Big Brother’s Nikki Grahame had a completely different job before she died, reveals her mum

NIKKI Grahame’s mum Sue has revealed her daughter was retraining for a completely different career shortly before her death.

Big Brother legend Nikki died in May last year at just 38-years-old after a lifelong battle with anorexia.

In a new interview Sue confessed that, just before the first lockdown, Nikki was working as a dinner lady and was training to be a teaching assistant.

Speaking to new! magazine, she said: “Before the pandemic hit, Nikki got a job as a dinner lady at a nearby school.

“She was also volunteering to help kids read in the classroom and had gone back to college to get a teaching assistant qualification.

“After she died, I had a phone call from the college to say she’d passed and they had her certificate.”

Sue said that Nikki struggled with lockdown and, despite her offers, refused to leave her London flat to isolate with her in Dorset.

Heartbreakingly Sue confessed Nikki felt like she couldn’t “justify” eating while the gyms were shut.

She said: “I’d visit and she’d sit there talking to me with weights in her hands.

“Every now and again, she’d run up and down the stairs. I’d beg her not to and she’d say, ‘Mum, if I’m going to eat, this is what I have to do.’

“It got to the point where I could just look at her and guess what she weighed. I would always be spot on. It’s a skill I wish I’d never learned.”

Sue also admitted that, while she was growing up, she was forced to make Nikki eat naked so she couldn’t hide food.

She said: “I started to bring Nikki home from school at lunchtime so I could supervise her meals as from day one it was like she was an experienced anorexic.

“It was like it was always there waiting to come out and she knew all the tricks to avoid eating.

“I was so desperate for her to put on weight that I’d make her sit naked to eat her food otherwise spaghetti Bolognese would end up stuffed in her socks or hidden in her knickers.”