Dicko Addresses 'Australian Idol' Comments Towards Paulini

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On last night’s I’m A Celebrity (Get Me Out Of Here), ex-Australian Idol judge and radio host Ian “Dicko” Dickson addressed the scandal that’s followed his and singer Paulini’s careers for 20 years.

He initially commented, “You need to choose more appropriate clothes or shed some pounds”, in 2003 after Paulini performed a rendition of Destiny’s Child’s Survivor on the show.

That comment led to a national controversy and a reckoning towards media figures’ propensity for fat-shaming.

Last night, Dicko told his campmate Woody Whitelaw that he received a letter from a viewer, a surgeon whose daughter had been admitted to the hospital with an eating disorder.

“He said, ‘This is your fault. She was an Australian Idol fan, and when you said that comment to Paulini, she spiralled out of control, and she is now in hospital; she might die, and if she does, I am going to hold you personally responsible,'” Dicko admitted. 

He continued, “To feel that my words had driven a beautiful young girl, the apple of her father’s eye, into a hospital ward where she could die; it’s really hard.”

Getting visibly emotional, Dicko shared that he spoke to a friend who was a psychologist. The friend informed him that real-world events could spur eating disorders, “and you have to accept that what you said might have been the trigger”.

“You’ve got to accept responsibility, you know? And I’m prepared to accept in that long society struggle to get there; I’m one of the villains that brought us there. I can’t change that. We do live in a different world now,” Dicko said.

“I’d like to have learned from it; I’d like the world to have learned from it. I certainly don’t have the slightest inkling for bailing someone up for the way they look these days.”

Ricki-Lee Coulter, Paulini’s bandmate in the Young Divas, recently admitted why she left the girl group following a backstage row.

She had lost her voice and couldn’t perform that night. Approaching an unnamed boss backstage, she began, “I had to have a sit-down with one of the guys in charge. I went in a room backstage by myself without the girls,” she began, explaining to her unnamed boss that she had a doctor’s certificate, which entailed a week of vocal rest.

“He was so enraged. He lost his mind. I’m a 20-year-old girl having an adult conversation with a grown-ass man. He was yelling, screaming, and then he threw a sandwich in my face. That is so wrong! Come on, dude,” she revealed. “That was very much the end of it for me. My voice is my career, and that’s how you’re going to react? I thought it was so embarrassing for him.”