Taylor Ryan, the OnlyFans creator who dated BBC Gladiators star Giant, says he broke up with her so he could try to win back his spot on the show after their relationship got him fired.
Giant, whose real name is Jamie Bigg, was cut from the fourth series of the rebooted family programme after he told producers he planned to go public with his relationship with Ryan, whose work as an adult content creator bosses reportedly objected to.
Ryan told The Sun she now believes the split was calculated. “He’s just a fake. He wants to get back on the show now,” she said. “He’s left loads of clothes at my house, but just taken his blue and red Gladiators costume and memorabilia.”
“At the time, he was portrayed as a noble man who fights for what he believes in,” she added. “But deep down, it was never what he believed in.”
Ryan said she was blindsided by the break-up and described the moment she saw the full picture as painful. “It was all just fake,” she said. “He has a lot of demons he needs to fight in his own head before he ruins another woman’s peace.”
Phone call, rings and broken promises
Ryan says Bigg ended the relationship over the phone, despite the two having discussed getting engaged and starting a family together. She says they had tried on rings and that, while no date had been fixed, he had led her to believe a proposal would happen this year.
In a separate Instagram video posted last month, Ryan laid out the sequence of events in what she called a series of confessions. She described getting divorced at 28, cautiously re-entering dating life, and then connecting with Bigg, who was also going through a divorce at the time. She said she felt safe and chosen, describing how he and others on the show made a public stand in support of her career.
Then came the next slide: “He broke up with me because of my job anyway.”
A representative for Giant was contacted for comment by The Daily Mail but had not responded.
How Giant lost his job
Bigg, 40 and described as a former professional bodybuilder who stood 6ft 5in and once consumed up to 10,000 calories a day, had appeared on the Gladiators reboot before the axe fell. He said in an April statement that he informed show bosses he was planning to confirm his relationship with Ryan publicly, including the fact that she works as an OnlyFans creator, and was told shortly after that he would not be continuing on the programme.
“It wasn’t something I expected, especially given the commitment I’ve shown to the role,” he said in the statement. “I’ve always taken being in the public eye seriously, and I believe being a role model is about honesty as well as professionalism. For me, that means not hiding parts of who I am or the people I care about.”
Bigg also claimed that Gladiators producer Dan Baldwin, who is married to Holly Willoughby, described Ryan’s career as a child safeguarding risk. He pushed back on that framing, saying he had received messages from parents whose children were upset by his departure, which he said showed the issue would never have been a problem with audiences.
“There’s nothing in our contracts about who you’re allowed to be with, who you’re allowed to love or what relationships you’re allowed to have away from the show,” he said.
Cast rallies, filming looms
Fellow cast members have reportedly rallied around Bigg, with a source telling The Sun that several Gladiators believe he was treated unfairly and that his removal was an overreaction by panicked executives. The source said cast members had exchanged messages about whether anything could be done ahead of filming on the new series, which was described as kicking off within a couple of weeks.
“A number of the Gladiators cast are really unhappy about what’s happened to Jamie,” the source said. “They feel like he was thrown to the wolves and made an example of, when he was just following his heart.”
The source added that the firing had made the whole cast nervous that details from their own private lives could be used against them professionally.
Bigg and Ryan met at a Gladiators Live event in Liverpool late last year, weeks after he had separated from his wife Katie, with whom he shares two children. The split was announced in June. Katie said at the time that she was left hurt and shocked when he moved on with Ryan so soon after their marriage ended.
When Bigg announced the break-up with Ryan on Instagram, he framed it as a period of personal reflection. “I’m not in a relationship anymore, I’m working on myself,” he said, adding that he had people to apologise to and things to be accountable for.
