I lost my hair AND LOST MY HOME"

TV presenter Gail Porter on turning her hardships into a comedy show

- JENNY COCKLE

In the late 90s, Scottish TV presenter Gail Porter’s career was going from strength to strength. She was hosting shows like Top of the Pops and bagging huge modelling contracts, but by the mid-2000s she’d lost most of her work and then her home.

Gail’s life took a turn after she hit the headlines when her naked image was projected onto the Houses of Parliament by lads’ mag FHM without her permission. The first she knew about it was seeing herself on the BBC News and her mother calling up to say, ‘What have you done now?’ Describing the incident as ‘upsetting’, Gail admits that it knocked her confidence. Then, in 2005 she developed alopecia and after losing all her hair, she lost her work and eventually, her home. ‘I couldn’t pay the bills, I couldn’t get any work because I was bald. It was just one thing after another,’ Gail, 52, tells Woman. The star, who has a 20-year-old daughter, Honey, from her marriage to Toploader guitarist Dan Hipgrave, added, ‘I couldn’t even contact anybody because I was so skint I couldn’t pay my phone bill. I ended up sitting on a bench on Hampstead Heath thinking, “I’ve got no idea what to do.”’

That was eight years ago, but Gail has since managed to pick herself up from rock bottom. She became an ambassador for the Samaritans and made a documentary,