Danielle Lloyd – Keep Fit Look Fit

Danielle Lloyd was one of the Celebrity Big Brother contestants responsible for the show’s racism controversy several years ago. Danielle,  Jo O’Meara and Jade Goody (described by Charlie Brooker as “The World’s Thickest Coven” ) ganged up on beautiful, polite and successful Indian actress Shilpa Shetty sparking  44,500 complaints to Ofcom, withdrawal of sponsorship deals and an investigation by the police.

British television at its finest

It’s probably a bit unfair to still be banging on about it. Poor Danielle. You spend the first years of the your career doing good works like winning Miss Great Britain or dating footballers  or posing nude for Playboy and all anybody ever remembers is that time you said that the Indian lady should “fuck off home.” in front of 5 million people.

They're best of friends now, of course.

This workout DVD “Keep Fit, Look Fit” was released the same year so perhaps it was intended as recompense for her previous actions. Her gift to the nation to say “sorry”.

If so, it’s a terrible gift. She would have been better off producing the Danielle Lloyd “Not-A-Racist” Perfume instead. Although she probably did that as well.

Buy it for the non-racist in your life

The workout DVD is an uninspiring collection of dance workouts led by trainer Steve Rich. If I was feeling charitable I might assume that the makers of the DVD were aiming for it to be as natural as possible which is why they decided to keep in all the bits where Danielle flubs her lines, messes up the moves or looks generally awkward. They cleverly managed to prevent the thing looking over-rehearsed by not doing any rehearsals.

Several years after releasing the workout, Danielle moved into acting and appeared in Dominic Burns’ 2010 film “Cut” - the world's first single continuous-shot horror movie.  Danielle’s character sets up the movie by providing the pre-credits sequence. Sort of like Drew Barrymore in Scream.

I know Halloween’s over but huddle round anyway and enjoy this terrifying dialogue. Remember this is from an actual film that some poor sods paid money to see.  Danielle plays Annette, a babysitter, who phones the mum of the kid she’s looking after .

Try to imagine that the lines are being said by someone with the acting skills of a late night soft porn advert and someone who sounds like she’s on that supposedly “hidden camera” Kindle advert.

Mrs Burton: Is Sandy OK? 

Annette:  Well, she’s not hurt or anything... 

Mrs Burton: But?  

Annette:  She keeps on getting herself worked up about this clown. 

Mrs Burton: Clown? 

Annette: She keeps saying that it is talking to her. That it’s going to hurt her. 

Mrs Burton: What are you talking about, Annette? What clown? 

Annette: The life size clown at the end of her bed. 

Mrs Burton: Annette, listen to me very carefully. Get Sandy out of the house right now! Run to the neighbours and call the police! 

Annette: I don’t understand. What? 

Mrs Burton:  Sandy doesn’t have a toy clown!

Da da daaaa!

To be fair, although the acting improves slightly for the rest of the film, the storyline doesn’t. The rest of film takes place at a different time and could be summarised as follows: “There are some people. And then they hear some scary noises. And then scary clowns want to kill them dead.” Frankly, if you told that as a spooky story at Brownie camp eight year old girls would mock you for being lame. And rightly so.

I’m not sure whether Danielle really has a future in acting but having watched both “Keep Fit Look Fit” and “Cut” today, I know which one I preferred.  Only one of those DVDs features a Rufus Hound doppelganger with an axe embedded in his midriff. That’s one hell of a fitness workout.

Best Bit

Danielle is sporting a comprehensive selection of Danielle Lloyd 'Designed4Love' workout wear. At the time of the DVD’s release, this clothing was available for purchase by the likes of you and me. Sadly the Designed4Love website has now closed as has that avenue of potential dream fulfilment.

Happily you get to see what must amount to the entire collection here. There are short sleeved tops, long sleeved tops, hoodies, sweat pants and a lovely velour tracksuit. Everything you could ever dream of.

Feel the quality.

Weirdest Bit

Danielle has her own logo. Clearly she recognised that she was a brand and needed to be marketed as such. As well as featuring on her designer workwear it’s also displayed on the set which along with the shiny gold decorations radiates an air of a market stall selling fake designer handbags.

