Losing a friend is awful. Losing a friend through suicide is horrendous. And losing a friend who happens to be really famous, and their death is headline news and seemingly all anyone is talking about, is just bizarre.
I’ve known Caroline for a long time, since she was a baby-faced kids’ TV presenter and I was starting my career as a TV producer. In the years since then, we both watched each other change a lot. Caroline’s trajectory as she became one of the most famous – and talked about – people in the country wasn’t smooth; instead it was, like a lot of her life, jagged and chaotic. During that time, I had periods when I was Caroline’s colleague, her boss (though nobody in the history of time has every really been her boss), but mostly I was her friend. And knowing that she’s gone is just horrible.
‘Love’ is not a word I throw around easily, but I loved Caroline, and she’s left behind a lot of people who loved her a lot. Watching her death being talked about on the news is surreal. That someone so full of life can just be gone. It all feels like such a waste.
Last Tuesday it was the BRIT Awards – to my mind the most ‘Caroline Flack’ night of the year. A year ago to the day I was with her at an after-party, watching her behave more hilariously and outrageously than I thought possible – and I make trashy reality shows for a living. Knowing she wasn’t out again last week, laughing and causing trouble, just breaks my heart.
Caroline is one of the most fun people I’ve ever met and, for the last few days, I’ve been remembering the millions of amazing/ outrageous/hilarious things we did together. I’ve also been remembering what a nightmare she could be. We worked on the first series of Love Island together. Caroline had decided to come and live on the island with the crew for the whole six weeks, even though she didn’t have to be there the whole time. But she’d made her mind up.
The reality of why she’d packed her case for the summer was that she was running away from her life. She was still getting over a break-up, and was dealing with that in the way a lot of people do, by dyeing her hair blonde, living on a diet of wine and chips and getting off with the wrong people. In her mind, Love Island was an escape. Part of my job was babysitting her. Sarah, the executive producer of the show, who had an amazing relationship with Caroline, was great at getting her to switch it on in front of the camera. My job was to stop her terrorising guests around the hotel pool and make her occasionally eat a vegetable.
A couple of years later, when I was working in LA, Caroline came over for a holiday and hired this massive Jeep about three times the height of her. It was too big for her to actually park, so we drove around aimlessly for hours at a time listening to the radio and gossiping. One night, we arranged to meet for dinner at The Cheesecake Factory (because that’s the type of people we are). Caroline turned up with 12 ballroom dancers, in full make-up, from Dancing With The Stars. And there we all were – queuing outside The Cheesecake Factory in a shopping mall.
Caroline had an amazing ability to be two completely opposing forces at the same time. She could be loved and hated all at once. Both vulnerable and hard as nails. She was an incredibly complicated person who had incredibly complicated relationships with the people she loved. Being her friend wasn’t always easy, and the relationships she had with the people closest to her were often volatile. She could love you intensely, then fall out with you with the same ferocity. She was a whirlwind, an absolute force of nature. And having spent a lot of years in the eye of Storm Caroline, I’m finding some of the things being written about her now that she’s gone slightly at odds with the person I’m going to remember.
If, out of the tragedy of her death, the press ask themselves some hard questions and people do think about being kinder to each other, then obviously that will be a wonderful thing to be part of her legacy. And personally, I hope some real questions are asked about how women who choose not to live the same life their mum’s generation did are treated. As well as a real conversation about suicide.
The way I’m going to remember her isn’t as a victim.
But the way I’m going to remember her isn’t as a victim. It’s as an absolute powerhouse who unapologetically lived her life the way she wanted to live it. Caroline’s death is a tragedy. An avoidable tragedy. But in her time here she experienced more than most people would in a hundred lifetimes. She won Strictly, was the worst contestant of all time on Bake Off, is part of the DNA of Love Island. She hosted I’m A Celeb, The X Factor, and all while going on holiday about 300 times a year and going out with absolutely everybody.
When she got the job playing Roxy Hart in Chicago, I said to her, ‘They were looking for a fame-hungry, man-eating floozy and they thought of you?!’, but it turns out the story behind her getting the part was even more Caroline. The producer had heard her, pissed, singing by the piano in The Groucho and knew she’d be perfect.
And she was. Caroline was a superstar, irreplaceable on our TV screens, and irreplaceable as a friend. And I’m really, really going to miss her.
Samaritans, which offers a free listening service, can be contacted via its website or by phone on 116 123.
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