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My revenge when I found out my footballer boyfriend had cheated on me...
and the truth about why I then married him anyway: Love Island star OLIVIA ATTWOOD reveals all By Lisa Sewards For Weekend Magazine Published: 11:52, 30 August 2024 | Updated: 11:56, 30 August 2024 e-mail View comments When a glammed-up Olivia Attwood sashayed into the famous Love Island villa, she says she had just one ambition...
revenge. Her footballer boyfriend Bradley Dack had cheated on her and she wanted him to regret wrecking their relationship. And, with her skimpy bikinis and sassy personality, it was mission accomplished.
Not only that, but her appearance sparked an unexpected reunion with the then Blackburn Rovers star Bradley and the pair have since become man and wife. Also, her Love Island sojourn has led to a soaring career as a TV presenter. Now, armed with her own romantic experiences, 33-year-old Olivia is launching an ITV reality series – Bad Boyfriends.
Olivia takes errant partners to task in new reality TV show Bad Boyfriends On the show, the boyfriends are faced with a series of honey traps to test their fidelity, before Olivia (pictured) and their girlfriend reveal they have been secretly watching At the behest of eight long-suffering girlfriends, the show aims to transform their partners – who include cheaters, commitment-phobes and man-children – into much better boyfriends. Olivia, who's quick-witted and a straight talker, recalls her motives for that appearance on the third series of Love Island, in 2017. 'I wanted to get back at my ex-bad boyfriend Bradley, and it worked.
Ever since, I've been flooded with messages from women asking for relationship advice,' says Olivia, who has amassed 2.2 million followers on Instagram . 'A lot of girls think that I've got the answers to everything.
I don't pretend to have them – I just tell it like it is. But I love talking to people about relationships, especially girls who are younger than me, showing them where I've gone wrong.' Astonishingly, Olivia had turned down an offer to appear on the second series of Love Island because of another cheater.
'I was going to go into the villa for series two but turned it down for a boy who ended up cheating on me,' she recalls. 'Then I turned down series three initially – until I found out Brad was seeing his ex-girlfriend. I thought: 'Oh my gosh, I can't actually believe this has happened to me again.
What am I actually doing?' Read More Olivia Attwood was worried contestants would WALK OUT of her new ITV dating show Bad Boyfriends Read More Olivia Attwood was worried contestants would WALK OUT of her new ITV dating show Bad Boyfriends 'Anyone who has been cheated on knows it's just the most horrible thing. Brad and I hadn't met each other's families at that point but we were dating. I was deeply shocked.
' Olivia was preparing to make an appearance as a grid girl at a Formula 1 Grand Prix race in 2017 when she got a call with no caller ID from a tearful woman who said she was Bradley's girlfriend. 'I'll remember that phone call for the rest of my life because it was so traumatic, chilling almost because you're having an out-of-body experience. When you hear that, your brain starts to try to put it all together, thinking, "How? Where? When?" Your mind just starts going into overdrive,' explains Olivia.
'The next day I was on the F1 track looking all gorgeous with everyone kind of drooling over me. But inside I wanted to cry because I just felt so ugly and kept asking: 'Why do I keep getting cheated on? I can't even get a guy to keep it in his pants.' 'It was a horrible feeling.
But it made me realise I couldn't miss out on the Love Island opportunity again. Luckily, they still wanted me.' On the show, Olivia met TV presenter Chris Hughes and they dated for six months before she and Bradley rekindled their romance in 2018, and they went on to get married last year.
'When I went on the show, I was looking to fully move on,' recalls Olivia. 'In my mind, there was no Brad after Love Island. I went in with a lot of rage.
I was angry with men and I was very reactive – like a cat on a hot tin roof. And it makes great telly. But it would take a lot more to make me angry now.
'I met Chris and we gave it a shot for longer than most, but we realised that we came from different worlds. When you leave the show, there's a nostalgia that only you two will ever be able to share. But essentially, in the real world, we were not two people who were meant to be together.
' With fellow Love Island contestant Chris Hughes on the show in 2017 But her reunion with Bradley wasn't all champagne and roses. 'It was rocky,' admits Olivia. 'I try to be honest, as people think post-Love Island he and I just got back together and there you go – a fairy tale.
