Mollie Pearce might have fallen at the final hurdle of The Traitors and lost the £95k prize, but the model and healthcare assistant finds some comfort in what she achieved in opening up on her “double whammy” of disability – limb difference and living with a stoma.

“I call my stoma Sid,” Mollie makes clear on the BBC’s Access All podcast. “I’m very proud of Sid. He’s helped me in a lot of ways.”

Sid the stoma came into Mollie’s life just a few years ago when she was 18 (she turned 22 on Sunday, 48 hours after the epic TV final).

Mollie had been diagnosed with ulcerative colitis aged 11. The autoimmune condition causes inflammation in the large intestine triggering ulcers and debilitating pain.

It came to dominate her teenage years stopping certain basic activities and the number of school days missed.

“When I was suffering with ulcerative colitis I couldn’t be away from a toilet,” she says.

Aged 18 she underwent “massive” surgery to have her colon removed and her small intestine diverted out of an opening in her abdomen known as a stoma.

“That colons in the bin,” she says theatrically. “Now, my small intestine sticks outside of my stomach and I have a stoma bag over the top, which collects my waste.

“I would never have been able to do the missions in the middle of a field or the middle of a loch. So actually having a stoma bag is the best thing I’ve ever done.”

Listen to the Access All podcast with Mollie Pearce from The Traitors, and spot the moment when the tables turn and Michael starts to interview Access All’s blind presenter , Emma Tracey, about her experiences…

It was something the Bristolian opened up about in the penultimate episode of this year’s series when the final five were enjoying a celebratory dinner.

“I really struggled to get my head around the fact that I was going to have a stoma,” she told her fellow finalists. “I wasn’t prepared for it. Eighteen-years-old, you kind of want to be out enjoying yourself with your friends, not having this life changing surgery.”

She says it felt right to open up at that point in the game.

“We’d got to the final and we were just celebrating. It just made me realise how far I’d come from that girl who was so unwell and couldn’t leave the house.”

An energetic island hopping trip around Greece two summers ago with her boyfriend, had given Mollie the confidence to take up the offer of appearing on The Traitors and take on the physical challenges including swimming and climbing, while wearing a stoma bag.

“I loved the physical missions,” she says. “They were such a good break from all the mind games and it was a really good bonding experience. Sid’s given me the kind of option to do these things.”

In terms of the practicalities, Mollie says she didn’t need any extra support throughout the series, and she got into a good routine. She changed her bag every three to four days and emptied it whenever she visited the loo.

Having ulcerative colitis was something going on inside her body whereas she has a much more visible impairment too.

She says living with an invisible illness has been much harder to explain to people than her limb difference on her right hand. Without the visual evidence she has found people often think “you look so healthy but, really you are suffering so much.”

As well as working as a hospital healthcare assistant in Bristol, it was Mollie’s limb difference which landed her a glamorous side hustle – what she describes as “disability modelling”.

“I saw a model in Primark who had one arm and I’d never seen a disability model before,” she says.

“The way that model made me feel in that moment…I was like ‘that is how I want to be for other people’.”

Mollie was initially signed as a model with limb difference, but now she is very comfortable showing off Sid too.

“It’s a double whammy,” she jokes. “Who doesn’t want someone with one hand and a stoma bag?”

She says the reaction from her sto-mates, people who also have stomas, to her being on the show and modelling has been “amazing”.

“It can be a bit of a taboo and I think it’s super important that we do advocate for it, especially when it comes to younger people.”

Mollie says it was a “strange” time between finishing filming The Traitors and it coming out on TV – a gap of several months.

“You have this crazy experience and this massive adventure and then that’s it. I was back working as a healthcare assistant at the hospital and you obviously can’t talk to anyone about it.”

At that point she was still coming to terms with the treachery Harry Clarke had served her, and which the nation had yet to see.

Harry – one of the original three traitors – and, faithful, Mollie were the last players standing, after both voted to eliminate faithful Jaz Singh.

In the final moments of the series, Mollie had started to write Harry’s name down for banishment, before changing her mind and voting for Jaz, leaving just her and Harry standing.

Her decision meant Harry won all £95,150 of the prize money – as if any traitors remain at the end of the game they take all the gold for themselves.

“Me and Harry are fine,” she insists for the umpteenth time since leaving the castle.

“As a group we were super close. We were together every day, all day. You do build real bonds and also you don’t have communication with your family and friends, they are your support system.

