still laughing is because I knew I was the joke, I wasn’t not in on the joke. I knew exactly what was going on during X Factor and I learnt very quickly on those type of shows you need to tick a box and you need to be potentially a stereotype of something and you need to fill a role that they’re looking for. I’m happy being the butt of jokes, I really, really am because I get to see my bank manager on a weekly basis, and he reminds me that it’s all worth it in the end! It really, really is. But yeah I am still laughing because it’s nearly 8 years on and, I don’t really know how I did it and I don’t know how I’m still here in front of an audience at Samsung KX of people that actually applied for tickets... talking about myself which is very, very odd but I’m happy to be the joke, I still like the joke, I’m still in on the joke but believe me I am still laughing.” Rylan prefers working with ‘normal people’ over celebrities When discussing the favourite parts of his job, Rylan explained how working on the upcoming series of Ready Steady Cook, the contestants made it for him. “I've just been in Scotland doing Ready Steady Cook, which is coming really soon to BBC1 and all the contestants were fantastic. They weren't your usual suspects that have maybe done a million reality shows and stuff like that. I had an 81-year-old person on there and her granddaughter and they're the funniest moments to me because they're real and you're having a laugh and I was like “Vera check your battery you can't hear me! It's just brilliant and I love working with normal people because I'm one of them, I was just one of you lot that would come to something like this to watch someone talk, except I was in the right place at the right time, I got lucky. Someone up there went 'go on, I'm giving you a little bit of the spoonful, but you've got to work hard for it. But with all due respect, I did work hard for it to the point where I had to stop because it got too much at one point, but you don't get anything without hard work." Big Brother changed Rylan Clark-Neal’s lifE “I used to have to keep a lot of secret for a show I was on, and I know I’ll be on again one day. My life was literally changed by a TV show, and it wasn't X Factor, believe it or not, it was Big Brother. After I came off X Factor, I was lucky enough to go on Celebrity Big Brother, and I won it. I then won the best thing; I got a job out of it. Now I wasn't a presenter, by any means, but Big Brother took a bit of a risk and I pretty much got an apprenticeship presenting job on Big Brother and six or seven years on I was still there, and I loved it. It literally turned in to my baby', and I got a husband from the show!”

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PersonInImage: Rylan Clark-Neal