The logo is a sort of backwards D dash L thing that weirdly looks more like it says ‘CH’. It looks like it’s trying to copy someone else’s brand but I can’t work out whose. Chanel? Chantelle? Chessington World of Adventures? I have no idea.

Worst Bit

It’s hard to choose what with the shitty production values, the terrible extras and the plinky plonky fucking music, but I think, on balance, my least favourite parts are any bit where Danielle is required to speak. Particularly the bits where she does a bit of unconvincing banter with Steve.  Talking like a believable human being isn’t really her strong point.

"Where are you feeling it, Danielle?”

“In my ... muscles?”

Danielle tries to sound like she knows what she’s talking about.

Difficulty Level.

Oh, you know, it’s fine. Not especially hard. Not especially easy. It’s like a great big dollop of meh.

In her introduction, Danielle says that she likes her exercise to be fun and that the best kind of exercise is where you’re having so much fun, you don’t even realise you’re working out.

Yeah, that sounds good. You should have tried that here, Danielle.

Could I do this if I was a racist? Could I?

Would I do this workout again?

Well no. Because of it being shit and everything. Tell you what though, if they make Cut 2 : Cut Harder and Danielle scores another role then I’m right there. This time I think they should start with that story where the girl hears a tapping on the roof of the car and the policeman tells her not to turn around because  it turns out to be blood dripping from her boyfriend’s severed head. That one’s a classic.

Josie Gibson – 30-second slim

Let’s get one thing straight. This workout does not last 30 seconds. Good news if you are looking to get value for money from your Celebrity Workout DVD purchases. Bad news if you were looking for a workout you could do during an ad break in Come Dine With Me.

The justification for the name presumably comes from the fact that this workout uses interval training and consists of 30-second blocks of high impact training interspersed with periods of “Active Rest”.

(“Active Rest” by the way is a grossly misleading term. It’s up there with “Public School” or “Friendly Fire”.)

Pictured: Friendly Fire

It’s a fucking liberty. A workout where bits of it last for 30 seconds isn’t a “30-second Workout” any more than Lord of the Rings is a “3 page book” just because sections of it are three pages long.

Not that I’m laying any of the blame for this at Josie Gibson’s feet. She seems like a perfectly nice girl who’s just trying to keep her media career alive after her departure from the Big Brother house in 2010.

Now here's a workout DVD double act we'd like to see

“Big Brother’s Josie Gibson is more a little sister now!” says the DVD box. Because she’s gone from being big to being little, do you see? Much like she’s gone from being a boy to being a girl. No wait, she hasn’t done that. I’m not really sure that comparison was really thought through.

Josie took part in Series 11 of Big Brother which was the last series of Big Brother to be broadcast on Channel 4. I had completely lost interest in Big Brother by this time and it seems I wasn’t the only one as Channel 4 were so desperately trying to ‘freshen up’ the format that it became a bit of an embarrassment.  For example, they had one of the housemates dress up in a mole suit live in a Mole Hole. They also instigated a Tree of Temptation which prompted contestants to do such hideously antisocial things like throw housemates' vegetables, fruit and bread into the pool and destroy someone's cigarettes. It’s like they actually wanted the housemates to kill one another.

It was - apparently - an actual tree

The format seems a confusing mess by this point – 81 hopefuls turn up on day 1 with one of the contestants being chosen by random draw and a bunch of new contestants being flown in by spaceship of day 31? What gibbering madness is this?

Still gibbering madness or not (and it was. Clearly.), Jodie must have been doing something right as she not only won the competition but did so with the highest percentage of the public vote ever. 

This DVD was released in January of this year which makes it a startlingly up-to-date review for CLCW. We’d better watch ourselves. We’re in danger of becoming cutting edge, here.

There are three workouts covering three different difficulty levels as well as a “Josie’s Story” extra which purports to give us a behind the scenes look at Josie’s incredible weight loss. Mostly it includes footage of Josie exercising at the beginning of her fitness regime when she was still plus-size. She has been squeezed into a pair of exercise shorts three sizes to small which causes her belly to overhang the waistband uncomfortably. Presumably to provide a contrast with the way she looks now.  And to provide an incentive to the rest of us.

It doesn’t have to be like this Josie. They make shorts in all different sizes.

