SHE’S a bubbly, outspoken blonde on ITV2’s The Only Way Is Essex who oozes confidence and appears the least likely member of the cast to hide her problems.

But while she’s been on the cult reality show, Gemma Collins, aged 32, has managed to keep secret her anguish at suffering a miscarriage, which added to the grief she already felt about a previous abortion.

Off screen, this down-to-earth girl still has to brush away the tears as she talks about those and other traumatic events in her life, which she’s revealed in her autobiography, Basically... My Life As A Real Essex Girl.

“Everyone regards me as the mother hen on the show, because I’m older than the rest of them.

“They’re only in their early 20s, and they think I’ve got everything under control,” she says.

“But inside, at times,I can be just as vulnerable and insecure as anyone else, but Ijust don’t show it.I put on my mental armour, a front, really, no matter what I’m feeling, because Ilike to look strong and support other people.”

She’s needed all of that strength to cope not only with those personal upheavals but also a barrage of wounding public criticism about her weight – she’s a size 20.

“Deep down, although Ilove being famous,I’m just a girl who wants to be loved and have kids, so the termination and miscarriage were heartbreaking for me,” says Collins.

“When I was young,I was an allsinging, all-dancing Essex princess who went to stage school after school and at weekends.

“My mum always told me, ‘You’re going to be a star one day, Gemma’.

“I never thought it would come true, though.

“And I certainly didn’t realise what it would be like to be in the spotlight and have everyone saying whatever they liked about you.

Sometimes it’s been very tough.”

There was no hint of her future high-profile life in 2010 when she discovered she was pregnant just as a five-year relationship with a City banker started faltering.

Doctors advised her that the foetus could have been harmed because she’d continued to take the contraceptive pill and had medication for what she assumed was simply an upset stomach.

“It was a complete shock when I found out I was pregnant.I have polycystic ovaries, which means I’m prone to weight gain and have irregular periods,” she says.

“I got three doctors’ opinions and they said the baby might be damaged because of what I’d taken.

The risk of complications was high.

“Not only that, my relationship had started to break down.I’d gone from thinking I had every girl’s dream life – nice house, lovely boyfriend – to find I was facing being a single mother.I didn’t think it was right to go through with it.”

Heartbroken, she visited a clinic twice before being able to finally face having the termination and then went through a year of depression, and even once selfharmed.

“I cut myself just once and I’ve never done it again, it scared me too much.

“To comfort myself,I ate – food was an emotional crutch for me and I was sometimes bingeing on food during that time,” says Collins, who when she was younger was a svelte size 10.

“Also, my health problems mean my body produces more insulin than other people’s, it’s like diabetes. Really,I don’t eat that much now, and I’ve tried every diet going, but I’m always going to have to work 10 times harder at losing weight than other people.

“I’m determined to get medical help so I can achieve my aim of being a size 14.I’d prefer that to winning the lottery.

“Even though the internet trolls and bullies who criticise me for my size have really hurt me,I refuse to be put down by them. Beauty comes from within and I take comfort in that.”

A friendship with Amy Childs, who was one of the cast on TOWIE, led to Collins, then selling cars for a BMW dealership, being asked to join the series in 2011.

Within months of joining, she found she was pregnant again, but she suffered a miscarriage.

Hours after losing the baby, she put on a brave face to hide her pain from the TOWIE cast, and attended the National Television Awards.

“I owe so much to TOWIE for giving me so many opportunities.I knew I had to go down that red carpet as I didn’t want to let them down.I couldn’t bear to share my misery with my mates on the cast.

It wouldn’t have been fair,” she says.

“I was devastated, though, as I really wanted the baby.

“For a while Ifeared I’d never have kids and at one time I thought it was God’s way of punishing me for the termination, for which I will always feel a sense of guilt.

“But I do comfort myself with the knowledge that psychics and mediums I’ve visited, because I believe in all that, have predicted I will eventually have two children of my own.”

Collins, who had an on-off romance with cast member James ‘Arg’ Argent, 24, but says they’re now “just best friends”, is living with her current boyfriend, Rami Hawash.

“I really love him and hope he’s Mr Right, but if he doesn’t put a ring on my finger within a year,I’m ‘offski’,” she vows.

“After allI’ve been through, all the ups and downs in my love life, I’m stronger as a person now.

“There’s still a bit of the car saleswoman in me, and I believe if someone’s not going to make the commitment, then I can’t be wasting my time.I want that dream of a family and in a couple of years I’d like to be married and thinking about babies.”

She has no regrets about playing out her life under the relentless public gaze in TOWIE.

On the contrary, she says: “It’s made me grow up – Ifeel like a woman now, not a girl.

“I’ve proved to myself that I can cope with the exposure, even when it’s unwelcome occasionally, like being recognised when I was having my miscarriage and on my way to hospital in the ambulance.”

She puts down her popularity to the fact that people can relate to her. “I’m just a normal girl who struggles with her weight, and I love being tanned, blonde and having a bit of banter. That’s what we’re like where I come from.

“My ambition, one day, would be to be like an English version of Oprah Winfrey, as I’ve been through quite a lot and IfeelI can empathise with people and they open up to me.

“At the end of the day, this book’s been like therapy for me.IfeelI’ve got everything out there, got rid of my demons, and there’s no longer any secrets.

“From now on, my motto is ‘the only way is Gemma’ because I’m happy and comfortable in my own skin and I’m true to myself.

“Basically, you can take the girl out of Essex but you can’t take Essex out of the girl, and I’m proud of who I am.”

  •  Basically... My Life As A Real Essex Girl by Gemma Collins is published in hardback by Ebury Press, £12.99. Available now.