A housemate in one of the first ever series of Big Brother now looks unrecognisable after the show "ruined her life".
Penny Ellis took part in Big Brother back in 2001 alongside Brian Dowling and Paul "Bubble" Ferguson. The former English teacher, 55, dropped her towel on the live feed on E4 forcing Channel 4 to issue an apology.
Penny, who was a born again Christian and the first to be booted off the show, is now a big hit on TikTok and looks a world away from her days on the reality show, the Mirror reports.
She's swapped her cropped blonde hair for a longer, grey style, which she either wears loose or in a pony tail along with a pair of thick-rimmed glasses.
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Penny has also ditched her bright blue eyeshadow, opting for a more natural look. She previously told Capital FM her application for Big Brother was "a mistake", claiming she was actually trying to get in touch with Big Breakfast.
She said: "I was trying to phone the Big Breakfast to get my girls to go on and read some of the letters out that they'd been writing about bullying and about racism and I got through to the hotline instead."
After revealing she then left her name for an application form, she continued: "So I carried [the form] around in my bag and then I put it in the bin, got it out of the bin, finally had to fill it in practically the day before it had to be in and sent it off."
When she became the first person to leave the Big Brother house in the second season, Penny emerged to learn she had been stripped from her teaching position after a barrage of complaints from upset parents.
Penny told Premier Christianity Magazine she deeply regrets going on the show, adding: "It has been 20 years of being mocked, and jibed and ridiculed.
“I lost all my money, my reputation, my church, my job, my self-esteem, my friends, my home - that two weeks in the house I lost everything.”
Speaking of the towel incident that showed her naked on live TV, in particular, the former reality star admitted she didn't think producers would air the mishap and didn't expect to see it all over the newspapers in the weeks that followed.
Earlier this year, Penny released a book called Meet Me at the Mirror, which chronicles her frenzied rise to fame.
The book is described as a "remarkable insight into the life of a reality TV star, taking you on Penny's journey from her accidental audition for Big Brother, through her days in the house, to the unprecedented fallout from her infamous towel-dropping incident which ultimately cost Penny her job."
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