Birds Of A Feather star Pauline Quirke realised she needed to lose weight when she couldn't fit an aeroplane seatbelt around her waist.
In her new book, Where Have I Gone? My Life In A Year, the actress says she lost track of how fat she had become until the summer of 2010 when she went on a family trip to Majorca.
She reveals she was unable to get the seatbelt across her body and had to ask an air stewardess for an extension belt.
Pauline describes the moment when the stewardess came back towards her with a fluorescent orange belt: "When she spotted me, I saw pity in her eyes. And I wanted to die.
"In truth, nobody else knew what was going on. Nobody cared. But I knew, and that was enough. I had to do something, and soon. I couldn't go through that pain and humiliation again."
The incident pushed the 52-year-old star to embrace a healthy eating plan that helped her lose eight stone in the following year.
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