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Gelli was brought up on an army barracks near Bracht in Germany, where her father was stationed with the Royal Logistics Corps. By the time she was seven her parents had split up and she, her mother, and her two brothers ended up in Coventry on a council estate in Wood End; full of drunks, weirdo's, and battered kids. Things didn't go too well and after a year Gelli's Mum had become a drunk and suffered a nervous breakdown, her brothers were sent to a boys home and she was fostered into a family with three older sisters who bullied her and a fat foster Mum who treated her like a burden.
A year later Gelli's mum took her children back and things got worse; she continued drinking, and tried to force Gelli's oldest brother to take an overdose. He moved out to live with their father (who by now was living in Kent having left the army to try and save his marriage), the other brother following not long afterwards. Eventually the neighbours turned against Gelli's mum and hounded her out of her house and the neighbourhood to the equally shitty Foleshill, where she lost her temper one day and cut Gelli's chin open with a Stanley knife;
"She just went nuts, I grabbed my stuff and ran for it, no idea where I was going. Eventually I ended up in a building with a truck inside it, it was open and there were blankets inside so I just went to sleep. I got woken up by a fireman; it was a fire engine I was asleep in. He called the police who spoke to mum who told them more bullshit. I screamed at them not to let her take me but they made me go; I got hit as soon as we left the police station."
Two weeks later her Dad took her to Kent for a holiday. When Gelli saw the south of England she couldn't believe how tidy and green everything was, and more importantly how happy her two brothers were. And so, Gelli also moved in with her Dad at the age of 12. She came to the south a gobby northerner and started a habit by getting into a fight on the first day of school. She bunked off a lot, and the teachers didn't really like her very much, eventually she was expelled for fighting;
"Everyone was getting changed after games when one of the boys came in and just hurled a medicine ball into the room. It hit me on the head and knocked me clean out. I came round and someone told me who had done it so I stormed into the boys changing room screaming his name. The teacher heard me and came out wanting to know what was going on, then the guy appeared, playing the innocent. I just saw complete red and went for him, punched him to the floor and stamped on his face until the teacher grabbed me, I was so angry I punched her as well, she called me a slut so I called her a cunt and walked out."
Gelli eventually left school at 15 to become an apprentice at a hair salon, she qualified as a stylist and things went well until one Sunday morning when she woke with a pain down one side. Ignoring it for most of the day she eventually went to the hospital to get it checked and to everyone's amazement her lung had collapsed. Suddenly it was an emergency, she was gowned and left in a room with a guy who showed her a variety of large metal objects and explained how they were going to ram them through the side of her chest. The lung refused to stay inflated and she was referred to Guy's Hospital ("which looked like you'd imagine a mental asylum to be, totally disgusting").
The specialists found three small holes in the lung, most likely minor birth defects. She was out of it for days and eventually came round to find tubes sticking out of her, no movement in her arms, and a lot of pain in her back; a keyhole operation had been planned, but they had to change tactic on the job and left a 9 inch scar down her back.
It took a few months to recover this time, and her boss was quick to let her know that she may as well give up on hairdressing as the chemicals used every day would put too much strain on her lungs. So Gelli did the Southern thing, and went into telesales for a double glazing company. Discovering something of a talent she was soon the top salesperson and moved into mobile phone sales while they were still booming, making enough to spend some time travelling Europe with a group of friends taking in France, Belgium, Holland, and Luxembourg. Then her other lung collapsed.
Yet another operation followed (this time through a keyhole in Gelli's side), and they had to cut 6% of her lung away as it had died. Recovery was quick and she used the last of her money on a tour of St. Lucia's underground spliff smoking dens before returning to a new job as a DJ agent. Gelli proceeded to sign legendary DJ Farley "Jackmaster" Funk to her books, and managed to blag an unknown DJ £1000 for a one hour set on the Isle of Wight.
Not long later she met Steve Piper through mutual friend Mark Mannell, fell in love, and moved in with him a few months later; forcing a move to the more reliable and regular income that came with retail and car sales. Unfortunately this led to her and Piper spending 2 years taking Beadles Car Dealerships (her ex-employers) and Ralph Marriott (another employee) through the works tribunal system for sexual harassment. Her version of events detailed an entire first week of serious physical and verbal harassment followed 2 months later by her being told she was lying about the whole thing and getting sacked; with the superb legal support of barrister Schona Jolly and solicitor Krishna Santra, the tribunal saw things her way and ordered Beadles to pay out £171,000, and Marriott to pay out £7,500.
This near record award caused a minor tabloid frenzy, kicking off with articles in The Guardian, The News of the World, The Sunday Mirror, and The People newspapers, followed by a bizarre angle on the story by the Daily Mail who used the award to complain about the low level of compensation for victims of crime, this got The Sun and GMTV going, and a series of offers to be flown abroad, put into luxury hotels and paid yet more money cropped up for an exclusive interview. Finding it all a bit weird the offers were declined and time was invested in moving out of the centre of town and getting a dog instead (a now 60kg beast pictured above at an earlier stage!).
Gelli still lives with Piper, cat Coffee and dog Baron in Kent, and whilst visibly despising acting, she gets about as animated as Gelli ever gets when it comes to snapping production photos or wrangling onscreen animals; even standing up on occasion, she is currently hugely busy running successful sister company and music agency Coffee Artists, and has somehow blagged the biggest office space under the pretence she needed more space for meetings, only to always go out for meetings; damn agents!
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