JOJO Siwa has opened up about her relationship with Chris Hughes – saying she immediately took to him because of the way he hugged and smelled.
The singer, who fell for former Love Island star Chris in Celebrity Big Brother house, said she struggled to go back to normal life without Chris when she returned to the US for a month.
But now the American star, who hails from Nebraska, has recently returned to the UK to be with Chris – and she plans to make good on a promise to mark their love with a tattoo.
Former Dance Moms star JoJo, 22, known for hit songs Karma and Guilty Pleasure, met sports presenter Chris, 32, for the first time in the CBB house.
Asked what’s special about him, she said: “What’s not?”
Then asked by Gyles Brandreth on the Rosebud podcast what first attracted her to Chris, she said: “When he first walked in, he was the only person that I knew what they looked like before coming into the show. I was ‘Oh that’s the Chris guy’.
“Initially the first thing that I took in about him was he was a good hugger. I liked his hug. That felt like a nice embrace. And he smelt good – ‘he seems cool’.
“We just kind of bonded right away and it started very much so as friends.
“I wasn’t looking to fall for him. He wasn’t looking to fall for me. We just were having so much fun together.
“Whenever one of us was down it was the other one of us that helped.
“Everybody got to see when he was there for me at the beginning.
Chris Hughes breaks silence on JoJo Siwa relationship and he’s quizzed by Ben Shepherd on This Morning
“There was a day – it was Easter – and he was having a really, really rough day. And he was in the diary room for a really long time and I was freaking out, because I was like ‘Something’s wrong’.
“Everyone was like ‘calm down’, and I was like ‘No, something’s wrong’.
“And he came out of the diary room and he was like ‘I had a stomach ache’. And I looked at him and I was like ‘you’re not good’. And I just gave him a hug.
“We had a talk and he really opened up and he wasn’t ok, he really wasn’t ok. I was able to be there for him.
“We had more fun than I’ve ever had in my life in that house."
JoJo continued: “Leaving the house, you’re in this bubble of Big Brother, so leaving the house I wasn’t sure what was going to happen.
“But I had all these realisations of my life, things that I wasn’t happy (about), that I was being ok with that I should never have been ok with. ‘I’m not happy, so I need to handle things’, and I did very quickly once I got out of the house.
“Then over a little bit of time I realised that I started to feel something for Christopher that I never intended, but I couldn’t not feel.
“And I’m a very, very lucky girl because he was feeling the same thing.
“We were watching Who Wants to be a Millionaire? And the answer to the winning question was serendipity and somebody replied ‘and do you know what serendipity is, it’s you and JoJo’.
“And we googled it and both of us freaked out because that was the million dollar question.
“The word serendipity is Christopher and I’s favourite word now. If you read the definition of it, it’s essentially finding love when you’re least looking for it. It’s beautiful.
“I don’t know how the universe did align for Chris to come into my life.”
When asked if she had any recollection of sadness from her life, JoJo said: “Leaving England when I left a month ago. I was really sad that day because I not only had to say goodbye to everybody but I was saying goodbye to the phase of life that was Big Brother.
“And I was really sad. When I got home it took me maybe three or four weeks to get over the sadness. It was really hard.”
After returning to England and seeing Chris again, she revealed how smitten she is, adding: “I want Chris to last for a lifetime.”
She is planning new tattoos to mark her affection for him and fond memories of CBB.
She said: “The Chris tattoo, I said in Big Brother that I would get this bamboo stick. “And I said that I would get a little bamboo stick tattoo, and I want to get two other tattoos from the Big Brother house of memories that I have from in there.
“I would get that because as much as that relates to Chris, I can deem it not bad luck by placing more on Big Brother.”
