Watching The X factor four years ago, who could have predicted that Rylan Clark-Neal, to give him his full name, would have gone on to have his own chat show, present This Morning and win Celebrity Big Brother? (Oh, and he has a cameo in Absolutely Fabulous: The Movie.)

“I have been very lucky,” he said. “I do feel that I was in the right place at the right time and I was very lucky. I do work hard though. It’s how I was brought up.”

It’s true there are many strings to Rylan’s bow at the moment, and, after winning Celebrity Big Brother, he is now presenting Big Brother’s Bit On The Side on Channel 5.“People think for Big Brother’s Bit On The Side I turn up at 10 o’clock and leave at 11,” said the 27-year-old.

“I’m actually there eight or nine hours. I’m not going to present a show I’m not involved in. That’s one of the reasons I’m not just an X Factor reject.”

In between his TV work and marrying Dan Neal at the end of last year, he has also found time to write his first book, The Life of Rylan.“I wanted to write it myself,” he said.

“No disrespect to anyone who has a ghost writer, but it was something I wanted to do. And I have just been really honest. There are a couple of surprises of course.

“I was used to writing songs but this is the first book I’ve written. It took me eight months and I just had to fit it in around everything else. I had my iPad and I was jotting things down in the car on the M25. But I managed to do it and I’m grateful that I did.

"There were times it was hard. I didn’t get any help, I didn’t ask my mum or my husband. I wanted to remember it completely through my eyes.”

As a man who deals in gossip on a daily basis, there were some parts of the book Rylan admits had to be warts and all.

“I love gossip, of course, but I don’t mind coming out with certain things that might make me seem a bad person because I think people appreciate the honesty,” he said.

“People told me ‘you are going to lose a lot of your friends’ after The X Factor and I thought ‘that’s not going to happen’. But I did lose a lot of my best friends and I was absolutely gutted.”

'I hope people will read the book and discover who I really am'

The book’s title, he said, had almost been The Tooth, The Whole Tooth and Nothing But the Tooth. But he said: “That was very much me three years ago. I’m so much more than that now, and I hope people will read the book and discover who I really am.”

Essex boy Rylan will be popping over to Kent for a book signing this weekend and visiting one of his favourite shopping haunts – Fremlin Walk in Maidstone.

“I absolutely love Kent. It is just over the bridge and I can see it from my window!” he said.

“I love Fremlin Walk, where I’m doing the signing. I love going shopping there.”

DETAILS

Rylan will be at Maidstone Waterstones in Fremlin Walk on Saturday, July 2 at 12.30pm for a book signing. His book, The Life of Rylan, is published by Century and costs £16.99.