Living it Arg Read online

  For Tash, for all the lifts and all the wrestling moves I practised on you

  First published in Great Britain by Simon & Schuster UK Ltd, 2014

  A CBS COMPANY

  Copyright © 2014 by James Argent

  This book is copyright under the Berne Convention.

  No reproduction without permission.

  All rights reserved.

  The right of James Argent to be identified as the author of this work has been asserted by him in accordance with sections 77 and 78 of the Copyright, Designs and Patents Act, 1988.

  Simon & Schuster UK Ltd

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  222 Gray’s Inn Road

  London WC1X 8HB

  www.simonandschuster.co.uk

  Simon & Schuster Australia,

  Sydney

  Simon & Schuster India,

  New Delhi

  A CIP catalogue record for this book is available from the British Library

  Hardback ISBN: 978-1-47113-440-1

  eBook ISBN: 978-1-47113-442-5

  The author and publishers have made all reasonable efforts to contact copyright-holders for permission, and apologise for any omissions or errors in the form of credits given. Corrections may be made to future printings.

  Typeset in the UK by M Rules

  Printed in the UK by CPI Group (UK) Ltd, Croydon, CR0 4YY

  CONTENTS

  Introduction

  1 Growing up in Essex: Friends, Family . . . and Michael Jackson!

  2 Beating the Bullies and Treading the Boards

  3 My Late Teens: Welcome to the Essex Party Scene

  4 Mark Wright, a Holiday in Marbella and an Exploding TV

  5 A Haircut from Hell and a Crazy Girl with Perfume in Her Mouth

  6 Losing My Virginity and a Bad Experience with a Burglar Alarm

  7 The Singing Bug and an Italian Nightmare

  8 A Stolen Kiss and Heartbreak in Marbella

  9 Joining TOWIE: Life on the Roller Coaster

  10 Fame, Fortune and a Guilty Secret

  11 A Boy Called Joey and a Fracas at a Pool Party

  12 A BAFTA for TOWIE and a Family Shock

  13 Farewell to the King of TOWIE

  14 A Christmas Cookalong and a Broken Heart

  15 My Yo-Yo Dieting and Surviving the London Marathon

  16 Back to Marbs and Passion with Gemma

  17 Hanging Out with One Direction and a Gig at the Royal Albert Hall

  18 Surprise Surprise and Working in a Celebrity Spa

  Epilogue: And Finally . . .

  Acknowledgements

  List of Illustrations

  INTRODUCTION

  It’s not every day that you get to ride in the back of a chauffeur-driven Rolls-Royce. I could feel the butterflies in my stomach as I straightened my tie and settled into the deep leather seats. I was about to attend the biggest celebrity bash in the television calendar – and I was a bag of nerves.

  Just a few months earlier I could never have dreamed that I’d be whisked to the red carpet in such a posh set of wheels. If the truth were known, I was still more used to going everywhere by pushbike.

  The previous summer I’d been down on my luck after a disastrous stint working in Spain. When I’d arrived back in the UK, I had no job, no girlfriend and very little cash. I was just an everyday geezer from Essex struggling to make my way in life. Then everything changed after a single phone call.

  ‘Hello, James. I’m calling you from a company called Lime Pictures and we’d like you to come in for a chat about a new television show called The Only Way Is Essex,’ the producer told me.

  That was when it all began.

  Joining TOWIE was the start of a roller-coaster ride that would take me overnight from being somebody who couldn’t hold down a job in Waitrose to starring with my best mate Mark Wright in Britain’s best-loved reality show. My life was transformed, but it happened so quickly that I almost didn’t have time to catch my breath.

  As I sat in the back of that Roller I had good reason to pinch myself. I’d just been reunited with the love of my life, Lydia Bright, who was sitting by my side looking stunning in a strapless ball gown. I was wearing my best suit and we were on the guest list to attend the BAFTAs at the Grosvenor House Hotel, where we were due to join the likes of Trevor McDonald and David Attenborough (not to mention the casts of all the top shows such as Downton Abbey, EastEnders and Coronation Street).

