I miss having anonymity..I'm 20 foot tall with the biggest teeth in Britain

Now in-demand star wants to help others

- KAREN BRYANS

Call Rylan Clark a national treasure and you get a flash of those soap powder gnashers, visible from space.

"I'm a regional trinket!" he laughs. He's being way too modest... and that's not something we typically associate with Rylan, 35, all unflinching honesty and telling it like it is.

"I was very cheap in the early days," he says. "Not so much now!" That's an understatement too.

He's gone from a council house with his single mum Linda to becoming one of TV's most recognisable faces, via the X Factor and Celebrity Big Brother.

Rylan is grateful for fame and the security it has provided for him and Linda. But if there's one thing he misses from the old days, it's being that gawky 18-year-old ginger kid he once was, someone no one had heard of.

"Anonymity. That's the main thing I miss from my old life," he admits.

"I'm 20ft tall with the biggest teeth in Britain. I wish, I wish I'd made the most of my old life. Going out, getting trashed and rolling home somewhere, in a wheelbarrow, you know, doing all of those things, without responsibilities." But instead, he's made it big - in an industry he says is "full of a***holes".

He says: "Entitled people that believe that they are something special, and that they can talk to people like sh**, and that they can get away with it. And subsequently do get away with it.

"Going into that industry at 23 when I was on X Factor, I learned that the hard way by seeing how people would treat me, a reality contestant. 'He's not going to be about in two weeks, I don't need to make the effort to him..." Now the tables have turned, and he's the one interviewing them.

Rylan is one of the most in-demand presenters on TV, trusted with everything from This Morning to Supermarket Sweep to the Mamma Mia dating show.