Express - Oh, Miss Porter!

It's not really what you'd expect of a children's TV presenter: nude pictures in a lads' mag. But Gail Porter knows what she wants - and how to get it. Interview Louise Gannon

When Gail porter was a little girl she used to cry herself to sleep because she didn't want to grow up.

When she did grow up she became a presenter on Children's BBC, which is the nearest you can get to being frozen in your early teens. But then Gall did a very adult thing. She posed naked for GQ magazine, showing off a perfect size-eight figure and a teeny bottom, bare but for a skimming of baby oil. The BBC went ballistic, and Gail went from almost nowhere to "Babe of the moment" (Chris Evans), "Hottest tot on the box" (Loaded) and "The girl of 1999" (Johnny Vaughan).

"It's great," she says with a full-beam smile. "I'm loving it because it's exactly what I wanted. A few months ago I could walk around totally unrecognised. This morning I was in the gym and this girl knew my name before I said who I was. I was shocked but I liked it. I felt great."

In the flesh Gall is quite minuscule: five foot two-and-a-half inches (the half is very important, she says) and six-and-a-half stone. She is outstandingly pretty in a Disney heroine sort of way: enormous, almond-shaped eyes, button nose, Cupid's bow mouth, and heart-shaped little face.

She is 27 but looks about 14 years old. So young, in fact that, as she admits with a giggle, two girls approached her in the street the other day and asked if she'd like to play Twister.

She is so delicate you fear she doesn't eat properly. "I'm starving," she cries, bursting into the photo studio - and grabbing a tangerine from the fruit bowl. But you very quickly realise that Gail Porter is no dainty doll. She introduces herself to everyone in the room, proffering a hand that - fragile though it is - has a firm grip and gives a hefty shake. She coos over a pair of Dolce & Gabbana sandals, and asks the price. They are £200. "A lot of money for such little things," she says in her soft Scots accent.

First of all she wants to know a bit about you. "Not work stuff," she says. "Tell me about yourself. Chat to me." This is quite unusual, but it's very Gall. She likes to know what's what. She writes and researches her own scripts. She's big on order and control. This is a girl who can't leave her flat unless her duvet is perfectly square on her bed, with the label down and facing to the right. "I'm horribly obsessive. Friends wind me up by bringing their babies round to trash my perfect flat. They take Polaroids of my face looking all stressed out."

At this moment she is showing not the slightest sign of stress. She's happy to talk whenever, wear whatever and sit wherever. She is not, mind you, happy to say whatever. Nothing comes out of her mouth that she hasn't thought about first, and if you make a mistake about her curriculum vitae she pulls you up straight away. Any attempt to pigeonhole her as girl next door/ladette/fluffy bunny proves use- less. Contradictions abound: for all her new sexy image, with her pierced nipple and gymtastic body, Gall Porter is not interested in sex. "What's the big deal?" she asks. "I haven't had a boyfriend for two years and I'm very happy. I don't want a relationship and I never want to get married." The only men she fancies are Eddie Izzard and Bob Mortimer, although she admits that, as Izzard is a transvestite and Mortimer has a partner and offspring - both are, in fact, unattainable.

Her idea of a good night out is "getting drunk with friends and seeing a comedy show," but these days she rarely has time to leave her west London flat because she spends most of her time working. For what really turns Gall Porter on is success. "I'm probably the most ambitious person I know," she says. "Ever since I was wee I wanted to be famous.

"No," she says, abruptly correcting herself. "Ever since I was wee I knew I was going to be famous. I just knew it inside myself. I had no doubt at all that one day I was going to be somebody."

There seems to be nothing in her background that could have fuelled such extraordinary self-belief. Her father Craig is a building contractor in Edinburgh, and her mother Sandra although now divorced from Craig, still works in the family building firm. She has an older brother who is an engineer. Neither parent was remotely interested in show business, but Gait used to spend hours in her room every day, singing Bucks Fizz songs into her hairbrush, and practising speaking into her mirror. So convinced was she of her destiny that she refused to talk to the school careers officer about any other job. "My dad used to laugh at me," she says, fixing me with her large blue-green eyes. "He wanted me to do something normal. Sometimes I think they wondered where on earth I'd come from."

At school the self-confident youngster was nicknamed "Snobby". "I never let anyone put me off. I was on one track right from the beginning and I never let anything stand in my way. Most of my friends probably thought I was a bit mad but none of them is surprised I got what I wanted."

The ruthless go-getter seems at odds, I suggest, with the child who didn't want to grow up. Gail ponders for a moment before answering rather astutely. "If you want to see pure determination you don't need to look further than a child. Inside, I didn't want to grow up, and part of me still hasn't. I spend a fortune on toys from Hamley's and, yes, I do play with them. But if people treat me like a child they are in for a big surprise. I won't be pushed around by anyone."