The voiceover tell us it was “cruel” pictures taken of Josie on holiday that made her want to lose weight. Well, if they were so very cruel, voiceover lady, why are you showing them, huh?

And why am I showing them now? It’s like we’re ALL monsters.

She certainly looks like a new woman by the end of it. And she deserves to if she’s doing these exercises on a regular basis. They are unbelievably hard work. This may actually be the toughest (as opposed to just incomprehensibly convoluted) workout we've had here. You don’t expect it when you've got a celeb who was formerly actually overweight rather than merely photographed by the paparazzi at an unflattering angle. 30 second workouts can be pretty exhausting when you stick a load of them one after the other.

Suffer as I do!

Difficulty Level

As I mentioned, this is really hard work. Trainer James Stark isn't content just to make us do press ups. It’s more like: do a press up then touch your toes and a do a star jump and a squat thrust all within 2 seconds. And Repeat! Lots!

We've barely even started, people!

Would I do this Workout Again?

You know I am going to have to. Basically, you’re expected to master Level 1 before you move on to Level 2 then get the hang of that one before moving up to Level 3. I feel like a bit of a fraud even playing the later sections. Like I wasn’t really authorised to do so.  I will be back and  I will earn those Level 1 stripes godammit.  

Best Bit

Josie’s accent is just delightful. I honestly didn’t know that Bristolians spoke like that. I am clearly not spending enough time there. Who doesn’t want to spend time with someone who looks like Barbie and sounds like the Wurzels?

I got a brand new combine harvester and I’ll give you the key

Worst Bit

The workout appears to have been recorded in a school gym. There are wall bars and a old-fashioned vaulting horse. It took me right back to PE lessons at school. I’ve just about stopped screaming now.

The horror.

Anne Diamond – A New You

Most Celebrity Fitness DVDs consist of a bunch of exercises with maybe a DVD extra at the end with a bit of healthy eating advice.

Anne Diamond’s A New You instead starts off with the food  and then tacks on a  few exercises afterwards. This was released by the Queen of TV-AM in 2003 following her appearance in Celebrity Big Brotherthe previous year when apparently her weight made headline news. Because tabloid editors are bastards.

Before the cardio or resistance workouts are even mentioned, we have half an hour of chatting about food. Anne’s personal fitness guru, Jason Vale, tells us what we can and can’t eat.

At the beginning of the DVD there is a weasel-worded disclaimer stating that although Vale may have specifically told you to avoid fizzy drinks while holding up a coke bottle with a sticker saying “Cola” over the label, this is in no way to be taken as us saying that there’s anything wrong with coke. Or any of the other products shown. And please don’t sue us.

From left to right, this is not diet coke, sunny delight or Tate & Lyle. As long as that's understood.

I appreciate that I’m in no position to criticise anybody else’s eating regime. My food pyramid is more of a food cube. I have no problem eating my recommended five portions of fruit and vegetables each day but I do compliment it with a passionate love of carbs and an evangelical enthusiasm for melting cheese over everything. I would melt cheese onto melted cheese if I thought the structural integrity would hold up. My idea of an interesting evening’s entertainment is to taste test Tesco’s and Sainsbury’s pretend snickers bars against genuine ones.

Hold my calls. This could take a while.

 



Never-the-less, I am a bit sceptical of some of Jason’s claims. White bread, he says, will only be eaten by cockroaches in emergency circumstances. “Call me picky,” he chuckles, “if it’s not good enough for cockroaches, it’s not good enough for me.”

Seriously, Jason, is that a valid scientific yardstick? What do cockroaches eat the rest of the time? And what constitutes an ‘emergency situation’ for a cockroach anyway? They always look like they’re losing their shit.

Don't panic!

He encourages to eat food in it’s a raw form as much as possible. “If you look at any animal in the wild, that’s all they eat,” he tells us. “They never cook anything.”

How the hell am I supposed to base my diet all animals ever? Cats manufacture their own vitamin C.  Rabbits eat their own shit. The Lisotrigona cacciae moth drinks human tears. I have no idea which of these to work into my current eating plan.

Party Time!

He also tells us that mice who drink diet cola become fat, that red meat will putrefy in your body and that that cow’s milk is basically glue which sticks to your bloodstream.