  TOWIE had stunned everybody by being nominated against all the odds for a BAFTA. I’d been biting my nails in the hope that we’d win, although I didn’t rate our chances. As far as most people in the telly world were concerned, we were just a bunch of newcomers with fake tans and a few lines of slick banter. But, as the Roller approached the Grosvenor, something was about to happen that made me realise just how much my life had changed.

  ‘Can you hear a noise in the distance?’ I asked Lydia.

  ‘It’s sounds like people screaming and cheering,’ she replied.

  As we stepped out of the car I assumed we must have arrived at the same time as some A-list celeb, because suddenly all the camera flashguns went off at the same time and the light nearly blinded us. The paparazzi were firing off shots like mad at whoever was close by. As we walked up the red carpet I looked over my shoulder to see the cause of all the fuss. And then I realised . . . it was Lydia and me that the press were going crazy for.

  ‘Arg! Arg! Over here,’ shouted the reporters.

  There were journalists everywhere and they were ignoring all the other guests, but they were desperate to speak to anyone from TOWIE.

  That was the moment when I really knew we’d arrived. It was reem, as Joey Essex would say. Later that evening, we stuck it up the rest of the TV industry by winning our BAFTA and we celebrated long into the night.

  This is the story of how I went from being an ordinary bloke to someone who’s famous for being on the telly. I’m lucky enough now to earn a great income doing a job that I love more than anything in the world. It would be great to know what you think of my story, so please feel free to tweet me @realjamesargent so I can find out.

  I hope you enjoy it.

  1

  GROWING UP IN ESSEX: FRIENDS, FAMILY . . . AND MICHAEL JACKSON!

  If you’ve ever seen me fooling around on The Only Way Is Essex you can probably guess that I had a happy childhood, although, like everybody else, I had my ups and downs. I’ve always been the sort of bloke who is game for a laugh and I reckon that’s because I grew up surrounded by such a loving family. I was also lucky to have a good bunch of mates, most of whom I’m still in touch with today.

  Essex during the nineties was an exciting place to grow up. I reckon that Essex is completely different from anywhere else because of the way we dress and act. We love nothing more than gelling up our hair and slipping into a pair of Gucci loafers. A lot of the people in Essex are very glamorous – they’ve got big houses and they drive expensive cars – but they’re not posh. It’s the sort of place that you could say has middle-class money but has a working-class mentality, and I mean that as a compliment.

  We like to spend our cash on our homes and our holidays, and, if there’s a bit left over, on a nice wristwatch, too. It’s not a violent place but there are a lot of tough characters. You get the odd fight outside pubs or nightclubs, but generally it’s a very safe place to be. It’s very rare that people get mugged or attacked.

  The majority of the Essex crowd are from families who come from the East End of London and they moved out to enjoy a more comfortable lifestyle. We call the area I am from the Golden Triangle because it’s a little bubble in west Essex that consists of Chigwell, Woodford and Loughton. Out here we have the best of both worlds. We’re close to Epping Forest but we’re only hal
f an hour from the City of London and the West End. It’s a very family-oriented place and the people here value their friendships. The bars and clubs are always packed with punters who are having a good time and there’s a lot of effort spent on looking good and dressing well.

  Even as a little kid, I can remember bugging my mum and dad to buy me the latest clothes. I was into sports gear by Nike, but what I really wanted when I was about ten was a shirt by Ben Sherman. I’d seen it while I was out with my two best mates from primary school, Richard and David. My mum was cooking in the kitchen one day when I approached her about it.

  ‘Mum, if I’m good can I have some money for a new shirt, please?’ I asked.

  ‘You’ve got lots of shirts, James. Why do you need another one?’

  ‘Go on, Mum, I want to buy a Ben Sherman,’ I pleaded. ‘Richard and David are going to get one, too. We’re all going to wear different colours so we can look cool when we go out together.’

  Mum liked to treat me occasionally and she agreed I could have the shirt if I promised to tidy up after myself around the house and keep my room clean. It was on my last day at primary school that I went with Richard and David to buy our prized shirts.

