Sitting in her manager's office in central London last September, Gemma Collins was seized by a coughing fit.
The media personality — best known for a string of reality TV show appearances, starting with The Only Way Is Essex and Dancing On Ice — tried to concentrate on the matter in hand, but her mind was elsewhere.
'I'd had a cough and a cold for some time,' she explains, and she feared the consequences. Sure enough, the intense coughing fit caused an embarrassing leak.
'It was as if the floodgates had opened,' she says frankly.
It wasn't the first time this had happened. A few weeks earlier she was at home when she experienced her first bladder leak after an intense bout of coughing.
Media personality Gemma Collins suffered an embarrassing leak in her manager's central London office, leaving her feeling 'dirty'
She said: ''It made me feel dirty. I'm a very hygienic person anyway, but no adult likes wetting themselves'
'Suddenly, it was like my waters had broken; perhaps I was having a baby . . .' she jokes now. But at the time it wasn't funny.
'It made me feel dirty. I'm a very hygienic person anyway, but no adult likes wetting themselves.'
A couple of weeks after that first episode, she was jumping up and down on a trampoline with her two nephews 'laughing like mad', and the same thing happened.
Soon after came that business meeting in London, the first time a leak had happened in public.
'I was uncomfortable, both physically but also emotionally,' she says.
'I was embarrassed and fearful that what was happening would be plain for everyone to see.'