Everything Jason tells us seems to get contradicted immediately. Cheese is off the menu because it’s unnatural to have dairy once we’ve past breastfeeding age. Organic cheese, though, is OK. Roasted nuts should be avoided because the roasting process changes the molecular structure however roasting sweet potatoes is just fine.

All processed food is basically the devil’s work - we should aim to eat food in its natural state “as Mother Nature intended”. He then recommends that we eat live yogurt for its Acidophilus but says that the best way to get it is by taking it in tablet form. Nutritional supplements springing from the ground as they do.

After having my mind blown by Jason’s food regime (and everything I have told you is just the tip of the iceberg), we moved on to the rest of the DVD which consists of 3 workouts, some of Anne’s top tips and a Anne’s fashion advice (think Gok Wan but with less boob fondling and more relentless erosion of self-confidence. )

There are three sections – Cardio Blast, Resistance Training and Abdominal Blast – and each is only 10 minutes long.  I am lazy by nature and yet even I found myself thinking “Is that all?” about the amount of actual exercise included on this DVD. The manufacturers seemed to realise it was a bit lacking and have added a bonus workout as an extra. I am not sure why this doesn’t get included the main workout. There isn’t really any warm-up or cool-down and the workouts are a bit like Interval Training without the Interval. Or they’re all interval. I’m not entirely sure. You know how interval is, like, fast bit, not-fast bit, fast bit? This was just the fast bits. Interspersed with Anne twatting on about eating in restaurants or something.

Best Bit

During the food section, Jason dismisses the idea that organic is necessarily healthier by pointing out that you can get organic tobacco.

“You can get organic cocaine!” pipes up Anne knowledgeably. Clearly, she’s a woman who likes to ensure that her Class As are ethically sourced.

And always check for the Fair Trade sticker.

Worst Bit

Jason may hate fat people. I don’t know if this should act as hindrance to his working as a personal trainer to fat people. The Biggest Loser TV show was predicated on the idea that fat people are disgusting and ought to be humiliated into shifting some of their useless blubber.

It’s a bit weird. During the workouts, Jason shouts out things like “Remember why you’re here!” and “Don’t just stare at the telly! Work while you’re doing it!” as though he imagines that us viewers are just sitting on our roly-poly arses gaping at the screen and stuffing crisps into our mouths four at a time.

After the workouts, there is a section called “Staying Motivated” which uses visualisation techniques to try and keep us on the right path to Our New Us. Jason asks us to visualise ourselves at our current size in a swimsuit. He is really keen that we concentrate on every bulge and every fold of fat. Apparently I already disgust Jason. He is keen that I learn to disgust myself too.

Difficulty

I didn’t work up much of a sweat doing this. I seem to have worked up quite a bit of rage though. I’m not sure what that’s about.

Would I do this workout again?

No. Anne didn’t.

I don’t normally mention any post-workout weight gain for celebrities I review here. Well, I did for Michelle McManus and then I felt bad afterwards. It’s not my place to judge anybody on whether they are fat, thin or somewhere in between.

As the sainted Marky Mark Wahlberg said “Everybody’s beautiful, man”

However, I am making an exception for Anne because it turns out she is a serial releaser of fitness videos which just don’t work.

Anne Diamond released her first exercise video, 100% Healthy in 1997. She released her second - The Diamond Plan - in 2000. In the intervening years she had gained enough weight to stick a ‘before’ fat picture on the video box and exclaim in large letters that she had lost 4 stone.  By 2002 and her appearance on Celebrity Big Brother, she had gained it back and more. She lost 4 stone again for the release of A New You in 2003 and then piled the weight back on by the time she appeared in Celebrity Fit Club in 2006.

 

Perhaps some sort of EU standard could be put in place whereby celebrities aren’t allowed to say “If I can do it then so can you!” until they’ve managed to maintain their new size for a year. Keeping the weight off just until your fitness DVD hits the shops isn’t the same thing at all.

She hasn’t felt the need to release a workout DVD in a while. Her solution to her weight issues? Having a gastric band fitted. Because it turns out that sometimes there’s more to finding the New You than some Resistance Training, a spinach smoothie and a thin bloke telling you that you look shit in a bikini.

Davina McCall – The Power of 3

And so Miss McCall, we meet at last.

