In an era when half of Hollywood seems to be melting away on weekly injections of Ozempic and its cousins, one woman is quietly proving that genuine radiance has nothing to do with a prescription. Kelly Brook, who first burst into the public consciousness in 1996 as a 16-year-old glamour model with a smile that could power the National Grid, is currently lighting up the I’m A Celebrity… Get Me Out Of Here! jungle at 46. And according to someone who has known her since those heady page-three days, she’s exactly the same warm, hilarious, unfiltered woman she always was.
Nicola McLean, former glamour model turned Loose Women regular and I’m A Celeb alumna herself (2008), has been friends with Kelly for almost three decades. The pair started their careers side-by-side in the cut-throat world of lads’ mags and tabloid front pages, when the pressure to be thin, tanned and impossibly perky was relentless. Yet Nicola insists Kelly never let it harden her.
“People keep asking me if she’s on Ozempic because she looks incredible in the jungle,” Nicola tells me over the phone, laughing. “I can categorically tell you she’s not. She doesn’t need it. She never has. Kelly’s smile lights up the room. She’s naturally beautiful, fun to be around, and she just makes people happy. That’s always been her superpower.”
Watching Kelly on this year’s I’m A Celebrity, it’s easy to see what Nicola means. While some celebrities arrive in the jungle polished and guarded, Kelly has thrown herself into camp life with the enthusiasm of someone half her age. She’s belly-laughed through trials, comforted crying campmates, flirted harmlessly with Dean McCullough, and served looks in a red swimsuit that had the tabloids scrambling for the word “ageless”. When she won ten stars in the Arcade challenge, her victory dance (hips swaying, arms in the air) felt less like a calculated “moment” and more like pure, infectious joy.
It’s a stark contrast to the body-shrinking narratives that have dominated red carpets and social media in the last two years. Stars who once proudly owned their curves have re-emerged dramatically slimmer, crediting (or dodging questions about) weight-loss drugs. The message, whether intentional or not, has often felt like this: if you have access and you’re not using it, you’re somehow falling behind.
Kelly Brook has never played that game.
“She’s had ups and downs with her weight like every normal woman,” Nicola says. “In the early 2000s the papers were obsessed with calling her fat if she went up half a dress size. Then when she slimmed down for Hollywood they accused her of crash-dieting. She’s been criticised whatever she’s done. But she’s always come back to the same place: ‘This is me. Take it or leave it.’ That confidence is sexy at 25 and it’s sexy at 46.”
Nicola remembers the first time she met Kelly on a photoshoot in 1997. “I was 16, terrified, trying to pose like I knew what I was doing. Kelly walked in, all bouncy hair and that huge smile, and just made everyone relax. The photographer loved her because she was playful. She’d pull faces, giggle, make the crew laugh. She never took it too seriously, and that made her stand out more than any ‘perfect’ body ever could.”
That playful energy is what viewers are falling in love with all over again. Clips of Kelly teaching Oti Mabuse and GK Barry how to “work the camera” in their camp bikinis have gone viral, racking up millions of views. In one now-iconic moment, she demonstrated her famous “boob jiggle” from her 1990s lads’-mag heyday, leaving the younger campmates in stitches. “See?” she told them. “You don’t need to be a size eight to own it. You just need to love yourself.”
It’s a message that feels revolutionary in 2025.
Nicola believes Kelly’s refusal to shrink (literally or figuratively) is exactly why she’s resonating with a new generation. “Little girls who grew up with her posters on their brothers’ walls are now in their 30s with kids of their own. They’re watching her and thinking: ‘Oh my God, it’s okay to have hips. It’s okay to eat pasta and still feel sexy.’ She’s giving permission in a way that’s really powerful right now.”
Kelly herself has been open over the years about her complicated relationship with body image. In interviews she has spoken about being told to lose weight for American auditions (“They wanted me to be a size zero. I tried and I was miserable”), about gaining weight during happy periods in her life, and about deciding, somewhere along the line, that happiness was more important than a thigh gap.
Since settling down with husband Jeremy Parisi on their Kent farm, surrounded by dogs, vegetable patches and a slower pace of life, she has radiated contentment. She grows her own tomatoes, makes her own pasta, drinks wine with dinner, and still fills out a bikini better than most influencers half her age. As Nicola puts it: “She’s proof that you can have the cheese board and the cheekbones.”
There’s something deeply comforting about watching a woman who came of age in the most objectifying era of British tabloid culture now, thirty years later, owning every inch of her story. She’s not trying to look 25. She’s not airbrushing her laughter lines or sucking in her stomach for the Bush Telegraph. She’s just… Kelly. Warm, witty, and unapologetically herself.
And Britain is eating it up. Bookmakers have slashed her odds to win the series. Social media is flooded with comments like “Kelly Brook is the curves representation we needed” and “Finally a woman on TV who looks like she enjoys dessert.” Even Piers Morgan, rarely short of an opinion, tweeted: “Kelly Brook is the real winner of #ImACeleb whatever happens. Class, curves and zero nonsense.”
For Nicola McLean, seeing her oldest friend finally get the flowers she deserves is emotional. “We were teenagers when we started. We’ve watched each other go through heartbreak, bad press, everything. I’m so proud of her. She’s showing women everywhere that you don’t have to disappear to stay relevant. You just have to keep shining.”
As the jungle finale approaches, one thing feels certain: Kelly Brook never needed Ozempic to glow. She’s been doing it naturally for nearly thirty years, one megawatt smile at a time.
And right now, in a world that keeps trying to make women smaller, that feels like the most rebellious act of all.
