Courtney’s new act

Before he turned up on televised fat farm The Biggest Loser, Courtney Jackson just wanted to stop his tits bouncing on the dancefloor.

Months later, his tits have stopped bouncing. And Jackson has stopped making jokes about his weight, acknowledging they were a defence mechanism all along.

I used to be angry and negative and now I’m a lot more calm and positive, he says.

I grew up overweight and got bullied at high school, and I built up a thick skin; rather than letting people have a go at me I’d put myself down first.

Describing himself as not quite hot, yet, Jackson says he’s waiting in limbo for the show’s final weigh-in next week. Then, he says, he’ll start his life over.

That includes an unexpected change of career. The 22-year-old Gold Coaster is currently studying to be a personal trainer, and help some of his rich, overweight neighbours to get into shape.

I realised it’s a way that I can actually keep fit and healthy, he says. For a long time I’ve hated selling mobile phones in a retail store. And I just actually started to enjoy training and it’s all fallen into place.

Unlike Artie Rocke, the gay contestant in The Biggest Loser‘s series one, Jackson says he’s never felt pressure within the gay community to look a particular way.

Sometimes being in the gay community you think you want to be all buff and that kind of shit, but I don’t really care about that. I don’t really care how people at gay bars perceive me. All I care about is my friends.