Fabulous Assistant Editor Kelly Allen reveals how Kelly Brook truly feels when she looks back at photos from THAT iconic Snatch dress moment
I’ve known Kelly Brook for over sixteen years. In that time, we’ve talked about everything — her chaotic romances, her triumphs, her setbacks, and her complicated relationship with her body.
And because of that, I know exactly how she feels about being “normal-sized,” and how she’ll react when the inevitable wave of cruel comments comes once she walks out of the I’m A Celebrity jungle.
Growing up in the 90s, watching Kelly and Johnny Vaughan on The Big Breakfast before school felt like a ritual. She was only 19 at the time, impossibly beautiful and tiny — and just a couple of years older than me.
Two decades later, I found myself working alongside her in showbiz.
JUNGLE QUEEN
I first met Kelly at the GQ Awards in 2009. She told me excitedly she was heading to LA to pursue acting, imagining herself hiking in the Hollywood Hills and drinking green juices under the California sun.
She was instantly likeable — warm, funny, and never too serious.
But LA didn’t unfold the way she hoped, and eventually, she returned to the UK. I’d bump into her at events, like the 2019 Brits, where she joked:
“It’s been 20 years since I first came to these awards. Can you believe I’m still somehow getting invited?”
She laughed again, teasing, “Think you and I will still be turning up 20 years from now?”
She has graced Fabulous magazine covers countless times, always delivering stunning photos and a great interview. I remember one shoot in an American-style diner — it was boiling hot, yet she never complained, only joked about her milkshake melting.
So when she joined I’m A Celebrity, I knew she’d be brilliant. And she proved it immediately, turning her first Bushtucker Trial into TV gold as she joked the bugs were “biting her t*ts.”
The Reality Behind the Glamour
But the moment she strips off for that famous jungle shower — “doing a Myleene” — trolls will crawl out, attacking her body.
It won’t bother her.
We’re both curvy women who’ve battled with our weight, and she’s confided in me many times about how she really feels about her body.
When paparazzi photographed her at the airport in everyday clothes, vile comments followed — the usual “she’s piled on weight” nonsense.
But Kelly knows the truth: thin does not equal happy.
“Some of the skinniest times in my life were my most miserable,” she once told Fabulous. “When my dad died in 2007, I weighed 8½ stone. I’d never want to be in that place again.”
She added:
“I’m not a 23-year-old bikini model anymore. That was fun, but it wasn’t something I had to work for. That was just my body. All 20-year-olds look cute — no wrinkles, great skin, naturally toned. I’m not that girl now. I’m something else, and that’s okay.”
Kelly is now 45 and a size 12 — two sizes smaller than the UK’s size-16 average — and still adored by most men I know.
Her husband of three years, French-Italian model Jeremy Parisi, played a huge role in helping her stop obsessing over the number on the scales.
Love, Pasta, and Perspective
When they met, Kelly barely had a normal relationship with food.
“I didn’t really eat properly,” she told me before her 2022 wedding.
Jeremy changed that.
“He loves pasta — he could eat it for breakfast, lunch, and dinner. And he cooks most of our meals. He works out every day, and he never skips lunch or dinner. With him, eating together is non-negotiable.”
She admitted she often looks at old photos and thinks how incredible she looked — but she’s learned that being thinner doesn’t mean being happier.
“I want to be healthy and feel good — but being thin isn’t everything.”
The Iconic Snatch Dress
Like the rest of us, Kelly enjoys looking back at moments when she looked “absolutely banging.”
Her favourite: the pink Julien MacDonald dress she wore to the Snatch premiere in 2000 with Jason Statham — the one that revealed just enough bum and cleavage to make headlines everywhere.
“I don’t still have the dress,” she laughed. “I think it’s in Julien MacDonald’s archives. I’m not sure I’d get one leg into it now!”
Her stylist at the time told her, “You’ll look back in 20 years and be glad you wore it.”
And she is.
Because that dress captured a moment — a young woman at her physical peak, totally unfiltered, totally herself.
A Woman Who Knows Who She Is
Kelly Brook may be in the jungle now, battling bugs and Bushtucker Trials, but she’s long passed the point of letting strangers define her worth.
She knows who she is, she knows what she looks like, and she knows what makes her happy.
And that — not a dress size — is what really matters