But it wasn't. The first six months of dating were pretty shaky because we both had our guard up. I was navigating being out of Love Island; he was at a new football club.
We were getting to know each other again.' 'And trust is something you have to earn. People can change.
It depends how motivated you are. Talk is cheap but you have to show the commitment. We'd have building blocks, then we'd keep having little setbacks, and then eventually you get to a place where you have a foundation.
' Now it's on to Bad Boyfriends, in which eight unsuspecting blokes are flown to a Greek island believing that they'll be filming a reality show focusing on manliness and bromance in a hedonistic holiday mecca. When Olivia, who is joined as co-presenter by her celebrity pal Pete Wicks, announces the true purpose of the show – to make them better boyfriends – they're shocked; but when their long-suffering girlfriends arrive, they're embarrassed and shame-faced. Even so, Olivia has her work cut out attempting to reform the wayward bunch.
There's Viktor who's been with his partner Maria for six years but doesn't want to get married. Ruben's girlfriend Liily describes him as 'a lover boy..
.way too flirty'. Eli has 'a bad reputation with women', says his partner Anna ('Most girls I meet around my age have slept with him,' she adds).
And Ryan's girlfriend Sapphia says: 'I am his mother: I set his alarms for him, I check his calendar. He's very flirty. I feel like he likes people fancying him.
' With footballer husband Bradley Dack, who Olivia married last year Olivia says: 'I really connected with the women. I think they felt a safety and a trust with me, that there was no judgment. I'd tell them: 'Babe, I've literally been there.
I've lived this.' The girls work together on missions to try to expose their boyfriends' bad behaviour. First is a temptation test, in which the men on a night out are subjected to a series of honey traps by the girlfriends, who are incognito.
The results are devastating for the girls, and before they confront the boys, Olivia confesses: 'I've got more front than Asda, but even I'm a little bit nervous. Some may be feeling a bit regretful. The last thing they're going to want to see is their girlfriend standing in front of them.
And not only will they recognise their girlfriend, they're also going to recognise the other girlfriends who were working undercover, chatting them up.' As the show progresses over 11 episodes, expect tough love as those deemed incapable of improving are voted out. 'There's something everyone can relate to in this show.
For many of the couples we have, it's make or break. So it's about shining a light on their boyfriend's behaviour, as they don't realise how hurtful they are being. We say: 'Look at the person you love in tears.
This is the effect it has on her.' And it's big wake-up call. Then, if that boyfriend doesn't care, you have your answer,' says Olivia, matter-of-factly.
It was a slow process because a lot of the lads were so pre-wired to just say what they thought their girlfriend wanted to hear – to deny until you die,' says Olivia. 'But girls are smart and know when they're not getting the full picture, and that does create tension. I know when Brad's holding something back from me, but you have to wait until that person is going to share the truth with you.
' However, she insists: 'I'm not a therapist and I'm not pretending to be one in this show. But I've always played the therapist role in my friendship groups and in my family. 'I'm the oldest daughter so everyone calls me when there's a problem, and I'm the one who tries to patch things up.
So I know you can get through anything with someone you love and who loves you.' With a CV including TOWIE, Celebs Go Dating, documentary series Getting Filthy Rich, regular appearances on Loose Women and her own podcast, So Wrong It's Right, it's hard to believe Olivia was once a shy schoolgirl, growing up in London. 'My confidence came much later.
I was an anxious kid,' she says. 'I used to do things quite impulsively because of my ADHD, but I was a nervous wreck. After leaving school, I spent many years just trying to make my world as small as possible, to eliminate anything that would make me anxious.
'I dated a guy and lived with him, and I just made everything tiny. I was thinking: "I'm scared of lifts. I'm scared of raw chicken.
I'm sick. I'm scared of flying." I was turning down modelling jobs because I didn't want to travel.
Then overnight, I consciously thought: "That's enough. I'm flicking the switch. Every day I'm going to do something that makes me really uncomfortable because otherwise I'm gonna be stuck with this horrible boy in this flat for the rest of my life.
" That's when I started breaking down the doors.' And through those doors came the sassy and sincere TV presenter she is today. Olivia Attwood's Bad Boyfriends, Sunday, 9pm, ITV2 & ITVX.
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