Gemma Collins' best diva moments: from Dancing on Ice drama to THAT Radio One Teen Awards stage fall

"I'm Gemma Collins. I'm 34. I've earned my divaship."
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The Weekender

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However you feel about Gemma Collins’ larger than life persona, it’s difficult to deny that the GC has been responsible for some of the funniest TV talking points of the past few years.

The 37-year-old first captured viewers' hearts with her straight-talking attitude and increasingly outrageous antics on The Only Way Is Essex, and has since stolen the show on almost every primetime reality show that the UK has to offer, from I'm A Celebrity... Get Me Out of Here to Celebs Go Dating to her infamous stint on Dancing on Ice.

Her no-holds-barred Instagram persona has made her a social media hit, too, from her willingness to embrace the "memays" to her habit of starting off every video broadcast with a conspiratorial "So girls!" - plus her willingness to tag public figures from Sir David Attenborough to Sadiq Khan in her social media meanderings.

With a brand new ITVBe show - aptly titled Diva Forever - set to launch next week and whisperings of a major BBC podcast deal, it's the perfect time to look back at some of the reality star's greatest hits. Never change, GC.

When she told Arg "you an't ever gonna get this candy!

Star-crossed lovers: Gemma Collins and James Argent
Stuart Wilson/Getty Images

The cult of Collins - and her infamous persona - can probably be traced back to one particularly memorable moment from an early season of TOWIE, which saw the GC emerge victorious in a showdown with on-off love interest James Argent.

After discovering that he’d been criticising her behind her back, Collins took him to task for his behaviour at a pool party in Marbella. She took off her sarong and shouted the immortal lines: “Take a good look at this, you ain’t ever gonna get this candy!”

“I might not be a size ten but I’ve got a good heart, so take that and kiss that!” she continued.

​When she fell through the stage at the Radio One Teen Awards in 2017

Fall: Collins was helped by the cast of Love Island 2017
Getty Images

Collins’ most meme-worthy moment to date was a complete accident. As the GC announced Love Island as the winners of the Best TV Show trophy, a trap door in the stage opened, from which show contestants Jamie Jewitt, Marcel Somerville and Amber Davies emerged to accept their prize. Unaware of this, the presenter turned round and fell down into the trap door, leaving the audience open-mouthed.

Luckily, Collins saw the funny side, later posting a mocked-up advert for the National Accident Helpline on her Instagram page, which saw the words “Have you had an accident at work?” superimposed over a picture of herself pre-fall.

When she took down a Dancing on Ice judge

After a spate of negative stories emerged regarding Collins’ Dancing on Ice work ethic, Collins publicly called out judge Jason Gardiner, accusing him of “selling stories” about her in an explosive rant.

When Gardiner described her performance as “all over the place,” the GC hit back, telling the judge: “Maybe if you didn’t sell stories on me, maybe I wouldn’t have been so upset this week. So take that. Boring. Next.”

When she swapped a trip to Paris for a spray tan top-up on Celebs Go Dating

Stood up: Collins left her date in the lurch
Channel 4

Last year’s instalment of Celebs Go Dating gave viewers a rejection scene worthy of a Richard Curtis rom-com when Collins’ date Laurence arrived at St Pancras station with a bouquet of flowers, two first class Eurostar tickets and dreams of whisking the GC off to Paris.

Those dreams were sadly thwarted when Collins failed to turn up, leaving Laurence to stare morosely into the middle distance as his train pulled out of the station. When she was taken to task for her no-show by the series’ matchmakers Eden Blackman and Nadia Essex, an unrepentant GC pinpointed a traffic jam near Leytonstone as the real villain.

“I did get up, I did put my hair and make-up on. I got in the car, there was traffic on the road at Leytonstone,” she told Blackman and Essex. “I sat in it for 30 minutes and I thought ‘Don’t know if I’m feeling Paris.’

“I went home, I did a marathon of the Kardashians. I had a cheeky bar of Galaxy, had a spray tan and had a beautiful day.”

When she lasted just three days in the jungle

Collins’s 2014 stint on I’m A Celebrity was ultimately short-lived, with the star leaving the jungle after just three days. Though she never quite achieved her aim of “becoming Bear Grylls,” she did, however, manage to pack those 72 short hours with a number of unforgettable moments, from her tearful arrival by helicopter to her belief that “people who murder are treated better than [campmates]” to her enduring hatred of porridge.

When she tried to exorcise the spirit of the GC

The GC persona has been wreaking havoc on the Essex area and beyond for years, as demonstrated in one particularly memorable episode of TOWIE. A seemingly contrite Collins invited her closest friends to take part in an ‘exorcism’ to banish the GC for good, asking them to write their criticisms of the diva persona onto scraps of paper.

“Rude, brash and demanding” are just a few of the words that sprung to their minds, before Collins graciously acknowledged their complaints and threw the paper onto the fire to “cleanse” herself of the GC’s worst traits. History has taught us, however, that this exorcism would prove to be short-lived.

When her hair got frazzled in the CBB house

The GC needs to keep up appearances for her viewing public, and Collins’ hair became an ongoing point of contention throughout her stay in the Celebrity Big Brother house. In one Diary Room meltdown, she took producers to task for failing to provide heated rollers for her hair, as the straighteners that contestants had been given were “frazzling” her “very expensive” hair.

“This is very expensive hair and it’s f****** frazzled because you’ve only got straighteners in here, you haven’t got heated rollers!” she cried.“ So you better pay for me to have a new set of extensions.”

Soon after, her fellow contestants decided to nobly sacrifice their hot water for the day in the interests of a greater good: allowing Collins to get her hair professionally blow dried.

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