7 Questions with… Unforgivable’s Lou Sanders: ‘It’s good to air your dirty secrets, it gives you a feeling of freedom’

Mel Giedroyc, Lou Sanders and Dave are set to help put your January blues behind you and kick-start February in style with brand new comedy series Unforgivable.

Mel and Lou are joined every week by a trio of celebrities who have to fess up to their most outrageous and morally bankrupt behaviour for our entertainment.

Guests including Graham Norton, Jennifer Saunders, Harry Redknapp, Richard Ayoade and Gemma Collins will be confessing to the dark underbellies beneath their shiny showbiz profiles with stories that will make you cringe, howl and gasp.

From feeding mouldy sandwiches to step-parents and public toilet accidents, this is the TV equivalent of the Popbitch newsletter - you’ll never quite look the same way at these celebs again.

We caught up with co-host Lou Sanders to find out more about the series and her own Unforgivable moments…

1.  Were you surprised by some of the celebrity confessions on the show?

Yes and no. It’s good to air your dirty secrets. It gives you a feeling of freedom. If I’ve done something gross or hideous, I like to tell everyone. What I don’t like is for someone else to tell everyone.

If you hear something second hand, it’s so much worse. If you hear, "Oh Alex s**t himself", you’d be like, "What?! That’s unfortunate". But if you tell someone that you s**t yourself, you own the power of the story. Hear it second-hand, you’re worried if Alex is alright.

Across the series I do say horrific things that I’ve done. The series has eight episodes and every episode I share a horrible thing I’ve done. But you’ll have to watch the show to find out what they are.

2. Your face on the show suggests you were appalled by a few celebs. Were you?

I do wear stuff on my face. I watched three episodes and there is a lot of cowering from me. There is one story about a little fish and I wanted to gag. In fact there was one time where I did gag.

I have quite a visceral imagination so if someone says something gross, I will gag. The people in the sound room noticed, they said afterwards, "You were genuinely gagging then". I was retching, retching. See if you can spot that moment.

3. Have you done anything unforgivable in lockdown?

I don’t think so. Nothing I’m going to tell you over Zoom right now! I think a lot of people are going mad and I have done things that are maybe a bit creepy.

We know a guy who runs the coffee shop near us, me and my flatmate. We always have fun with him. And the other day, there was a guy in the queue who I thought was really good looking and I told the guy who runs the coffee shop that I loved him. I said, "Tell him that I love him".  But then I saw him again another day and he was an absolute donkey.

I just thought, why I have told someone I don’t know very well that I’m in love with a stranger? I think we’re all embarrassing ourselves a bit more in lockdown. But our forgiveness levels are higher. When you get a text from an ex-acquaintance, you just think, fair enough, we’re all bored.

4.  Can we test your own Unforgivable past – have you ever lied to get a job?

Oh yes. I used to lie all the time to get jobs. I lied about my salary, I lied about my skills. It’s pretty embarrassing because they can tell pretty quickly that you’re an idiot. And it’s annoying for HR to let you go. I did lie to get jobs, but what’s really the difference between lying and selling yourself. You tell me.

My Spotlight CV, I had to take off that I could do accents on there. I put I could do an American accent and I thought, "You can’t do any of those?"

There was once this really fit guy I knew who worked in TV and he interviewed me and he found a really old CV of mine. It said that I got French my GCSE early. It such a lame brag and it was so immature. It was so embarrassing.

5. Have you ever stolen anything?

I did once  eat Cadbury’s Creme egg in a shop. And once I got done for shoplifting.

I was wearing this headband as me and my friends were going around thinking of things to steal and I genuinely forgot I’d put it on. I walked out of Woolworths - it’s always Woolworths – and this undercover detective stopped me. He said, "You know what you’ve done, you’ve nicked stuff, you’ve been got". I said, "I haven’t!" and then he pinged my hairband and I was just crying.

They call your parents and my step-dad came to pick me up and for five minutes on the way home, he just said, "You stupid, stupid, stupid, stupid, stupid". Genuinely for five minutes. It was at that point, me and my friends just started laughing.

6. Have you ever woken up and not known how you got somewhere?

Must have done. Oh I mean yeah. Not remembered the journey home, not know who I was next to, yeah. It was called the ‘90s!

7. You’re going to be in the new Taskmaster Champion of Champions series. How do you rate your chances?

Yes! F***ing can’t wait. I’m going to watch all the other series and study them. During the series, I was really competitive because I wanted to do Champion of Champions and come back again. But this time they can’t strip you of the title and there’s nowhere else to go, so I think I will be less competitive.

Unless they do a Champion of Champion of Champions. Hmm, I may have to rethink.

Watch Unforgivable on Dave, Tuesdays at 10pm and catch up on UKTV Play.