Tragedy was Heather’s hardest battle

Unbreakable – NEITHER the jungles of Guyana nor the ice fields of Norway held any terrors for Welsh nightclub bouncer and model Heather Loyns.

For far worse than any challenges she might meet there was the day the 21-year-old student discovered that her long-lost father had died – just two days before she tracked him down.

“Those piranhas were scary in Guyana, for sure,” says Heather, a contestant on Channel 5’s new reality show Unbreakable, which pits contestants against some of the harshest conditions on the planet. “And Norway was so, so cold and really hard.

“But finding out my dad, Phillip Bracey, had died only two days before I found him again was definitely the hardest thing I’ve ever had to go through.”

Bullied at school, Heather, from Rumney in Cardiff, was five when her parents separated. Just before her 18th birthday she decided to track down her dad, only to find he had died suddenly, aged just 44, two days previously.

“That really sent me off the rails,” says Heather, who went to four schools in Cardiff after bullying left her feeling angry and rejected.

“I was smashing things up in the house, throwing weights down the stairs, everything.”

But martial arts fanatic Heather soon channelled her aggression and trained to become a nightclub bouncer, a job which she combined with working as a model by day.

“I was being bullied at school. Kids called me ugly and a skinny little runt,” says Heather, who has just gained two A-levels at Barry College.

“So I got into modelling. I knew I wasn’t ugly and if anybody tells me I can’t do something then that’s like a red rag to a bull to me – I’ve got to prove them wrong.”

The same gutsy attitude spurred Heather to audition for Unbreakable in which she and seven other self-professed hard-nuts and explorer presenter Benedict Allen endured gruelling physical tasks including:

nBiting out piranha fish brains and being stung all over by vicious huntsman ants;

nwrestling an anaconda;

nenduring the shockwaves from a 5kg TNT blast;

nsleeping in freezing ice caves;

nand diving in freezing ice holes.

Even a sprained ankle did not stop Heather from trekking through the Guyanese jungle carrying an 82kg backpack.

“I was so scared of the water – there were piranhas in there and everything,” she says.

The cast then transferred to Norway where Heather telemarked with a 32kg backpack plus a 10kg rifle.

But eventually her sore ankle left the show’s producers no option but to send her home.

“I was gutted,” she says.

Now Heather, a 2nd Dan Black Belt in karate and kick boxing, is hoping her media career will take off.

“I’d love to get into martial arts movies, do Steven Seagal-type stuff,” she says. “I wish I could have gone further in Unbreakable.

“But I don’t regret anything. I did it for the experience – and for me it wasn’t a game show which you won or lost, it was an experience which you survived or not. And I did it.”

Unbreakable starts on Channel 5 on Monday,October 6, at 9pm

Tragedy was Heather’s hardest battle – WalesOnline