Ryan Thomas breaks social media silence for first time since winning Celebrity Big Brother

Last Monday (10th September), reality TV fans got to see former Coronation Street actor Ryan Thomas crowned the winner of Celebrity Big Brother, and now the winner of the 22nd series has returned to social media with a touching post.

The 34-year-old actor, who was the centre of one of the show's biggest scandals with 'punchgate', took to Instagram to post a loved-up photo of himself with his girlfriend Lucy Mecklenburgh. He captioned the photo simply, 'HER. ❤️'. Cute!

Ryan, who had also been dubbed one of the most deserving winners of Celebrity Big Brother, also posted a photo from the finale earlier in the week, where he is hugging the show's host Emma Willis, the caption read, 'Absolutely overwhelmed with the love and support i’ve received, you’ve no idea how much it means to me.🙏🏼💙'. [sic]

He also gave his first interview since leaving CBB earlier today, speaking on Jeremy Vine's show - the same one that Roxanne appeared on a week earlier, giving her now-infamous apology. Although he revealed that he would forgive her if that was "something that she wanted," he's not interested in meeting up with her and would prefer to focus on his family.

After the incredibly dramatic series, which saw Ryan accused of punching Roxanne Pallett, despite the footage proving otherwise, and her behaviour on the show resulting in over 12,000 Ofcom complaints; loads of Ryan's former co-stars and his girlfriend all jumped to his defence, with Charley Webb, who plays Debbie Dingle in the soap, Lucy Pargeter, who plays Chas Dingle and Danny Miller, who plays Aaron Dingle all taking to Twitter about the incident.

Since leaving the house, Roxanne has apologised for her behaviour speaking in an interview with Jeremy Vine on his Channel 5 show she said, "It's a lot to deal with. I’m the most hated girl in Britain right now.

“I am scared about the future… I just want to say I’m sorry."

NOW WATCH: All of the past Celebrity Big Brother winners:

Ryan has now explained in an interview that he WILL forgive Roxanne if that's what she wants, "It was totally unexpected," he said, "It was a sign of affection that I've used on Gabby, the boys. And unexpected because there was nothing in it and as it unraveled, as it became bigger and bigger, the thing that scared me the most was when Ben said she couldn't stay in the room with me because she was scared. That rang alarm bells. Then the game became real life for me. I did break. I was a scared little boy. I just wanted out.

"If she [Roxanne] wants sort of forgiveness and it makes her feel better then I would rather give her that because I think she's been punished enough by the public and the people around her."

The civilian version of Big Brother returns to our TVs THIS Friday!

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