In 2008 Lisa Appleton shot to instant fame when she landed a spot on Big Brother.
The former bodybuilder and sales rep appeared on series nine of the reality show alongside boyfriend Mario Marconi, making history as the first couple to ever enter the house together.
While the pair failed to make the final, Lisa and Mario became household names, with the couple snapped up for glossy magazine shoots and personal appearances.
Yet fame didn’t last forever and Lisa soon fell on hard times, being swindled by a convicted conman, splitting from Mario, and ultimately ending up on benefits and living in a treehouse.
The mother-of-one then turned to comfort eating, revealing she developed an addiction to pork sausages which resulted in her scoffing up to 50 bangers a day.
Now Lisa, 56, tells MailOnline how she went from rags to riches and back again.
Big Brother’s Lisa Appleton reveals she went from earning £10k on photoshoots to becoming homeless (pictured on the Channel 4 reality show with ex Mario Marconi)
Fame didn’t last forever and Lisa soon fell on hard times, being swindled by a conman, splitting from Mario, and ultimately ending up on benefits and living in a treehouse (pictured)
During her lowest moments she struggled with comfort eating, unable to stop herself snacking on sausages. She soon found herself addicted to bangers and ate up to 50 a day
‘Fame really is life changing’, Lisa explained. ‘Nothing prepares you for the overnight celebrity status when you leave the house.
‘Before I was just leading a very normal life as a single parent, and doing jobs like selling sandwiches, being a doorwoman – on minimum wage.
‘Then next thing I knew had four agents after me, I was being chauffeured around with a towel over my head and running into hotels with my face hidden because I had exclusives lined up.’
After Lisa and Mario got engaged in the Big Brother house, she revealed they were approached by OK! magazine for an exclusive photoshoot, in which they parodied Peter Andre and Katie Price’s wedding.
They were paid £10,000 for the exclusive.
Yet despite the sudden influx of cash, Lisa revealed there was a downside to fame.
‘I couldn’t go to the shops without people coming up to me wanting pictures,’ she explained. ‘They were excited, which is lovely, but you just couldn’t get anything done. It was life changing.
‘We had people camping outside our house and then eggs thrown on our car so we had to move.’
Yet soon enough, the fickle cycle of fame left Lisa and Mario struggling for income.
‘The work started to dry up but it was very difficult trying to get back to normal,’ she explained.
‘Fame really is life changing’, Lisa explained. ‘Nothing prepares you for the overnight celebrity status when you leave the house’ (pictured with Mario at the Deviation film premiere in 2012)
In 2011, Lisa and Mario’s fate took another turn for the worse when they were duped by a conman as part of a bogus reality TV show he had dreamt up.
Serial fraudster and fantasist Selva Carmichael tricked the pair into filming ‘Lisa and Mario: Their Journey’, which saw them film for 18 hours a day for several months.
The couple were never paid a penny for their work.
Carmichael had previously been jailed for running a Spanish property scam based in Bristol.
He then set up a ruse for the benefit of Carmichael’s TV production company, the World Screen Group, which he used as a front to lure in celebrities and investors and take their money to fund his luxury lifestyle.
They paid him in the hope of sharing in his profits and appearing on his shows.
Lisa said at the time: ‘Filming 18 hours a day, two to three hours sleep and all this pressure. He was pressuring us all the time.’
Once the promised deal with a national television station failed to materialise, Lisa and Mario decided to leave Carmichael’s agency.
Lisa said: ‘He said “you’re has beens and you’ll never work in the media again”. He was really horrible.’
Ultimately, the stress of filming and learning they had been conned, resulted in their split.
Lisa said at the time: ‘Towards the end we just hated each other – Carmichael tore our lives apart and destroyed our relationship.
‘Mario and I were unhappy for a while – our whole world fell apart around us when we got conned.’
She was also lured back into the spotlight, with one of her paparazzi pals calling her up and asking if she fancied posing for a photoshoot on the beach
Reflecting on the stress of the experience, Lisa shared: ‘I was having a midlife crisis and in the menopause. I had only been married a year and then I suffered from depression, insomnia at night, I had anxiety and panic attacks.
‘The trolls were saying things like “get a job, go and work in Tesco or something” but people didn’t know I wasn’t well and there’s no way I could have gone out.’
Lisa began relying on government handouts and appeared on Channel 5’s Celebs on Benefits in 2015.
After coming off benefits she was employed in sales but 18 months later she was still struggling to make ends meet and ended up living in a £5-a-night treehouse on a farm.
During her lowest moments she struggled with comfort and binge eating, unable to stop herself snacking on sausages.
She soon found herself addicted to bangers and at the height of her struggles she would eat up to 50 a day after raiding the reduced to clear fridges at Tesco.
‘I’d buy loads of packs of eight or 10 a day,’ she shared. ‘I would make my sausage casserole. I would make sausage on toast. I would make bangers and mash.
‘I would cook them on the grill, and I would just munch. I became addicted to sausages. It was comfort thing.
‘Some people have cream cakes and chocolate bars but for me it was sausages.’
Lisa realised she wanted a more steady income and signed up to become an Amazon delivery driver – which can pay £13 – £17 an hour – but she quit after just one day
Yet Lisa was determined not to be kept down and used her love of fitness and holistic therapies to get her mental health back on track.
She was also lured back into the spotlight, with one of her paparazzi pals calling her up and asking if she fancied posing for a photoshoot.
‘I’d had a few wines and I just stripped off on Blackpool Beach and went rolling around in the sand – I just felt so liberated and free.
‘Then the next day it was in every single paper! Then I was hot property so I’d go to the beach and I was doing all that stuff and it was my therapy.
‘I needed fun in my life and I was enjoying myself. I thought, I don’t care what anyone thinks, I deserve this happiness.’
With her newfound fame, Lisa also started working on OnlyFans, selling nude photographs of herself to a slew of admirers.
Yet she soon realised she wanted a more steady income and signed up to become an Amazon delivery driver – which can pay £13 – £17 an hour.
She spent four days training with the company and was soon sent out on her own, but revealed she wasn’t prepared for how fast paced and high pressure the role would be.
‘It was a nightmare,’ she explained. ‘I wanted to boost my income and have some stability because the OnlyFans payments are up and down but you go out with about 190 to 220 parcels a day to deliver.
‘I had a headache, I didn’t eat all day. I went out about nine o’clock and by the time I got back I think it was 11 o’clock that night.
‘The managers were ringing me and asking why I was taking so long. I had technical issues, some parcels didn’t have numbers, some streets were so narrow I couldn’t turn the van round and had to reverse with everyone beeping at me.’
Ultimately, Lisa decided it wasn’t for her and quit after the first day.
Lisa went back to OnlyFans and is happier than ever with her X-rated business being her sole source of income
She went back to OnlyFans and is happier than ever with her X-rated business being her sole source of income.
‘If someone had said to me years ago I’d be doing OnlyFans work, I would have gone “no chance”, but there’s nothing wrong with it.
‘So many people are doing it now because the times we’re living in, the cost of living and stuff like that. You can’t afford to live on a normal wage, and you can make a lot of money on OnlyFans.
‘It’s controversial but at the end of the day, I’m not really bothered, because I I know I’m an amazing person and I’ve had so many hard times so I just do what I want to do and I am happy doing that.’
As well as her work on OnlyFans, Lisa also has a weekly slot on Ian Riches Radio Show on Apple Radio where she discusses all things related to Big Brother.