I’ve been aware for some time that Davina McCall is widely regarded in the world of Celebrity Fitness Workout DVDs. The Daily Mail refers to her as the DVD Workout Queen and her workouts are considered to be both well put together and difficult to do.

This is, of course, why I have been putting it off. I like my workouts easy and stupid.

But we both knew, me and Davina, that this day had to come. She may not know she knew it but deep down she did. CLCW has been playing hard to get long enough and the time had come to say “Enough, Davina! I’m all yours! Show me what you’ve got!”

Bring it on

 

Not that I’m tackling the whole of McCall’s fitness library. I’m not a lunatic. The woman appears to have released a workout DVD every year since 2004.

This is the very first of those. The ‘Power of 3’ of the title refers to the 3 routines on the DVD, which you need to do 3 times a week. Presumably it also refers to Davina and her two personal trainers – Jackie and Mark Wren. After they’ve finished working out together they probably go off and fight crime, shouting “By the Power of 3!” before they do their special hand signal, put on their masks and capture the bad guys.

The Dynamic Trio

 

The three sections are Legs & Bums, Upper Body and Abdominals as well as a Warm Up and Cool Down. The husband and wife instructor team split the sessions between them so there’s no awkward bickering while they’re giving instructions. Jackie and Mark Wren seem like a nice couple. Although at one point when Davina makes a comment about her arse being too big, Mark says “It looks good from here”. Dude, your wife is just there!

Davina acknowledges that not everyone is lucky enough to be able to afford not one but two personal trainers. “So,” she tells us. “I thought I’d share Jackie and Mark with you!”

Well that’s just great. Not content with boasting about your enormous wealth, you’re now gloating about the fact that you’ve just made more money out of us by allowing us access to your privileged lifestyle. Why not just include a shot of you rolling around in piles of money, lathering your hair up with Garnier Nutrisse and laughing maniacally while you’re at it?

Go on, mock us with your chestnut locks

That said, Davina is quite entertaining. She’s clearly enjoying herself and not just because she’s showing off.  There are plenty of extras showing her mugging to the camera, getting the giggles and hanging out with the rest of the crew trying to learn how to wolf-whistle. If someone held a gun to my head and forced me to choose a celebrity to have as a gym buddy, I’d be pretty freaked out. I mean, who does that? That’s some messed up shit.

You could do worse than McCall though. She seems like fun.

Difficulty Level
The workouts are hard work. There’s a lot of squatting and thrusting and stretching and stuff. Every so often Jackie will suggest an easier version of a move, “If this is getting to much, just do the kicks” she’ll say and join you in it for 45 seconds before hectoring you to do the full kick-jump-squat-waving your arms about thing again. I felt I had to do the whole thing properly or be judged.
Davina even admits that she wants us to suffer. When Jackie suggests that we just do the knee lifts as an easier alternative, she says “That’s OK isn’t it?” to Davina. “Sort of, “grumbles Davina. “I’d rather everyone was doing it with me.”

Suffer as I do!



Best Bit
The Boxercising. Davina shares my enthusiasm for pretending to punch people.  “It makes me feel butch” she says before growling a bit and saying “Dangerous, yeah! That’s me yeah! I’m a lean, mean killing machine!” A little bit of murderous rage always helps when you’re working out, I think.

Maybe too much murderous rage.

 

Worst Bit.
There are two DVD extras – ‘Davina on Clothes’ and ‘Davina on Food’. In the first one, Davina introduces us to her personal dresser, Neil and then invites us to admire how great she looks while she tries on some dresses. Seriously, that’s all there is to it. There are no handy Trinny-and-Susannah-type tips for the rest of us. We are just here to gawk at the dress she wore to Elton John’s party and admire how shapely her calves are now.

Are you sure this isn't too revealing, Neil?

 

‘Davina on Food’ consists of Davina walking around a supermarket waffling on about food. There’s no diet plan. There’s no plan of any kind. It’s just an unedited stream of consciousness as she wanders around the food aisles. Thanks for that.

I have no idea what extras are included in any of her other workouts. Maybe there will be the opportunity to see her strolling around BHS talking about cushions or a film of her in her local launderette telling us about her favourite spin cycles.

