Celebrity Big Brother winner Chantelle Houghton's marriage was a sham

29 Oct 2008 

The Essex girl says that her ex husband Preston told her a month after they got hitched that he had not wanted to marry her on their wedding day.

Fighting back tears she said: "He has since told me that he knew he didn't want to marry me on my wedding day."

Chantelle met the Ordinary Boys frontman inside the Celebrity Big Brother house in January 2006 and they got engaged a month after the show ended and married in the August with a six figure magazine deal.

But the 25-year-old told The Dark Side of Fame with Piers Morgan that things soon turned sour.

She said: "I just wanted to go back home to Essex where my family live. I wanted the marriage to work and that's just what I tried to do so much really."She added: "When we were actually saying our vows he was making silly faces which I thought was really weird because when you are getting married you imagine looking into their eyes and it obviously being really heartfelt and romantic and stuff. But he was doing that which I thought was wrong and I felt embarrassed in front of my family because he was doing that."

Chantelle and Preston announced their split in June 2007 and she was granted a divorce in November 2007 on the grounds of Preston admitting unreasonable behaviour.

Chantelle said: "If I could turn the clocks back I would. I regret getting married, but there is nothing I can do about it."

Following the split Chantelle had a public battle with bulimia and was photographed looking very gaunt. She said: "I remember being out with my parents and having a dinner, and I got up to go to the toilet, and I really was just going to go to the toilet but to see my mum looking at me like she knew what I was going to do was just horrible".

"But I suppose any girl when you split up with someone you do just want to make yourself look better and have your hair done and your nails and lose a little bit of weight, but I suppose I went too far really and obviously went about it in the wrong way because I was so unhappy."

The aspiring Page 3 model had a boob job six months after she split up with Preston and said she is now "doing a lot of modelling," and hoping to have a TV show and own clothes range coming out soon.