In her day job as reality television star, Gemma Collins goes by the alter-ego of "The GC". But in Gemma Collins: Self-Harm and Me (Channel 4, Wednesday) she introduces herself simply as Gemma. "The GC is for when I'm working," she tells a support group for people with a history of ritualistically cutting themselves.
Collins could have done with just such a network when she began self-harming as a young woman, we learn over the course of a thoughtful and sensation-free film. The catalyst for her harmful behaviour, she reflects now, was constant pressure to be perky and exuberant. And who put that pressure on her? The answer, she ultimately concludes, is her parents.
This unflinching profile makes a virtue of Collins's ebullient personality, which will be familiar to fans of reality series The Only Way Is Essex and her millions of social media followers. It also painstakingly negotiates the question of culpability – and the degree to which Collins's self-harm arose from her upbringing.
The upshot is a painful conversation with her mother. In the end, however, parent and child agree to differ as to what triggered the behaviour. “I don’t even know why you did it,” says Collins’s mum. “I thought you copied someone off TV.”
Collins shrugs and then expresses her frustrations to the camera. “She wanted to live in the razzmatazz, tap-dance, show-business world,” she says of her mother.
It is an intensely personal portrait, focusing largely on Collins’ own struggles. It does, however, touch on some unsettling facts. In the UK, one in six people aged 16 to 24 have self-harmed. Women are more likely to do so (the corollary being men are at higher risk of suicide).
The details are unsettling. Collins reveals that she used to rely on silicon plasters to cover up the knife-marks. Silicon reduced the scarring – though it did not eliminate it completely. Her arms still bear the faintest white lines.
Collins is clear, too, about not wishing to star in her own private tear-jerker. She is serious about confronting her traumas and the childhood factors behind them.
But she isn’t seeking the audience’s sympathy. What Collins really wants is her fans to know that, no matter how hopeless the situation may seem, a brighter future is always possible. “This is not a celebrity sob-story,” she says. “Don’t get the violins out for me.”