Such defiance has been learned the hard way. At the age of 18, with an HND in Visual Communications, she took a job as a runner with a production company based in Scotland. "I looked about 12 years old and people basically just treated me like some kid who didn't even merit being called by a proper name. If someone wanted me to go out and get sandwiches, they'd shout across to the girl in charge of me, 'Tell her to get me a sandwich,' even though I was just a few feet away: I was a total nothing. I cleaned the loos, the cars, ran every errand I had to and didn't let anyone know if I felt badly treated.

"Sometimes I'd go and cry to my mum and she'd tell me to ignore them or to leave the job. I wouldn't, because I felt I was in the door and I was learning about everything I needed to know. I also knew the only way was up. It taught me a valuable lesson - never be nasty to the people below you because one day you'll be asking them for a favour." She nods at herself in the mirror and a small smirk of satisfaction creeps across her face.

Gail's second job was as a receptionist for a Scottish TV company. She persuaded a cameraman to film her interviewing people in Edinburgh's Royal Mile, and sent the tape to 10 television companies. Five rang her back, and she acquired an agent, a slot on a kids' television show and a flat in London. There were no regrets about leaving home. "None at all," she says with a bright smile. "I didn't even look back because this was just what I wanted."

Wthin a year she was another pretty blonde cog in the wheels of the children's TV circuit. She got herself noticed by producers by insisting she would do anything at any time in any place (and we are talking work not sex, remember). "I worked my butt off. I raced all over the place doing slots here, there and everywhere." Her profile slowly and steadily began to rise, and she moved from the fringe to the mainstream, making a splash on manic live shows such as Fully Booked and Live And Kicking, where she presents the Electric Circus slot. Her latest conquest is Channel 5, which hired her to present the Blockbuster Movie Chart Show.

Among the hordes of children's presenters she is, quite noticeably, the prettiest. She disagrees, frowning. "I think I look a bit boring. Too young." The tabloids began to write about her, linking her with her co-presenter Tim Vincent and 911 pop star Lee Brennan. None of it was true, but Gail didn't care as it was getting her publicity.

"I just thought it was funny. There was some story about Lee catching me snogging Tim at a party and having a 'stormy row' with me. I couldn't believe people could just make up whatever they wanted. Then I started thinking it was all a bit of a laugh. I even made up a story about myself and my friend Steve Furst [better known as the cult comedian Lenny Beige]. I tried to think of the most ridiculous thing, and came up with a story about us canoodling in a rib restaurant called Big Uns. It got printed in The Sun. We both howled with laughter.

"He's one of my best mates, but I can say categorically there is absolutely no romance between us. I'd like to say he fends off admirers for me but I don't get many. I think people look at me and assume 1'm too young," she pauses and adds with a smile, "Or more likely they just don't fancy me."

I demur, but she nods her head vigorously. "Men don't generally go for me. I've only ever had one serious boyfriend, but that was more than two years ago. Since then there hasn't been anyone. I'm just not interested and that puts men off. I've been out for a few dinners and been totally upfront about the fact I'm not looking for a relationship. That definitely puts men off. When I come back from the loo, they've done a runner." She laughs, then adds more seriously, "As far as I am concerned the whole idea that you have to have a relationship in order to have a fulfilling life is a load of rubbish. I don't want a boyfriend, I don't want to get married and I don't want to have children. People think I'm very odd for having such views, but why should I be considered odd? I think it would be a lot worse if I did things just because society makes you think that you have to do them. Girls are told from such a young age that their future is all about marriage and children. I say that's a load of crap."

Her views have nothing to do with her own parents' divorce. "I was totally fine about it. I'd much rather they were happy. Children should try to understand and let their parents just do whatever they think is best." Gail's parents in turn were 'totally fine' about her decision to pose naked for GQ. Even her grandmother described the pictures as 'cool.' None of them had any inkling of the fuss they would cause, following hard on the heels, as they did, of revelations about Blue Peter presenter Richard Bacon snorting cocaine. Gail shakes her head. "It was mad. I was in all the papers as this terrible example to children, and people were calling for me to be sacked. I was really upset at first. I sat in my flat crying for two days. I couldn't see why it caused such a fuss. Dannii Minogue, who does Electric Circus with me, posed nude for Playboy and no one said a thing. The photographs weren't even all that bad. I thought they were just pretty. I didn't deliberately set out to cause an outcry. I just did the pictures with a photographer friend who said GQ might be interested. I didn't realise they'd be so interested they'd use them so big," her voice trails off. "But I'm not complaining now. After all the fuss I suddenly became a name overnight and I'm not crying about that."

She smiles her determined little smile again. She turns round, her face glowing with excitement and freshly applied makeup. "I'm just starting to feel famous and it's just brilliant. I don't need a man. This, for me, is it."