‘I Feel More Powerful On My Own'

After a tumultuous year, Caroline Flack is back on our screens and smiling again. Here, she talks about how hypnotherapy, horror movies and a party loving mannequin called Gladys helped put her back together

- Tracy Ramsden

10.30am

Caroline Flack and half of our cover-shoot crew are huddled around a phone screen watching Kim Kardashian’s sex tape. “Credit where it’s due, she gives a good performance!” Flack cackles loudly. “I can’t believe I haven’t seen this before.”

I have a theory about Flack, 39 and rarely out of the headlines: people don’t like that she behaves the way a man would. She plays hard (though works harder), and is wholly unapologetic about enjoying sex and dating. I tell her I suspect that people were largely jealous when she slept with Harry Styles – I know I was. There’s that cackle again. “I always feel a bit like [sticks middle fingers up], but you can’t do that because you’d just look awful, so instead you smile, close the door, and I have a good giggle about it around the dinner table with my family. You can’t take it seriously. There’s actually a lot more that goes on, and if people knew the truth it’d be a lot worse.”

Running her hands through the rails of clothes at the cover shoot, she pulls things out at random. “I’d look like a granny in this!” she hoots. “Does this one make me look a bit pregnant?” she asks, pulling on a floral-print mini dress and sizing herself up in the mirror. She doesn’t mince her words. And it is powerfully refreshing.