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The chubby 5ft 1" actress who plays Mimi Maguire on Channel 4’s Shameless has gone public about having a gastric balloon operation to help her tackle her weight problem.

Speaking frankly on BBC Radio Manchester, she explained that -  in her view - big just ain’t beautiful.

“I'm getting married to my fella Stu next year and I just thought I'm never, ever going to be a fat bride.

I’m the same as any other woman, I want my partner to say to me: you look amazing. And I’m sorry, as long as you’re fat, you can scrub up as well as you can, but you’re never going to look classy, elegant or beautiful.”

Drastic

The gastric balloon, which is filled with saline and sits inside the stomach for six months, means she can only eat small portions - otherwise she is sick.

Tina told Eamonn and Dianne that she’d taken what she considered to be a ‘drastic step’ because, like any addict, she had to accept that she needed help.

“Something I realised, as someone who’s quite angry about being fat, is that unfortunately I’m not like some of my skinny friends who can eat ridiculous amounts of food.

“You can go on forever about ‘my metabolism slower than yours.’ The point is: you need to exercise to speed up your metabolism and then you can eat anything you want in life.

“But just have a bite, not the whole box which is what I’ve done for 15 years.”

Reality

Tina said that she believed that the only way to tackle the obesity epidemic was for overweight people to face up to reality.

“You’d have to be in a coma to really not recognise a cream cake from a piece of broccoli.

“We have programmes on the TV every week: meet the 40-stone man, 80-stone man, the 100-stone man. The fact that is, the same with cigarettes, alcohol and drugs – fat is going to kill you. It’s as simple as that.

“[On television] I think they must go to the thickest families I’ve ever seen in my entire life with the IQ of a sprout to actually not know that deep fat fried food is not good for you.

"You’re a big fat family having big fat kids. And unfortunately that’s the way we’ve gone.”