  We went up the high street, where I chose a lemon-coloured one. We felt like the most grown-up geezers in Essex, even though we were still just boys. We wore our new tops with pride all through the summer holidays.

  My mum, Patricia, and my dad, Martin, met at a nightclub called the Epping Forest Country Club, which I guess you could say back in 1984 was the Sugar Hut of its day. People would travel from miles around to go there and it was the No. 1 hotspot in Essex. It on was my mum’s twenty-third birthday and she was out celebrating with friends when my dad spotted her and asked her to dance. Mum had arranged for her parents to lay on a few nibbles of food at home that night in case any of her friends wanted to come back after the club, and Dad ended up being the only person who accepted her invitation.

  Dad was from just down the road in Wanstead in east London and my mum lived in Woodford Green, although her family are originally from Ireland. Mum was employed as a receptionist for a big advertising agency, and her mum, Colette, was a nurse. My mum’s father, Seamus, was a supervisor with London Transport and he had a big personality (I’ll tell you a lot more about my grandparents later).

  My dad is from a banking background. He was twenty-eight when he met my mum and was working in the Foreign Exchange section of Barclays. His father, Tom, was a finance manager in the City and his mum, Diane, also worked in the banking industry, as a shorthand typist.

  Aside from banking, Dad’s big passion in life was as a DJ. He would travel all over London to host discos at weddings and engagement parties, and he has an amazing collection of records. His disco was called Staccato Disco, which I always thought was a weird name. Dad also played rhythm guitar in a band called Tokyo Rose.

  It didn’t take long for Dad’s music to rub off on me music to rub off on me. I’ve enjoyed listening to music for as long as I can remember, so I suppose it was natural that I would want to take up singing when I was older. Growing up, I used to follow all the usual kids’ stuff in the charts, although Dad reckoned that most of what I liked was rubbish.

  ‘You need to come and hear some proper music,’ he told me one day.

  ‘What do you mean?’ I asked.

  ‘I mean stuff by real bands who write their own songs. When you’re older I’ll take you to see the Rolling Stones,’ he promised me.

  ‘But I don’t want to see the Rolling Stones. I don’t like them,’ I protested.

  ‘Trust me – you’ll love them,’ he said. ‘There are so many great bands out there. You just need to open your ears to them.’

  It was thanks to Dad’s influence that I started to appreciate lots of different types of music. Michael Jackson was my favourite, and it wasn’t long before I was dreaming of being able to dance like him.

  My dad’s collection of records and CDs filled a whole room and everything was filed in alphabetical order. He still has it to this day and, it’s like a huge maze. I would sneak in as a child and borrow Michael Jackson CDs.

  Dad kept his promise to take me to see the Rolling Stones, and I also saw U2 at Wembley Stadium. Dad would somehow manage to wangle tickets in the VIP area close to the front and I would be fascinated by the fantastic stage shows and lighting effects. I also saw Michael Jackson at Wembley on his History tour, which completely blew me away.

  As well as taking me to concerts, my dad would bring me along to record fairs, which were like giant boot sales devoted entirely to music. I now have a very detailed knowledge of music, whether it’s classical, swing, hip-hop, garage, pop or indie. People might sometimes think I muddle my way through certain things when they see me on TOWIE, but music is one subject that I know well – and it’s thanks to my dad.

  The first meeting between my parents at Epping Forest Country Club was the start of a whirlwind romance for them. They got engaged after just six months and they were married the following year, 1985. My dad proposed during a weekend in Paris. He slipped an emerald ring onto my mum’s finger at a small bistro in the shadow of the Moulin Rouge. The stone had a special significance for Mum, what with her family being from Ireland.

  I was born on 5 December 1987 at Whipps Cross Hospital in Leytonstone, which is the hospital that David Beckham was born in. According to Mum, even then I had music in my veins, because, a few weeks before I was born, Dad had dragged Mum along to a David Bowie concert and she could feel me kicking inside her in time to the music! I arrived a week early because Mum had high blood pressure and I had to be induced. I was delivered at 2 a.m. and I weighed 7 pounds 9 ounces, so I wasn’t a particularly big baby (it was only in later life that I started to pile on the weight).

