A Tumble carer has spoken out about her time as part of a social experiment where she used a fake online persona to become popular.

Sinead Edwards, 22, starred in new TV show The Circle on Channel 4 last month where players lived in their own apartment in the same tower block with no physical contact to each other.

The only form of communication was a social media network site where players had to rate each other based on their popularity.

Coleg Sir Gar student Sinead told The Guardian: “I seen the show advertised online and I was intrigued as it was brand new and I thought why not give it a go.

“The concept of the show was the fact you can be whoever you wanted behind the computer screen.

“I was never going to go on the show as me.

“I had a few ideas in my head, but I thought what could be the further away from me – a 65-year-old man called Christopher who is a coin collector.”

‘Christopher’- whose picture was in fact a picture of Sinead’s grandad - lasted around five days before a question about Little Mix casted doubt in the minds of the other players.

“I think I was doing well until we played a game where we had to identify famous faces and I guessed Little Mix right when really a pensioner probably wouldn’t know them,” said Sinead.

“It was hard to keep the act up all day every day. Being a catfish in the show did make me second guess everyone.

“I was gutted to be blocked from The Circle so early on, but it wasn’t Sinead being blocked it was Christopher.

“I think I would have been more upset if I was being myself.”

Sinead was away from her phone for a total of 17 days throughout the experience and has revealed that she thinks the experiment is a good idea.

She said: “Since I’ve had my phone back I have been more wary of people who click me up to speak to me.

“I thought Christopher would have been popular because he was older, but they all started asking me questions thinking I was knowledgeable and there was no Google to help me.”

Although being a catfish didn’t work out for Sinead, 26-year-old Alex Hobern walked away as the winner of the show and £75,000 despite pretending to be ‘Kate’ for the whole series using pictures of his girlfriend Millie to fool the other contestants.

All episodes of The Circle are available to catch up on All4.