Paul Danan claims Celebrity Love Island bosses gave him Valium to help through his drug withdrawal
The former Hollyoaks actor was a contestant on the first ever series of the ITV dating show in 2005 and his tenure on the programme is infamous for his drunken rows and outbursts
PAUL Danan has claimed Celebrity Love Island bosses gave him Valium to help through his drug withdrawal when he appeared on the show.
The former Hollyoaks actor was a contestant on the first ever series of the ITV dating show in 2005 and his tenure on the programme is infamous for his drunken rows and outbursts.
He revealed when he went on the show he suffered withdrawals from the party drugs he’d been taking prior to flying to Fiji, where the show was set, and was shivering and shaking even crawling to the famous beach hut.
Paul said: “I was fine mentally, it was more just asking, ‘Do you have any problems’.
"At that time I didn’t realise that I probably did have a few issues with addiction. I suppose he must just have thought, ‘You seem all right'.
“I was kind of realising all this in front of the nation. When I first got there I was actually going through some serious withdrawals and I remember actually crawling to the Beach Hut in the first few days and I was shivering and shaking going, ‘Oh my god, I don’t know what’s going on with me?’
"Then they gave me some Valium and it just chilled me out and the next day I was fine and that was it. That was the end of my kind of cluck. I didn’t even know.”
Following several stints in rehab for cocaine abuse and later on prescription pain medication, Paul knows that he should have never have been plied with booze on the show.
The actor’s most infamous moment was when when he got into a drunken altercation with fellow contestant and Westlife's former bodyguard Fran Cosgrave and had to be removed from the villa by security.
He insists producers made a decision to ply him him with alcohol in a bid to boost ratings because they knew he was unpredictable after having a few drinks.
He told the Berkhamsted Revisted: A Teenage Diary Podcast: “Maybe the reason they gave us more booze was because they saw that people were liking this Danan drunk, let’s give him some booze because it doesn’t seem to agree with him and something’s gonna happen because no one is really copping off.
"I was the one saying to everyone, ‘Come on, if you like her, she’s for let’s get it on’.
"Everyone was like, ‘Careful of the cameras’. I didn’t even notice the cameras, there were so many palm trees that you don’t really see any cameras."
He added: “I had a row with Fran Cosgrave - which is a bad idea, he’s very muscly he was swimming about 20 miles a day in that pool - and I just lost it. I got very paranoid, I was coming off a hell of a lot of drugs and it was just one of those things where it was like, ‘Don’t give me alcohol because it doesn’t agree with me but they did'.
"I ended having this big row, literally the bouncers have got my arms and my legs are pulling me off and I’m calling him this gay, Irish... Disgusting words, god knows what was coming out of my mouth, it was so wrong.
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"But it was great TV for them because suddenly the ratings went up. They chucked me off the island, they took me off on a speed boat to another island, because Fiji is made of little islands.
"I was sitting there on this other island and was like, ‘What am I doing here?’ They were like, ‘Paul, this is serious, we don’t know if we can bring you back on’.
"They had a vote whether or not I was allowed to come back and I come back on but the deal was I wasn’t allowed to drink, nothing. They calmed down giving the booze out and when they did they made sure I was OK."