Ajay Rochester's son's shock: Mummy, that fat woman is you!

Ajay Rochester describes in her own words her humiliation when she finally became a cover girl – as the “worst bikini body ever”.

With two weeks off over Christmas [a break from shooting Channel 9’s new weight loss series Excess Baggage], I flew back to LA to spend it with my darling boy Kai. Home and with a Christmas meal to cook the very next day, we raced off to the supermarket to grab some groceries.

“Standing at the checkout, my eyes skim across a magazine I never look twice at, the National Enquirer, and I think, ‘Oh, wow, some random celebrity has the very same bikini as me’. I can’t see the face of the alleged celebrity because there is a sticker across it, claiming that $2 and a turn of a page guarantees a peepshow of the best and worst beach bodies of all time. “It takes me a few seconds. I’m not sure how long, but time stood still, crickets chirped, while clocks probably ticked loudly… and then it hit me! “I looked a little closer at the fat spilling out over the bikini bottom and marvelled at the back fat spilling out of the top like a nicely rolled roast.

“Oh my god! That fat celebrity with the worst beach body of all time was ME! ME! Oh my god! I am on the cover of a magazine, the fattest I have been in years! Oh dear! Oh dear! Oh dear! “I look around, forgetting that I am in America and no-one knows who I am (it’s only in Australia that people scrutinise my every move), and I grab the magazine, dying a thousand deaths.

“I show Kai, pointing and – unlike me – unable to find the words to describe the horror I am experiencing, but he sympathises immediately. “‘Oh my gosh,’ he says. ‘Why do they do that? That poor person. That’s just rude. Imagine how they feel…’ “At first I think he is joking. Then I realise, bless him, he doesn’t realise it is me – his mother – on the cover of a magazine I hope none of his friends ever get their hands on.