Brian Dowling: 'Hosting Big Brother never felt natural'

rian Dowling "lost" himself while hosting \'Big Brother\'.

The 42-year-old star won the show twice as a contestant - first in 2001 and then again in 2010 for \'Ultimate Big Brother\' - but Brian admitted taking over as presenter of the competition in 2011 "never felt natural".

He told new! magazine: "That whole time was a very weird time on the show. It didn\'t feel as natural as it should have, doing the main show. If I wanted to turn left, they would tell me to turn right, even with the fact that my accent was too Irish at one point.

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"I just felt like it didn\'t click. Some people wanted me to host, but I felt like a lot of people on the show didn\'t want me to host. I felt like I lost myself hosting the show. When I look back at it now, I don\'t really recognise the person that I was.

"Had I been myself a bit more and if they had let me be who I am, I would have enjoyed it a bit more. It didn\'t end in the best way, being fired on such a public platform."

Brian also revealed that he found out he had been fired and replaced with Emma Willis from a newspaper.

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He explained: "A newspaper broke the story to me when I\'d signed a contract and was coming back to host two more seasons. And to find out they were in secret talks with Emma the whole time, it\'s not a nice feeling. But that\'s just the industry we\'re in. It happens and I just had to hold my head high and walk away from that. But when I look back on my time being a housemate twice and hosting it ... you have to find the positives."