Andrea McLean opens up about ‘awful’ SAS: Who Dares Wins experience that forced her to confront her demons
Loose Woman Andrea McLean has spoken out about how taking part in a gruelling reality show forced her to confront her past demons.
Andrea, 49, is a contestant on the first celebrity series of Channel 4’s SAS: Who Dares Wins in aid of Stand Up To Cancer and being put through special forces selection took her to dark places.
“When this came up I thought: ‘This is the most difficult and uncomfortable thing I’m ever going to do’ and damn I was right,” she told press including Goodhousekeeping.com/uk at a screening for the series.
In episode one, Andrea struggles with being shouted at and when questioned by the show’s Directing Staff and she admits it’s because it forces her to confront issues from her past that she’d previously blocked out of her mind.
“My darkest moment was [in the questioning room]. We all have baggage, we all have experiences we’ve been through that we’ve dealt with in our own ways. [What I’ve done is] put them in a box, in another box, put that in the garden, put another heap of stuff on top of it and think: ‘That was then, I’m not going to look at it anymore,’” she explained.
“What I didn’t expect was the second I got there, when all the shouting started, that box blew out of every box that it had ever been shut in.
“I did not expect that to happen and what it made me do was look things in the face and realise that maybe putting things in boxes isn’t the best way to deal with them,” she said.
Despite being extremely challenging, the experience has changed Andrea’s life for the better.
“As a mum you try to lead by example with your children: ‘Talk to me if something’s bothering you, don’t bottle it up.’ I realised I wasn’t leading my example, so this has been really good for me,” she said.
Andrea revealed that prior to flying to Chile to film the show, her Loose Women colleagues told her: ‘You are bonkers, what the hell are you doing?’
Yet she felt she had something to prove.
“One of the reasons I wanted to do [the show] was for menopausal women everywhere, to show that we can still do this. All the way through I was so cold. The doctor there told me [as well as hot flushes] you also can’t regulate your body temperature so when you get cold you can’t get warm again,” she said.
“I felt like I was doing it for middle aged women everywhere and that’s what got me through at the beginning. But then you can’t think about that, you’re just putting one foot in front of the other and you’re just getting through,” she added.
“There were so many times I knew I wasn’t going to be the fittest or strongest, but I also knew I wasn’t going to give up.
“I was walking along, marching, thinking: ‘Do I like this? No. Can I do this? Yes. Just bloody keep going.’ For me that’s what I’ve brought back. I’m so glad that I did it, it was awful, but I’m really glad that I did it.”
Celebrity SAS: Who Dares Wins airs from Sunday 7 April at 9pm on Channel 4.
The show was made in aid of Stand Up To Cancer. You can learn more about Stand Up To Cancer and donate here.
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