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GOODBYE JULIE PUDYEAR!

Mar 13 2005




Exclusive By Alice Haine


JULIE Goodyear looks every inch the superstar as she sashays into the room in a slinky pink ballgown and declares: "Hilary Swank, eat your heart out."

The Corrie legend's trademark beehive hairdo and leopard-skin outfits are long gone.

Julie looks more glamorous and classy than she has for years - thanks to her rigorous slimming and work-out regime for ITV1's hit show Celebrity Fit Club.

The bubbly actress who made brassy blonde Bet Lynch a household name is delighted after trimming from a frumpy size 18 to svelte size 14.

Speaking exclusively to The People, she admits: "I'd never been in a gym before. I had no idea how unfit and out of condition I was."

Julie, 62, piled on weight after quitting the Street, with its exhausting round of rehearsals and filming, in 1995.

She pigged out on full English breakfasts, mounds of steak and chips and thought nothing of downing a bottle of wine a night with toyboy Scott Brand, 35.

The 5ft 4in star recalls: "I was eating what my man ate but he's a slim 6ft 4in and I'm not - so I was packing on the pounds.

"I loved cheese and pickle on white crusty bread, chocolate gingers and Indian meals - but all that is a distant memory.

"I was in a rut. Since leaving the Street I'd gone from a size 12 to 14, then to 16 and 18. My metabolism had totally changed. I'd gone from dashing around and being in the studio for a 6am make-up call to the luxury of lie-ins.

"When the Fit Club producers approached me I thought, 'I should consider this'. I needed a kick up the bum but had no idea how hard that kick would be. It was a shock to the system."

Julie started on a strict low-fat diet and endures punishing fitness sessions with ex-US marine drill sergeant Harvey Walden.

Fit Club bosses were amazed when she shed 3lbs from her hefty 11st 12lb in the first week and went on to lose 1st 2lbs over the next three months. Her target is to lose two stones.

Not bad for a former 60-a-day gran with osteo-arthritis in her knees - which Julie blames on tottering over Corrie's cobbles in high heels for 25 years - and cholesterol way above recommended levels at 8.9.

The actress, who dons fashionable Nike trainers to exercise three times a week, says: "The only exercise I'd taken before was a walk around my farm. I'd always assumed gyms were very masculine environments and I'm not keen on those big machines."

She also clashed with Harvey, 38, when she refused to play a basketball game. The furious instructor chased after her and screamed: "You are the captain. You should support everyone."

Julie told a flabbergasted Harvey: "I don't give a stuff."

The former soap queen says: "Harvey is an institutionalised robot. Being a marine is all he knows. I understand that working at Corrie made me institutionalised too. But I'm a free spirit now. I don't respond to bullies or emotional blackmail. He won't break me."

Julie admits she has also ignored the advice dished out by MP and Fit Club graduate Ann Widdecombe.

She says: "Ann constantly tells us to have a little treat here and there. But if I have a glass of wine, I want to finish the bottle - it's rude and wasteful not to. So I haven't touched a drop since New Year's Eve."

Julie pauses to take a sip of her new tipple - Pepsi Max with no added sugar.

In the flesh the actress is surprisingly petite. She has no bum to speak of, long slender legs and her glossy blonde hair falls to the middle of her back. But she confesses the quest to transform her image caused friction with Scott, her partner of nine years.

She says: "Scott's a typical fella, so at first he tormented me. He'd eat a box of Maltesers and say, 'Two for me, none for you'.

"Then his insecurity kicked in. He started wondering why I was doing it. Was I going to run off with someone else? He was very jealous.

"You can imagine how worried he was when I started disappearing every weekend to film Fit Club.

"Our relationship is very traditional. I do the cooking and suddenly I was saying, 'There's the cooker, there's the freezer, get on with it.' Now he's realised if you can't beat 'em, join 'em. So now when I'm on the treadmill he's on one beside me."

The couple met when lorry driver Scott delivered plaster to the farmhouse she was renovating. They now live together in the £500,000 home in Heywood, Lancs.

Work

Despite the 27-year age gap, the relationship has lasted longer than any of Julie's three marriages.

Her first, to factory worker Ray Sutcliffe, broke up by the time their son Gary was one.

Her second, to Tony Rudman, was over by the end of the reception and the third to American businessman Richard Skrob failed because of the distance.

Julie says: "Now I've quit the Street I can devote time to Scott and put more into our relationship. Who knows if I'll marry again. I have no regrets about my past and I take each day as it comes."

She pauses to puff on a Silk Cut in her trademark black cigarette holder.

"I've cut down from 60 to 20," she says. "But I've been smoking for 30 years and it's hard just to stop."

Offers of work still roll in for the former Rovers landlady and Julie plans to write her autobiography. She doesn't even rule out a Corrie comeback.

"I might pop in again. Who knows?" she says. But it'd be a fitter, glossier Bet.

-ITV1's Celebrity Fit Club is on Tuesday, 8pm

HER DIET BEFORE

Breakfast

Full English fry-up with lots of heart-clogging fat

Lunch

Cheese and pickle on mounds of thick crusty white bread

Dinner

Steak and chips or an Indian washed down with bottle of wine

HER DIET NOW

Breakfast

Healthy bran flakes with banana chopped in

Lunch

Smoked mackerel with snacks of fruit and raisins later

Dinner

Trout, fresh spinach and low fat yoghurt plus mineral water

TRAGEDY OF STAR'S ANOREXIC MOTHER

SLIMMER Julie revealed how her weight problems were partly caused by her tragic mum Alice's long battle with anorexia.

Alice, who also had cancer, weighed less than four stone when she died in 1987. Julie said: "I was always a healthy size 12 - I loved food. Maybe subconsciously I decided to eat properly in front of her to show her that you can eat and be all right.

"But after her death I compensated by over-eating. It was very painful seeing her die like that and I didn't want to pass that pain on to my son or grandchildren." Julie only realised how her mother's problems had affected her after a session with Fit Club's hypnotherapist Marissa Peer.

Julie said: "I was incredibly close to my mum and when she died she was only a little older than I am now.

"But I'd never made the link between her eating habits and mine."