Strictly star Kym Marsh's desperate early struggle for survival with kids on £80 per week

express.co.uk:

Strictly's Kym Marsh might be a household name now, but in the 1990s, she was a single teenage mum with barely a penny to her name - and she still recalls her desperate struggle for survival to this day.To top it all off, the Strictly Come Dancing star feared that her frail father, who suffered a heart condition, might lose his fight for life at around the same time.Kym despaired as she recalled the time when she and her sister had been forced to club together to buy a pack of nappies that their children could share.In an unearthed interview from before her Strictly stint, she told all about the "rut" she'd found herself in."I was pregnant at 18, so I've lived on £80 a week...

when you've got two kids and you're living in rented accommodation, it's hard to get out of the rut," she agonised.Kym had struggled for money since her childhood, after her father lost his business and was forced into poverty.Telling of their time together on council estates in Wigan, she exclaimed: "I've seen my parents with literally a fiver a week to put food on the table."When he developed a heart condition, and became "very ill", it was touch and go whether he would survive.However, the adversity seemed to awaken her fighting spirit and she became dead-set on building a better future for herself and her children.It was an attitude that saw her described in the media as being tough as nails, and something for which she was heavily criticised.An incredulous Kym fired back: "I'm not embarrassed about being ambitious!"[Attitudes are] as though the minute you have children you should be chained to the sink and changing nappies and just accept that your life's over," she exclaimed to the Independent."But [the critics] don't do it themselves, and.