“It’s hard finding out your friend’s been lying to you, but I stuck with my heart and I am not going to hate myself for that.”

Former England striker Michael Owen says he would “swap eyes” with his son if it was possible to help the teenager see again.

James Owen, 17, who hoped to follow in his father’s footsteps, was diagnosed with Stargardt disease, a degenerative eye condition, when he was eight.

Speaking on the BBC Access All podcast, Michael said: “If I could give him my eyes and we could do a swap, I would.

“I would pay every cent I’ve got to make James see again.”

James is from a family of top footballers. Michael played as striker for clubs including Liverpool and Real Madrid, and somewhat controversially went on to play for Liverpool’s big north-west rivals Manchester United. His father Terry Owen started his own footballing career at Everton in 1966.

The beautiful game was very much in James’s blood, but it slowly dawned on the Owens something unusual was going on with their young son.

James was a good player when he was on the ball, but he often failed to track passes or notice player movements further down the field.

It became more concerning when he struggled to compete on bigger pitches and it was all getting too fast-paced, James admits.

At home or on holiday, Michael says he often got frustrated when trying to take family photographs as his young son always seemed to look to the side of the camera rather than at it.

Even so, Michael says it came as a “hammer blow” when he and wife Louise were referred to an eye specialist and were informed of James’s diagnosis.

Listen to the Access All podcast with Michael and James Owen, and spot the moment when the tables turn and Michael starts to interview Access All’s blind presenter , Emma Tracey, about her experiences…

According to the RNIB, Stargardt disease is an inherited eye condition that affects the macula, the central part of the retina, and causes a reduction in vision there.

Understandably, Michael says it left him with parental guilt.

“As a parent you just want everything to be perfect – and he is – but of course it was a sad time,” he says.

“Thinking about the future – will he be able to drive? Will he be able to work? All these things run through your mind.”

He says the procedures and tests which followed over the years while medical staff monitored James’s condition were also hard to watch.

“You’re pushing your son forward to get something you know is going to be painful,” he says. “It’s just horrible to see. You want to take all the pain away.”

James told Access All presenter Emma Tracey, who is blind herself, that his “central vision is blurry” and that “I struggle with seeing different colours and different lights” although he has “good peripheral vision”.

He has learned to adapt to the world around him, by using tricks that other visually impaired people will know well.

“I’ll notice what colour my dad’s jumper is. So if I ever go out, then I would be able to recognise him from the colour, not from his face because I struggle with detail.”

Michael, who now focuses on training racehorses, says “time is a great healer” and while James had found it difficult to comprehend the diagnosis when he was younger, he has since become very positive about it.

“He’s just mentally very, very strong. He’s got a great mindset,” Michael says. “I’ve got four children and I’m probably the least worried about James’s future.”

The father and son are about to release their first documentary – Football is for Everyone – exploring James’s sight loss and an adapted version of football called futsal.

The duo follow the visually impaired futsal England squad as they compete in the 2023 visually impaired world cup hosted in Birmingham.

The game is played on a smaller, indoor, pitch with a heavier ball that doesn’t bounce as much. Players are classified by their visual impairments and only so many players of the same classification can play at once. The goalkeepers are fully sighted but are confined to the goal.

When he joined a training session, James quickly got to grips with the game.

“I did actually score at some point while training with the England team which I’m quite happy about,” he says.

Then he pauses, and confesses. “I actually got megged and then scored an own goal. It was not a great moment.”

Michael can’t help but jokingly stick the knife in: “It’s one of the most embarrassing things in football, if you get nutmegged.”

Nutmegging, for the uninitiated, is when one player kicks the ball through another player’s legs. Adding an own goal into the mix, just increases the humiliation.

“It’s just been a surreal experience,” James says of making the documentary which started before the pandemic. “I used to be quite shy as a kid, but it’s definitely brought me out my shell.”

Although he has sidelined football, James says “I’ve got a lot of dreams”.

He has found a passion for business, which he is studying at college and hopes to own his own business in the future, although he says he is keeping his options open about what that might be.

Michael has a hunch. “When I retire from work in 30 years or something, he’ll probably take over the ‘family empire’,” he laughs.

James and Michael’s documentary, Football Is For Everyone is available from 30 January on TNT Sports and Discovery Plus.

Same Difference wishes him well!