As one of the break-out stars of the ninth series of Big Brother back in 2008, Lisa Appleton made a name for herself due to her fondness for stripping and her fiery relationship with then-boyfriend Mario Marconi, who she later went on to wed after he proposed in the house.
And despite admitting that she’d cut her hands after kicking down the door to escape the house for “a pint, a kebab and to buy some new lip gloss”, Lisa’s star continued to rise and she was dubbed “the Kim Kardashian of Warrington” for her outrageous antics, which saw her straddling her toyboy lover on a park bench, putting the bins out in a thong and rolling topless on the sand dunes of Blackpool Pleasure Beach.
Now, she’s back in the headlines again after she was photographed working as an Amazon delivery driver, which she tells Closer wasn’t all it was cracked up to be.
Lisa, 55, says, “I thought Amazon would suit me because I just wanted to be adventurous and travel, but it was a bit of a nightmare to be honest. I was rained on all day, and a lot of the time they’re not in and you have to knock at up to six neighbours. I thought, ‘I’ll be here all day’. Then you need to see if they want to leave it behind the fence or the bin or wherever…
“People kept wanting selfies with me and we had a little chat and stuff, which was lovely, but everything went up – my stress levels, my blood pressure…my heart rate.
“I lost 2st just running from house to house. I hope I haven’t lost too much though, I like to be curvy.”
Life has been far from plain sailing for Lisa as, just five years after her stint on BB, career opportunities dried up and she was forced to move from the mansion she once rented to a rat-infested council house, where her marriage to Mario broke down.
Following her divorce, she developed an addiction to sausages and would eat up to 50 a day. And she was forced to live in a tree house for £5 a night after she became homeless as a result of her habit.
But Lisa is thriving once again. Not only has she moved on with a new mystery man and bagged a True Crime documentary gig, the former body builder is looking better than ever – something she puts down to running between the houses and missing her lunch breaks to deliver up to 200 parcels a day. Though the stress of the role led to her quitting after just a few weeks.
And Lisa – who is about to undergo another boob job after previously admitting that she fears looking “like a testicle” and instead wants to grow old “disgracefully” – says she’s built up a huge male fan base online, many of whom now subscribe to the OnlyFans site she set up to help pay her bills.
She says, “I’m really flattered, I’m so grateful. I’m quite shy and humble about myself. I think, ‘God there’s so many fit birds out there and I’m 55’. They’ve all seen my knockers and they all give me compliments.
“They’re all young men. You should see my private messages. The amount of people who want to take me out for a meal, it’s really tickled me. They say, ‘I will sweep you off your feet’, ‘Sweetie, you’re just so beautiful’ and all of this. There are hundreds of them!”
But Lisa says that after dating a string of younger men – including former EastEnders star Danniella Westbrook’s son Kai Fernandez, who she was spotted snogging in Benidorm despite their 18 year age-gap – she is happy and in love with a man she refuses to name, who she started dating shortly before lockdown.
Lisa, who coyly admits she has no complaints when it comes to her sex life, says, “He’s very lovely. He treats me well and he’s really easy going. He lets me be myself and understands me. I love him. I just love him for who he is and there’s harmony between us, I’ve never had that before.”
After decades of turmoil when it came to her love life and her finances, Lisa says she’s also managed to quit her addiction to sausages, which in 2017 drove her to have liposuction on her stomach after it got so intense that she had to visit several different chip shops a day so they wouldn’t recognise her.
Although she has weaned herself off of the bangers, Lisa says they are still a comfort and that she really has to focus on a healthier new diet – consisting mostly of a budget-friendly £4 pack of beef a week, which she whisks into cottage pie, chilli con carne and “sexy” burgers. She also does a 22-minute workout a day.
And after spending a few weeks wishing for the summer, Lisa has now jetted off to Ibiza where she’s living it up in the sun – going topless on the beach and partying with Wayne Lineker at his O Beach Club.
She says, “In the UK I was sitting in the garden in my bikini with my can of cider, chilling on my day off and being rained on. I thought, ‘Well, this sucks’. The whole neighbourhood could hear me whining, so I flew to Ibiza and am living it up with Wayne Lineker – he’s lovely! The beach club is full of hotties – I’m loving life.”