NEW Celebrity Big Brother star Donna Preston was branded a “bully” after laying into Christine McGuinness on a panel show.
Christine herself has been in talks for the reality show before but never made it into the spy house.
Donna will feature on the ITV reality show when it begins on Monday but was working alongside Joel Dommett on ITV2 series Hey Tracey! in 2019, when it is claimed she overstepped the mark with insults so savage they left Christine in tears and on the verge of quitting showbiz.
Christine, 35, did not name her tormentor but wrote of the incident in her autobiography A Beautiful Nightmare.
But The Sun has revealed it was Donna, 36, behind her tears.
Christine claims she was “bullied” after being greeted with the line: “I’ve got no f***ing idea who you are. I don’t care who you are, I don’t know who you think you are, and I don’t know what you’re even doing here.
“You are really beautiful, aren’t you? But there’s nothing else.”
Christine wrote that she’d prepared herself for a roasting but struggled to hit back with “banter."
She added: “I was mortified, embarrassed and humiliated, I felt so s***!
“But she went on and on. 'Just f**king stop now!' my brain screamed.
“I returned to my hotel shaken and in floods of tears - I’ve never cried so much!
“I was really upset about it and ever since then it’s always been a focus in my mind.
“Do I actually want to be on TV? Is this for me? Do I want to stay as a TV personality?”
Christine adds that the directors checked on her afterwards and her agent requested the footage did not make the final cut.
And she says that the presenter contacted her on social media afterwards to apologise.
Christine explained: “I didn’t reply and haven’t spoken to her since.
“I’m not a bully and I don’t pick on anybody, so I don’t want to associate myself with somebody like that.”
Joel, 36, has insisted any comment was made in jest and that he personally reached out to Top Gear’s Paddy McGuinness - Christine’s then husband - to check she was ok and praise her time on the show.
Joel said: “At the end of the day it is a comedy show. It was made in jest.
“I don't like anyone to feel like they went away from the show unhappy. No one expressed their concerns to me but I do like to make sure everyone is happy if they are on a show with me.
“I hope she is ok.”
Donna is best known for her role on Apocalypse Wow and appears as Despair in The Sandman which was released on Netflix in 2022.
But a role on Channel 4’s Scared Of The Dark in 2023 took her on to primetime TV and she has since featured as a panellist on Big Brother spin-off show Late & Live.
