Journalist, broadcaster and author of new memoir This is the F#$%ing News Paddy Gower has lifted the lid on the pain he still feels about being bullied for his looks.
Appearing on the first episode of Season 6 of Grey Areas with Petra Bagust, Paddy tells of how he was known as ‘Paddy Carrots’ at school thanks to large protruding front teeth before facing a fresh wave of abuse for his appearance once entered the public eye.
“You get teased a lot as a kid and then you find ways to get through that. And then you grow up and people are a lot more respectful and they don't tease you anymore because you become an adult,” he told Petra.
“I'd moved on in my life – and then of course when I popped up on television for the first time since being back in the schoolyard, because social media was just starting up and things like that, you could see what people were saying about you.
“I admit that my performance wasn't the best. I was new to TV; I'd come out of newspapers and that's going to be a surprise to people and that's fine – you can work on that. But of course all of these comments would come up like, ‘He's so ugly. What is he doing on TV?’”
Paddy, who was in his 30s when he started as a TV reporter, and hadn’t had people remark on his appearance in decades, was suddenly inundated with nasty comments about his looks.
“You're trying to do your job, you're a professional, and you think that you live in a world where this doesn't come into it anymore. And next minute, it's just popping out of the internet, and you can see it and hear it,” he told Grey Areas.
“There's all sorts of things that people can say... you actually know when someone says, ‘Oh, you've got a face for radio’, you're like, well, you're actually calling me ugly. That hurts, but you've got to kind of laugh along with it.
“You realise then how much you're carrying from your earlier life that has been put on some shelf somewhere way, way, way in the back there, but it hasn't gone away, you've just found somewhere to put it.
“And then of course, it's back and it's heavy, and now I'm dealing with it again.”
Elsewhere in the interview, Paddy gets vulnerable about the toxic cocktail of alcoholism and work addiction that brought about a mental breakdown – and would ultimately lead him to embrace authenticity and give up the booze for good.
