Last night saw the departure of the sometimes-villain with the haunting rave score, British lad Paddy Colliar from The Bachelorette, without ever copping either a single date with the woman he endlessly described as “fit“, Ali Oetjen. He wasn’t even allowed to attend last night’s sleepover!
For a full recap of last night’s ep, featuring a biffo between Colliar and Charlie Newling versus Bill Goldsmith and Taite Radley, here you go:
But we can just skip to the crux of it, which is that Colliar and Dan Hobley were turfed outta the mansion.
In a chat with PEDESTRIAN.TV today, Colliar said he felt that he had been given a raw deal by Oetjen, being strung along for more than half of the series for no real reason.
I feel like she could’ve taken the time to really, really get to know me, but I think she was feeding me information on our chats that we were having, and then her actions weren’t actually speaking: she was just saying things and then not doing anything about it, e.g. single date or extended time.
He says they’d have chats about their similar values, about their families, but nothing would ever come of it. He ended up asking her directly why he was being kept around. “She’s like ‘You’re intriguing, you’re funny, you’re cheeky, you light up a room. All of the guys get along with ya.’ And I’m like ‘Yeah, that’s well and good, but…’”
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Oetjen then asked Colliar to show him his emotional side, but he reckons that’s a ridiculous thing to ask someone to do over the course of a five- or ten-minute chat.
She tried to get me to open up about my past and everything like that, but it’s like do you meet someone out at a cafe and then just be like ‘Oh here, this is how I got bullied when I was young, this is how I overcame it, this is how I built the resilience, blahblahblah, here have all my information.’ Y’know what I mean? If you wanna take the time, you take me aside and you really, really get to know me for me.
By the end of the series Colliar says he was “over it” and had “clocked out” from the series, not really making an effort to spirit Oetjen away at the final cocktail party. He was “done“, ready to leave. “End of the day if you don’t take the time to get to know me then why would I stick around?”
Colliar says he decided to give The Bachelorette a crack because he was “happy where I was at“. He figured he’d regret it if he didn’t do it, and knowing what he knew about Oetjen, that she’s blonde, blue-eyed, into fitness and from Adelaide, “I just thought, ‘Y’know what? Why not?’”
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Still, Colliar says it was hard to see himself edited as the villain at first, but chose not to “read too much into it“.
I obviously was a bit of a loose cannon on the first night, but I was confident in the impact I made on and off camera, and I knew that my character would change and that different side to Paddy would come out. And it did.
You know what? We signed the papers. We knew what we were in for. I didn’t actually know I was that bad on the first night – it was a bit of a wake-up call. But in saying that I would probably be very, very annoyed if my character didn’t change, because you talk to any of the boys and they’ll tell you exactly what I was like on and off camera. So I’m grateful that it did change and that actually shows that I did have an impact on everyone around me, and that villain that was shown in the first and second episodes became the cheeky larrikin with a sweet side.
At the end of it all, Colliar says he doesn’t “regret a thing, ey?” “I was myself when I walked in and I was myself when I walked out. I was Paddy… Unfortunately, Ali didn’t take the time to get to know me, but the experience was unbelievable and I’ve made lifelong mates.”
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Colliar says he was closest in the mansion with Radley and Newling. He even says he shared a dorm-style room – “like on school camp” – with those two, Ivan Krslovic, Pete Stephen, Todd King and Hobley.
He’s quick to defend Newling, who’s definitely not coming off well on the show atm: “I think Charlie is getting portrayed as a kind of controlling, possessive [person], but at the end of the day, I think Charlie’s a very, very good lad. There’s more to him and I think he’s just been misunderstood.”
Daniel Noonan, the “silent assassin“, he laughs, is his pick for the winner, a choice that he reckons would “surprise the whole nation“.
“I think he’s gonna come out and shine.”
In an interview during car ride out of the mansion, Colliar saw the bright side of going home: plenty of matches on Tinder. Was he right?
I haven’t been on Tinder. What a crumpet for saying that. I haven’t had Tinder in a very, very long time. I’m just concentrating on me, trying to get back to normality, when all this stuff’s going on. If opportunities [are] to come, I’m gonna take them. If the right girl comes along, then yeah, let’s see what can happen. I didn’t really wanna go see girls or talk to girls while I was in the house [on TV] because I don’t wanna be known as that.
When asked if he’d be interested in another shot at love on telly on Bachelor in Paradise, Colliar jibes “Is the Pope Catholic? Well there’s your answer.“