Would I do this Workout Again?
Perhaps. Perhaps not. There are at least eight other Davina workout DVDs to get through, including ‘Body Buff’, ‘Intense’ and ‘Ultimate Target’ so one thing’s for sure, this isn’t over yet, McCall. You’ve not seen the last of me.

Chantelle Houghton – Chantelle’s Boot Camp Workout

Chantelle Houghton appeared on Celebrity Big Brother in 2006 pretending to be a celebrity when she actually wasn’t. She managed to fool the other celebrities who presumably (a) hadn’t heard of many the other ‘celebs’ either and (b) didn’t give much of a fuck in any case.

Following a task where they had to rank each other in terms of famousness – Chantelle romped in 9th out-famousing both Preston and Maggot.

Maggot can still presumably get on a bus without fear of being mobbed. And poor Preston is now best known for his brief marriage to Chantelle. It’s true what they say about fame. She’s a fickle wossname and no mistake.

Chantelle went on to win Celebrity Big Brother despite not actually being one. This allowed her to embark on exciting new projects like glamour modelling and supporting the animal charity PETA.

As a vegetarian, I feel I should approve of this advert but I just can't bring myself to do so.

 

This, however, I heartily endorse. Animals should be removed from circuses. And replaced with washed-up Reality TV stars.

In 2010, now a legitimate celebrity – because that’s how these things work apparently – Chantelle entered the Big Brother house again for Ultimate Big Brother.

Riding high on the crest of public recognition once again, she released this workout video.
The DVD front cover shows how Chantelle shed the flab via the age old method of holding her belly in and cracking a smile.

Not to mention changing into a pink push-up bra and matching knickers and dying her hair blonde. Weirdly none of these techniques are demonstrated on the DVD although there was a voucher for La Senza which expired in June 2011. If only I hadn’t been nineteen months too late, I could have done the workout in a La Senza bra and immersed myself in the full Chantelle experience.

The full Chantelle Experience

Chantelle is aided in her workout by Ben Poole from the No.1 Boot Camp. (That’s their name by the way, I haven’t carried out an independent study of Boot Camps and ranked them accordingly.) No.1 Boot Camp carry out residential fitness courses which Chantelle completed before releasing the DVD. She describes the Workout as “Boot Camp, but without the mud!”

Boot Camp with the mud.

In her introduction Chantelle says “Honestly, I’m just a normal girl who has to exercise and eat healthily to stay in shape.” Which is reassuring for anyone who thought she might be a cyborg.

She tells that the motivation for deciding to get into shape was that someone asked her if she was pregnant “when obviously I wasn’t”. Since she really doesn’t look as though she’s carrying any extra weight, I think it may have been something other than her belly size that triggered the question . Maybe she was eating gherkins and ice cream at 3 o’clock in the morning while flicking through a Baby Bjorn catalogue.

Chantelle with her daughter and a genuine celebrity.

She wasn't pregnant with this baby at the time of the workout. That all happened later.

 Trainer Ben’s hardly a one-man charisma party but he gets the job done. This workout is relentlessly dull and repetitive which may well be the definition of a boot camp workout. The warm-up is literally ten minutes of jogging on the spot.

Chantelle’s input is minimal and in a slight variation on the norm, our celebrity is the go-to person for the easier workout version while Ben demonstrates the harder versions. At the beginning of the Upper Body workout Chantelle tells us that is will get rid of our bingo wings. She then says it again at the end. She has clearly been instructed not to speak at all apart from her carefully scripted sentence at either end of the workout.

 Would I do this workout again?
The workouts are dull. The trainer is dull. Chantelle is dull. I honestly think I may be the only person in the world who has watched this DVD from beginning to end. I bet even Chantelle’s mum hasn’t bothered. I can’t think of a single reason to subject myself to it again.

Worst Bit
We’re back to plinky-plonky music which in this case reminded me of playing the PS One game “Mary Kate and Ashley’s Magical Mystery Mall”.

Pixellated Olsen Twins showing more natural screen presence than Chantelle

Best Bit.
There wasn’t one. Even buying the DVD was an exercise in disappointment. I shelled out £3 in HMV for this workout. Three whole pounds! You can almost buy a cup of coffee for that. I then discovered that Poundland practically had a whole shelf of the damn things,

Supporting both HMV and Chantelle’s media career at one stroke could be considered an act of benevolence, of course, but I’m not sure either one is worth saving.