  My mum had a nasty health scare three weeks after I was born when she suffered a haemorrhage and had to be rushed back to hospital. She lost an enormous amount of blood and the doctors said it had been because part of the placenta was still lodged inside her tummy. Luckily, it didn’t cause any long-term complications, because my little sister, Natasha, arrived twenty-one months after I was born. My earliest memory of her is of a cute little toddler whom I would play games with in the living room.

  Natasha and I were like a typical brother and sister growing up. We’d occasionally have fights but we were very close. I loved watching WWF wrestling and I’d practise various moves on her that I’d seen on TV. Natasha would laugh her head off, although occasionally I’d go too far.

  ‘James, leave your little sister alone!’ Mum would tell me if ever I got too rough.

  ‘Sorry, Mum, we’re just playing WWF,’ I’d explain.

  For a while we lived at a house in South Woodford before moving to our family home in Woodford Green. It’s a nice, comfy, detached house, nothing too flash but with plenty of room and a nice big garden.

  According to Mum, I was a bit of a showman from a very early age, always dressing up in my superman outfit and diving off the sofa while pretending to be a superhero.

  ‘You’re a little show-off, James!’ she would tell me. ‘Whenever there’s a party you always seem to be in the middle of things.’

  Apparently, even as baby I used to love getting attention by doing things like splashing about in a paddling pool at a family party in my nappy.

  I suppose that’s why I now enjoy being part of TOWIE so much. If there’s a party to go to, I’m your man.

  When I was two, something happened to me that would have a lasting affect on my health. I have no memory of it now, but I suffered a severe asthma attack and to this day I still have to carry an inhaler. It was triggered by an allergy to cats and, according to Mum, I ended up in a very serious state. It happened when a neighbour called at the house and offered to take me next door to see some kittens. My mum stayed at home but the next thing she knew was that a huge commotion had broken out.

  ‘Pat! Pat! Call an ambulance!’ the neighbour screamed to my mum. ‘Jam
es’s gone blue and I think he’s having an asthma attack.’

  They dialled 999 and I was given oxygen and rushed to hospital, where I was kept in overnight. Mum said that it caused a big scare and the doctors later diagnosed me as being an asthmatic. I was prescribed a drug called Ventolin, which made me very hyperactive as a small child.

  I had a second asthma attack when I was about four. I caught a viral infection called croup, which was making me cough and wheeze. Mum treated me with steam inhalation but the condition got worse and I had to be rushed back to hospital because my airways started to close up. They kept me in overnight but thankfully I was OK.

  The asthma affected me during primary school, and I would sometimes get out of breath when I did certain sports. If I tried to play football with friends I would go really red and fight to breathe. I was given a space inhaler (which is like a normal asthma inhaler but with a longer tube).

  ‘It’s important that you always carry your inhaler with you if we’re going anywhere,’ my mum explained to me when I was a bit older. ‘Don’t forget that there’s always a spare one in the medical room at school if ever you need it.’

  ‘Will I have to carry it for ever, Mum?’ I asked.

  ‘Yes, possibly, James, but lots of people have them. It’s nothing to worry about. You’ll get used to it and everything will be fine.’

  Luckily, I didn’t have any more asthma attacks – I just had to know my limits. If I get close to a cat today I lose my breath and I start wheezing. I also come out in a rash and go blotchy, which is weird because my skin is normally very clear. As for carrying an inhaler, I’ve now got a smaller one and it’s become second nature to keep it in my pocket.

  Aside from asthma, there were a couple of other medical ailments that affected me as a child, one of which was very embarrassing. The first was that my hearing was poor. Mum and Dad noticed that I always had the television turned up loud when I was watching it at home, and later on the teachers in school said that I talked very loudly. They wondered if my hearing was to blame, so I went and had some tests and the doctors said I needed grommets inserted into my ears.