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Daily Mirror
Daily Mirror
Entertainment
Mark Jefferies

EastEnders' Jay Brown actor reveals he lives with crippling phobia of throwing up

EastEnders star Jamie Borthwick has opened up for the first time about suffering from a phobia of being sick, which left him scared to be away from home because he felt too “unsafe”.

The 27-year-old actor has played Jay Brown in the BBC soap since 2006, and in a new interview he has told how emetophobia - an extreme fear of vomiting, seeing vomit, watching other people vomit, or even feeling sick - has put a massive strain on his life, resulting in him being riddled with anxiety, and feeling “quite OCD” about germs.

He said: “I’ve never really spoken about it, but I’m just having a moment where I’m like, ‘Whatever.’ I’ve got a real phobia about being sick, called emetophobia.

Apparently, it’s the second most common phobia.

“I really suffer quite bad with that, and it affected me in so many ways. I didn’t want to go out, I didn’t want to shake people’s hands. It became a thing about germs and I got quite OCD about things like that.

Jamie has lived with the phobia since he was a child (BBC / Kieron McCarron)

“I didn’t want to be in busy environments where there were a lot of people.

"It just made me feel really anxious and I didn’t like that at all. I don’t really like being away from home. It started off just about that, but then as I got older it developed a bit more into random bouts of anxiety, where I just felt awful.

"I felt so unsafe. Then, it got to a point where it’s really frustrating. It was stopping me from living my life, it was stopping me from going out. I was missing opportunities.”

Jamie - who was just 12 years old when he first joined EastEnders - admits the phobia also made him “really selfish”, and while he accepts it will never go away, the star is now able to manage his condition.

Jamie has revealed his phobia for the first time (jamie_b10/Instagram)

He said: “I managed to seek the right help and it’ll never go. I will never ever be OK about being sick. Ever. But I just get to a point where I cope with it, and just deal with it the best way I can.

“But there was a point where it was not nice for me, or the people around me. Because if I didn’t feel good, if I felt anxious about something and wasn’t feeling right, that would peel off onto other people who I was with.

Because my mood would change and then it would affect them. If we were out I might be like, ‘I don’t want to be here, I want to go home.’ I became quite selfish. I just didn’t know where it came from, it just hit me randomly.

“I can understand it now. I’ve got a bag of tools I can use to manage it and understand there are going to be times where I’m not going to be in the environment where I want to be all the time. Things are not going to be catered to suit me all the time. I understand and accept that.

The Jay Brown actor has been on the BBC soap since 2006 (BBC/Kieron McCarron/Jack Barnes)

“I suppose I learnt to manage it the best way I could at the time, and I am going back five or six years ago now. I was just really selfish and I wouldn’t put myself in a situation that would make me feel unsafe.”

But Jamie would always feel safe in the company of his late EastEnders co-star, Dame Barbara Windsor, who died in 2020 aged 83, and he remembers the Carry On legend - who played Peggy Mitchell in the BBC soap - as a “complete icon”, as well as admitting he had a crush on her while watching some of her earlier work.

Speaking on the Lads, Dads and a Couple of Beers podcast, he added: “Her husband Scott [Mitchell] was my agent for six or seven years.

"He is just an amazing man, he really is. He’s so warm and nice and lovely, we’re great, great pals. He is a special person in my life. Barbara was as well.

Jay's condition leaves him with crippling anxiety (BBC / Kieron McCarron)

“She was the first person I met on EastEnders and she had this wonderful ability to be able to calm people. You know you meet someone and you feel really calm and safe in their company - that’s what Barbara was like. You could feel her aura when she was there.

“She was a complete icon. I watched a clip of film Sparrows Can’t Sing, and I said to my dad, ‘She was a sort back in the day wasn’t she?’

"She really was. She was so showbiz, but in such a lovely way.”

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