Nadia – Latino Dance Workout

Wikipedia informs us that Nadia Almada was the first transsexual winner of Big Brother. I’m not sure how many transsexuals have won the show since 2004 (I stopped watching after Series 4) but it’s nice to know that Nadia got there first.

Originally born in Madeira, Nadia lived in my home town when she first came to England. I remember a lot of excitable coverage in the local paper during her time in the Big Brother house. (“Woman who used to live here may win Reality TV show” constitutes big news in Woking.)

She now lives in Brussels and works for a banking firm. Having watched this DVD and her pop video, I think she made the right decision to step away from the entertainment business.


Nadia fails to take the pop business by storm

The safety instructions at the beginning of the DVD tell us that it is advisable that you wear flat and appropriate footwear when doing this workout. Nadia throws caution to the wind and does the whole things in 4 inch heels. More worryingly, she’s not wearing a bra. This seems to be especially foolhardy on her part as she must have gone to some effort to get those breasts. It’s not like they just turned up uninvited like mine did.

Or, you know, don't bother.

Nadia doesn’t speak at all throughout any of the workouts. It’s led by choreographer and dancer Steven Grace who swivels around like 1970s pop sensation shouting “And hip. And hip. And hip. And hip.” and other encouraging things.



The only time Nadia speaks is in the introduction and even then I only understood one in every three words she said. At one point she seems to say: “Exercise is always fun that’s why I’ve struggled to keep off the weight” so I don’t think I got that right.


Nadia speaks. The Boys look enthusiastic.

The workout consists of a Rhythm and Spank Warm Up, a Low Impact Latin Section, a Salsa Shakedown and a Rumba Cool Down. Please be aware that the Rhythm and Spank section contains no actual spanking.

The whole thing is set in a bar which makes a change from faux-celebrity houses. Disappointingly, the bar tables and chairs are empty. I think the DVD would have been improved by having a bunch of random people sitting in the background sipping mojitos.

Best Bit
Nadia’s outfits. I don’t suppose any other workouts I review here are going to include the celebrity in question wearing the miniest of mini-dresses and killer heels. She has a different look for each of the sections. The warm-ups see her with sleeked back hair and green dress festooned with gift-wrapping ribbon. For the main workouts she’s wearing red and her hair’s sporting more of an up-do. My favourite outfit is the cool down one. She looks like a Bratz doll.



Worst Bit
The whole thing’s pretty terrible really. It looks like it’s been made for about a fiver and Nadia is obviously putting in the least amount of effort she can get away with and still expect to be paid at the end of the day. I think she might have a hangover. The DVD contains a “Behind the Scenes” segment which is ideal for anyone wanting to see a production crew all wearing expressions that clearly say “Ah well. It’s work”.

Weirdest Bit
The two male dancers get no recognition whatsoever. The IMDB page for Nadia’s DVD only credits Nadia in the cast list. I can see why Steven Grace would have wanted to remove all traces of this DVD from his CV. His IMDB entry shows not only the “Strictly Ballroom” and “Moulin Rouge” credits mentioned on Nadia’s DVD box, but also an ongoing involvement with the US show, “Dancing with the Stars.”
The credits tell us that the dancers are called Gunther and CJ. They have significantly more right to be on a dance DVD than Nadia does but that’s all we’ll ever know about them.

They’re dressed identically except that CJ wears a leather cuff on his right wrist and Gunther wears one on his left. Does this signify anything? I feel that it should signify something.

Difficulty Level
I couldn’t do this at all. You know the film “The Tall Guy” where Dexter King goes to the audition for “Elephant!” and fails to dance in time with the other actors? That was me trying to do this. I was vaguely moving my legs around but not necessarily at the right time or in the right directions. I have no natural sense of rhythm of course. I hate even being at an event where you have to clap along as it takes all my concentration to keep time with everyone else.



Would I do this workout again?
No. I didn’t even do it the first time. After bemusedly failing to follow Steve’s instructions for fifteen minutes or so, I gave up and made a cup of tea. Later, I did Michelle and Dax’s workout again. Life seemed so much simpler then.