GAIL Porter said she owes her life to her daughter after hitting her lowest point during a spell when she was homeless.
The TV presenter, 54, explained that work dried up after she lost her hair to alopecia and she ended up homeless for six months in 2014.
She relied on friends to put her up, but at one stage found herself sleeping on a park bench.
Porter, who now campaigns on behalf of the Samaritans, told how she felt “there’s nothing for me to be here for”.
She said she found strength to fight through the situation after thinking of daughter Honey, now 22, and insisting “I wouldn’t do that to her”.
Speaking on the Working Class to World Class podcast, she said: “Nobody wanted to hire me because I was bald and didn’t look right so I kind of ran out of money and was homeless and so I just sort of gave up and was very depressed.
“I was homeless for six months but I kept battling and battling and got myself back on it and I’m still here to tell the tale.”
Describing her spiralling predicament, she said: “I was appearing on television programmes but they were saying ‘come and do an interview about being bald but we’re not going to pay you’.
“I’d got divorced and that was very expensive and just everything. So money was going out and nothing was coming in.”
Porter said she struggled to find work to pay rent and bills even in her local bookshop, because she was famous, and when she ran out of savings her landlord told her “right, you have to go now”.
She said: “Suddenly I thought ‘I’ve got nowhere to go’. Luckily I told a couple of friends – not many because I was so embarrassed – so I was sofa surfing for a bit.
“I couldn’t even afford a phone so I couldn’t phone anybody and it was getting worse and I was sitting on a bench in Hampstead Heath one night.
“I had nowhere to go and I couldn’t phone anybody and I thought ‘oh bollocks, I’m going to have to sleep on a bench’.
“I didn’t really sleep, I just sat there and thought ‘this is really bad’. If I didn’t have my daughter – to be honest, this is one of the reasons the Samaritans are great – I wouldn’t be here.
“I just thought ‘there’s no point, there’s nothing for me to be here for, and then I thought ‘well I’ve got my daughter and I wouldn’t do that to her so I’ve got to get my head around this’.”
Porter, from Joppa in Edinburgh, became a household name in the 1990s presenting shows such as Fully Booked, Live & Kicking and Top of the Pops before she developed alopecia in 2005.
She said the money from appearing on TV reality show Celebrity Big Brother in 2015 helped get her back on track, and how her struggles helped inspire her to help others in need.
She said: “As much as I slag off reality shows, Big Brother contacted somebody I knew saying they were trying to get hold of me and she said ‘I know you don’t want to do this but it will get you rent.
“I think I was the lowest paid person they’d ever had on Big Brother because they knew I was homeless and vulnerable, so they knew they could just get away with paying me nothing really.
“I thought ‘great, I’ll go in and get voted off in week one’. I didn’t – I was there for ages and couldn’t get out.
“I kept buzzing the buzzer going ‘hello, Big Brother, it’s me, Gail, could you just vote me out please?’ because if you walk you don’t get paid.
“Every day I was going ‘get me out, get me out’.
“Eventually when I left I was so excited, I went running for the stairs and all the people in the house were going ‘bye, we’ll keep in touch’ and I went ‘no, I’m out of this’.”
She added: “I bought myself a little flat round the corner from where I am now and it was just a little place – I had enough for a deposit – no furniture, no nothing, I didn’t care, I had a roof over my head.
“And from that day onwards I just thought I’m going to be forever grateful and whatever I can give back to help other people that are in this situation, because if it can happen to me it can happen to anybody.
“The amount of people I speak to that are like one pay packet away from missing a mortgage payment or a rent payment – it happens.
“If I can help, and point people in the right direction, and show a bit of compassion.”
Porter started campaigning on behalf of the Samaritans after using the charity herself.
She said: “There were a few times I picked up the phone and I phoned the number and then I hung up and I thought ‘no, my problems are not big enough, this is terrible, I’m wasting people’s time.
“I didn’t go through with the phone call, and then one night I phoned again and a guy answered the phone.
“I think I was on the phone for hours and I just let it all out and, oh my gosh, they didn’t judge me, didn’t say anything, and it was such a relief.
“Because sometimes you don’t want to burden your friends, you don’t want to worry people, and suddenly I’ve got a stranger who’s actually listening to me on the phone and he was worth his weight in gold.
“I thought if I can just tell other people about this.”
