Anyone tuning in to Thursday's 'This Morning' would be forgiven for thinking that Katie Hopkins had had a personality transplant after the notoriously outspoken star showed that a few molecules of empathy do actually exist in the woman's (larger than usual) body.
It seems putting on some extra weight recently has not only given Katie Hopkins soft lumps and bumps, but also brought out the softer side of her personality too.
The former 'Apprentice' star was on the ITV show to talk about her own experiment to put on and then lose half of her body weight, after her much-publicised controversial comments ('I wouldn't employ a fat person') about overweight people.
Joining Katie on the show was Christina Briggs who believes incentives by the Government will help her lose weight.
Katie Hopkins appeared on 'This Morning' to talk about her own battle with the bulge
Even host Phillip Schofield couldn't quite get his head around the all-new Katie that sat before him, her arm reassuringly linked into Christina's.
"You’re fascinating me today," he said. "Because this is an entirely different ‘Katie Hopkins’ than the one that we have had sitting on this sofa.
"I’ve never seen you be so warm, I’ve never seen you be so caring, I’ve certainly never seen you be so empathetic with someone."
You and the rest of the universe, Phillip.
Katie explained that since putting on four stone, she now knows how hard it is to be overweight.
“I found since I got bigger… I used to say ‘for goodness sake, put your trainers on and go for a run!’ but actually, sometimes you find you get to the front door [and you can’t leave the house]," she explained.
“I only put on half my body weight… but I understand this thing about getting to the front door and thinking people are going to call you names.”
Asked if Katie's softer side was something we'd be seeing more of, she replied: “I’m still a tough person, I’d still say to your face ‘I wouldn’t employ you because you’re big’ because I know how hard it is to be fat.
"But the interesting thing is whilst I say there are no excuses to be fat, we do have our reasons… [To Christina] Your reasons are many, your excuses are actually few and what you actually wanted to say in your article is that you want help.
“There is such an invisible population of very overweight and very obese people who are almost invisible because they hardly go out because you’re scared to go out the front door.
But Katie said despite having a better understanding of what it's like to be overweight, she still stood by her original views.
“It hasn’t changed my view in that I would say the same things," she said.
"I stand by everything I said, I wouldn’t employ a fat person, looking at myself after three months [of putting on weight for this project] I wouldn’t have employed me to be honest.
"Being fat is hard, it’s hard on your knees, it’s hard on your body, it doesn’t feel great, [it’s] really hard to catch your breath and after I was on here last time, that’s the thing everyone was saying, why is she gasping so much?”
