VICKY PATTISON – RECRUIT NUMBER 8

3 September 2021

Why did you sign up to this show?

I’m a fan of the show, I love SAS. I always watch it every year, the civilian and the celebs, and I always think, "Oh my God, everyone is so incredible, so brave." I love to push myself, I love to get myself out of my comfort zone. I sat at home and like everybody else I was dying for a challenge, to get out there. So I think it was a number of reasons why I did it. Just wanting to do something new, wanting to challenge myself, being a big fan of the show. It felt like the right time to do it. So I took the leap and went for it.

How would you rate your mental strength going into the course?

I think that's what everyone said to me, "It doesn't matter if you're not the fittest, your mental strength will get you through." To a certain point, I definitely am strong but I didn't know what I was expecting, it looks super brutal on the telly, but nothing can prepare you for it, I don't think.

What did you think when you saw the rest of the celebrity lineup?

I had so many conflicting feelings. Obviously, it's super intimidating. You're not on there competing with anybody else. I know you feel an element of it sometimes, and they pit you against each other and stuff, but there was no moment where I thought, "See her, she's my competition”. I never felt like that. I just was so desperate not to let myself down, and do the best that I could.

How did it feel having to strip naked in front of everyone on the first day?

That is one of the things I was so worried about before I went in, I was agonising over which sports bra I should take, because I was like, "Oh God, you've got to get changed on the beach in front of everyone." I'm a bit of a prude. I was like, "Everyone will see me”, this was all I was thinking. And then the minute you're there and they're screaming in your face, you're shivering, and you just want to do whatever it is they want you to do, as quickly as possible, because you're so terrified, you don't care that you're naked. You don't care that you're having to wee next to someone you don't know, like James Cracknell, the British legend. You just don't care. All of these things that I thought I was going to have such hangups about, they just fade in the background so quickly, because there's just more important things to worry about.