Telly star Anneka Rice has got something off her chest – she used to nick bras to gain attention.
Her admission comes as she talks of her quest for fame – and chuckles about the time Tussauds binned her wax model when she stepped back from TV.
Anneka, star of hit shows Treasure Hunt and Challenge Anneka, owns up: “In my teens I was so invisible to my parents I reckoned the only way to get noticed was if I was sent to prison.
“I used to shoplift in a desperate attempt to be caught. I was stuffing bras – I am talking size 46 – into my school rucksack.
"I was trying to catch the eye of the assistants and they did not notice! Eventually, in Jean Machine, Croydon, I got caught.
"This was my chance to be taken home in a police car. I felt this amazing rush like ‘Look at me.’
“Was this my first taste of fame? I gave the acting performance of my life to the Surrey Constabulary.
“Now you know why I loved Celebrity Hunted.”
Anneka was on the 2017 series of Hunted, where stars try to avoid capture. She became a huge name in the 1980s, having earlier fibbed about her age to get on a BBC course.
Her helicopter-hopping antics in Treasure Hunt and Challenge Anneka brought stacks of fan mail – but unwanted attention too.
She reveals one oddball left a crude “gift” when she was playing Aladdin in the West End, with a note saying: “Anneka, if you don’t receive this, could you pass it on to Sue Lawley?”
Anneka took 18 years out to raise her three kids. She was off so long Madame Tussauds melted her waxwork.
Speaking at a new autobiographical Radio 4 show, Anneka, 61, says: “I was the first person tourists saw as they walked in. Me in a jumpsuit, dangling from a ladder.
“Now, rumour has it, my head is plonked on a shelf next to Steve Cram and President Reagan!”
Anneka was in Strictly last year but lasted two weeks. She brands judges Bruno Tolioni and Shirley Ballas “idiots”, claiming they didn’t watch her best bits.
Philosophically, she adds: “I was once famous. Am I now unfamous? It is like being unfollowed on Twitter. Fame is exhausting. Then again, it has been a fabulous life – film crews, baby Annekas, dancers and Dave the sound man.”
