Brian Dowling "lost" himself while hosting ‘Big Brother’.
The 42-year-old star won the show twice as a contestant – first in 2001 and then again in 2010 for ‘Ultimate Big Brother’ – but Brian admitted taking over as presenter of the competition in 2011 "never felt natural".
He told new! magazine: "That whole time was a very weird time on the show. It didn’t feel as natural as it should have, doing the main show. If I wanted to turn left, they would tell me to turn right, even with the fact that my accent was too Irish at one point.
"I just felt like it didn’t click. Some people wanted me to host, but I felt like a lot of people on the show didn’t want me to host. I felt like I lost myself hosting the show. When I look back at it now, I don’t really recognise the person that I was.
"Had I been myself a bit more and if they had let me be who I am, I would have enjoyed it a bit more. It didn’t end in the best way, being fired on such a public platform."
Brian also revealed that he found out he had been fired and replaced with Emma Willis from a newspaper.
He explained: "A newspaper broke the story to me when I’d signed a contract and was coming back to host two more seasons. And to find out they were in secret talks with Emma the whole time, it’s not a nice feeling. But that’s just the industry we’re in. It happens and I just had to hold my head high and walk away from that. But when I look back on my time being a housemate twice and hosting it … you have to find the positives."