Looking bright and breezy and like butter wouldn’t melt, TV presenter Helen Skelton reveals how she punched Love Island fan-favourite Camilla Thurlow ‘in the face, more than once’ during a charity boxing match, and she still feels guilty about it.
The Cumbrian-born TV personality also shared that when she’s not busy taking over our screens and presenting shows like Countryfile, she’s busy making various world record attempts.
Speaking about the charity boxing match, Helen says how the match against Camilla had to be stopped and the blows were not personal. “She's a wonderful woman who’s done a lot of amazing things,” Helen told Ellie Taylor on her Won In A Million podcast with Lotto from The National Lottery.
She also discloses how it may have been for charity, but that didn't make it any less intense. “All the girls who were training for it in London did nice boxercise classes, but I live in the north and so I was training at a boxing gym in Hull,” she adds. “My training was quite intense. I lost a tooth; my right tooth got smashed.”
But it was the real women boxers at the gym who inspired her to take the sport seriously - pulling her up for punching softly and for apologising. “They said to me ‘don’t step into our ring and disrespect our sport. It would be like going ballet dancing and doing the Macarena. If you’re going to do something, you should do it properly.”
She remembers one boxer who was a single parent, a full-time student and funding everything herself. “That’s the ultimate in girl power,” she says. “She would say ‘don’t waste my time dancing round the ring. Get in here and hit me.”
When it came to fighting Camilla Thurlow, who worked as a bomb disposal expert before going to the Love Island villa in 2017, where she met her future husband, Jamie Jewitt, Helen says she may have won, but she wasn't that happy about it. “I got a cup and a big belt, which my kids liked,” she said. “My friends said ‘you didn’t look happy about the win’. But you can’t celebrate when you’ve just punched someone in the face!”
The new Won In A Million podcast features a range of celebrity guests, from RuPaul’s Drag Race winner Ginger Johnson to Ted Lasso’s Kola Bokinni, comedian Thanyia Moore and magician Richard Jones, talking about the highs of winning. Helen is the very first guest and talks about other wins in her life, including her various World Record attempts, which have included kayaking the entire length of the Amazon River and reaching the South Pole by bicycle.
Getting older has given her a new perspective on what winning, losing and taking part can mean. “I’ve realised it’s alright to care,” she says. “When my kids are sad about not winning, I don’t tell them it doesn’t matter. Don’t sulk and have a tantrum, but it’s okay to be disappointed. It’s such a good lesson for life.”
“I once got entered into the Downhill World Skateboarding Championships. I clocked 27 miles an hour on a skateboard. It was the worst and most terrifying thing… No one thought I would reach the end, not even me. Whenever I am scared I think back to being on that starting line and know that I’ve got to feel the bumps and get through it.”
Watch Won In A Million on YouTube or listen on Spotify or Apple .
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