I'm a Celebrity... Get Me Out of Here! star Dean McCullough has opened up about being homeless during an emotional interview. The BBC Radio 1 presenter revealed that he didn't realise how bad things were when he was younger but looking back, sees that he was experiencing homelessness.
Dean, 32, appeared on Good Morning Britain on Wednesday, 18 December, to speak about hidden homelessness and opened up about his challenging childhood. Talking to Richard Madeley and Kate Garraway via video link, Dean recalled having no fixed address as a child. He openly shared: "People think that they know what a homeless person looks like. They think it's someone who is on the street with a bottle of liquor in a brown bag asking for money, but from my own personal experience, we were homeless whenever I was younger and my mum was forced out of the home and I went with her.
"We shared a bedroom, we were on the sofa, and at the time I was going to school, I was getting dressed up every day, I was fed well and we were surprisingly quite happy. We made the most of that situation and at the time I wouldn't have called that homelessness."
Dean went on to explain that it wasn't until "later on in life" that he realised what he had experienced. He said: "I started working with Centrepoint – I'm the young person’s prevention ambassador for the charity – and it wasn't until I was working with them… They didn't know about my homeless story, and to be honest with you, I didn't really understand the experience that I’d had until we started working together."
The radio DJ also spoke about his experience of homelessness as a young adult. He said: "I was living in London between performing contracts and other bits and bobs, I didn't have a fixed address, and for quite a lot of my time living in London I was moving from house to house and some of those houses that I lived in were quite volatile.
"Housemates of mine were using drugs and alcohol and I got caught up in that world as well. Sometimes I’d go out on a Thursday and stay out all weekend going from party to party, friends house to friends house just so that I wouldn't be living in that volatile environment."
He continued: "That kept happening and I didn't realise, I just thought I was having a good time, I thought I was being a bit wild, a bit free, but actually I didn't have a fixed address… I didn't have keys to anywhere – I was just waiting for my housemates to come home and then I would be able to come back home and maybe have something to eat, so I didn't realise that that was homelessness."
Dean also spoke about the mental health impact going from "house to house" had on him as he recalled how lonely it could feel. "I felt lost and I felt very lonely but I used drink and drugs, unfortunately, to feel some sort of a connection," he shared.
"At the time I just thought that I was being fun and that's just what you did when you were in your late teens, early 20s. But actually, what it's done for me later on in life is that it means my home is really important to me, making a home and also offering up somewhere to stay if friends of mine find themselves in that situation."
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