DIY SOS presenter Nick Knowles says he deliberately decided not to trim his beard or shed the pounds because he wanted to show that not everybody spent lockdown following fitness guru Joe Wicks.
Nick was moved to tears after seeing the reaction to his his moving BBC Children In Need episode which helped kickstart a surf school for the special needs kids near Swansea.
But some cruel trolls ignored the heartwarming story to focus on how much weight he had put on after he was seen changing into a wetsuit to take a dip in the ocean.
Filming was done after the first lockdown and Nick told Gethin Jones he was well aware that he had put on weight when he started filming.
Asked if the comments upset him the TV presenter who lives near Cirencester said: “No because the thing is I put on a lot of weight during the first lockdown”
He added: “I couldn’t do any training, I was doing a lot of writing, a lot of banana bread and I grew a big beard and stayed in and I wrote a lot.
“So when I came to do the shoot I thought ‘I’ll tidy myself up’ and then actually no because so many people, not everybody, did the Joe Wicks thing, not everyone spends half their life in the gym.
“Some people put on a lot of weight and I thought do you know what, first start of the show, let’s start with that straight away.”
Despite knowing this he climbed into a skin tight rubber wetsuit to try surfing and joked about references to beached whales.
He recalled: “So the opening scene was me in a wetsuit, literally if I had laid down on the beach Greenpeace would have dragged me back into the water. But like let’s embrace it!”
“There was a combination of what an amazing job and also who ate all the pies? Well I did. You do whatever you have to do to get through lockdown.”
After the Children in Need show went out he tweeted: “It was a phase, changed shape and hirsuiteness since but I let myself comfort eat to get thru lockdown.”
And he tool Twitter to again to encourage fans to focus on what’s really important and not his fuller figure.
“Yes we are not actors. Yes I’m large after lockdown. Yes my hair is a mess I don’t care It’s!!!! Concentrate on the story,” he wrote.
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