Ollie Skelton has revealed a fear that hung over his head while Married At First Sight aired earlier this year.
Speaking on his podcast The Ollie Skelton Show Everyone Rates (TOSSER) this week, Ollie opened up about a situation that happened after he filmed the final vows for MAFS, but before the show had even hit our television screens.
Ollie explained that between filming the MAFS final vows — where he and Tahnee Cook committed to continuing their relationship outside the MAFS experiment — and filming the MAFS reunion episode, he had a mate’s bucks party in his hometown of Perth.
Ollie said he had a few drinks (as you do when your friend is about to get real-life married) and decided to have a sneaky little nap in another room where he wouldn’t be interrupted. I deeply relate to this.
But it’s what happened while he was asleep that, funnily enough, kept him up at night throughout the first half of this year.
“The adult entertainment — the barmaids — their bags were there [in the room],” Ollie explained to guest host Chantelle Schmidt (who, full disclosure, is also PEDESTRIAN.TV’s MAFS recapper).
“Having to tell Tahnee this was very difficult,” Ollie explained on the TOSSER podcast episode, “because it sounds incredibly suspect.”
He went on to explain that one of his mates “tipped them off” and that the barmaids came in and began taking photos with Ollie asleep in the background.
“You have to think about the optics here,” he explained. “They are taking it lying on a bed.”
He explains that he had clothes on and is fast asleep but that the photo is “not great”.
The photos were then shown to Ollie’s friend, who posted it in the boys chat the next day to have a laugh about it. Luckily the rest of the friends in the group chat discouraged the entire situation — but by this point the anxiety Ollie was facing was real.
All of this and MAFS hadn’t even aired its first episode yet.
“I’m talking with the PR team,” Ollie shared. “They’re like, it’s coming out. It’s gonna come out.”
Obviously if the image surfaced it would’ve posed a real issue for how the audience perceived Ollie (and his relationship with Tahnee) during the airing of MAFS — even if it was an innocent situation.
Ollie was worried about seeing it pop up in the news cycle for at least five months, explaining that he DM’ed the adult entertainment company to ask the barmaids if they could delete the image.
While they assured Ollie that the photo was deleted, he was still worried it would get released and couldn’t be 100% sure.
“It was terrifying,” he shared.
I think we’ve all had friends play a joke on us while we’re dead to the world, but the difference is huge when you’re in the public eye.
You can catch the full episode of the story on the TOSSER podcast here.
