FHM - Gail Porter

PSYCHIATRISTS WOULD HAVE A FIELD DAY with Gail Porter. In fact, some of the bearded chin- strokers would probably make a case that she has gone full-scale bonkers. Not because she refers to her mother at least 20 times during her interview with FHM. Not because she is a self-confessed gym obsessive who gets up at six in the morning to work out for up to two hours, seven times a week. Not even because she can't bear to leave her house unless the duvet is spread out on her bed so that the label rests in a right-hand comer.

No, the primary evidence in any shrink's diagnosis would have to be the stunning pictures which run over these pages. After all, it's just a few months since the former Fully Booked presenter fuelled a tabloid-generated storm by posing in her skimpies for the first time. The shots were published just after Richard Bacon got the heave-ho from Blue Peter for dallying with cocaine - which meant that, for at least a fortnight, kids' TV presenters were marked men and women, charged with soiling the good reputation built by squeaky- clean predecessors such as Valerie Singleton and Johnny Morris. Having been dragged through the mill once, surely Gail must be insane to risk causing upset again?

As it turns out, the petite Scot at the centre of the whipped up controversy was bemused by all the fuss. She admits that she spent a couple of days at home crying, fearful she'd let down her employers, but soon pulled herself together when she realised that there were no plans to jettison her from the schedules, and that no one at the BBC really cared whether she'd dragged the corporation into a pit of depravity or not. In any case, having resigned from Fully Booked, she wasn't even a children's presenter anymore.

Which is why, in a move that typifies the 28-year-old's determination, she's decided to go even further for FHM, posing naked in a series of stylish pictures that blow the roof off every other shoot she's done. "I don't think the reaction could be as bad as last time," she explains, sipping at a glass of white wine in London's Groucho CIub."You see, I don't care anymore. In the gym I change in front of loads of women. It doesn't bother me in the slightest - it's my body. And these are beautiful pictures. Anyway, my mum was on the shoot and if she thought they were disgusting, she'd have stopped me." Gail admits she is tired of fronting kids' TV programmes, so this could well be a carefully-measured ruse to ensure she never has to do any again. She is, after all, a woman manifestly in control of her career.

Her insistence on precision and order becomes clear even when she discusses her childhood. She knows not only that she was born at Simpson's Memorial Hospital in Edinburgh on March 23, 1971, but that the time of her birth was 7pm. At school, her nickname was Snobby, largely because she was devoted to her book-learning and had developed a manner of speech which bordered on the teacherly. When she and her friends built a gang hut in the wasteland opposite her house, Gall fitted it with carpets and swept it clean while the others went out to chase woodland animals. She excelled in her end-of-school exams - although, in a rare lapse of concentration, she failed her Accountancy Higher when she bunked off after 20 minutes to spend the rest of the day at the beach. ("Mum saw sand on my clothes and asked how the exam had gone. I was like: 'Oh, it was very sandy at school'.")

Little Gail was also a performer "I remember my papa - that's my grandad - standing me up on a footstool and getting me to sing. I was only three or four years old, so I probably sang Baa Baa, Black Sheep. And he'd give me a polo. 'Well done,' he'd say. 'You have sung, so you shall have polo mints.' Now I get more than polos. I get Hob-Nobs. And coal?

She furthered her taste for performance by learning ballet and taking to the stage in school plays. At 18, she enrolled on an HND at film school, then got a job as a runner for a video production company in Edinburgh. "I was treated like a nobody," she recalls. "I did everything from making teas and coffees to ordering pizzas and cleaning the railings outside the offices. Once they made me do it with a toothbrush. It was horrible." Finally, after four years working her way up behind the scenes, she took the plunge and produced her own showreel, interviewing random members of the public on Edinburgh's Princes Street. That got her a presenting job on Children's ITV, which in turn led to Fully Booked. Since then, she's presented The Movie Chart Show on Channel 5, stood in on Melinda's Big Night In, and fronted Electric Circus on Live And Kicking. Single-minded as ever, she has already written the pilot of her own comedy/documentary series, and is reading for a couple of acting parts, including a remake of Randall And Hopkirk (Deceased) with Vic Reeves and Bob Mortimer. She's also just begun filming a new show for VH1, Gail's Big Nineties, for which she writes her own scripts.

As an adult, Gail is still a curious bundle of contradictions. She sports a nipple ring on her left breast and talks quite openly about sex, yet insists she hasn't actually done the deed for so long she thinks her maidenhead might have grown back. She admits to getting lonely without a boyfriend, yet is scared stiff of commitment. She's careful never to swear-the closest she comes during this interview is "blimming"- yet is careless enough to have been caught speeding on three separate occasions. In conversation both on and off camera, she's supremely confident, flirtatious and funny, yet she confesses to being "dead nervous with men". All of which would surely make great material for any therapist to work with. "Oh no, I doubt if I could ever see a therapist," laughs Gail. "I'd be asking them questions the whole time."

Presenting kids' programmes isn't always the most dignified of careers. What's the most ridiculous thing you've been asked to do?

There was one time I really thought I was being wound up. I was doing an education programme and the production people came up to my hotel room the night before filming. They had this great big Habitat lampshade with them, and told me: "We've got this outfit for the show and just wanted to see if it fits." I was like: "Fits what?" "Fits you," they replied. So they dressed me in the lampshade, then stood round admiring it. I really thought I was being filmed for a Gotcha! But there I was the next day wearing a Habitat lampshade on top of my normal clothes, carrying a torch and saying to camera: "Hello, I am the sun, and here are my rays." When I realised it wasn't a wind-up, I was absolutely devastated.

You auditioned for the Big Breakfast job. How pissed off were you when Kelly Brook got it?

I wasn't pissed off. My mum always says: "What's for you will go by you." I was really hoping I would get it, so when I didn't I thought: "Well, there must be a reason for it." It would have been great fun, but good luck to Kelly.

Will you reapply when the post becomes vacant again in a couple of months?

Oh, it will not! Don't say that. Poor soul. I haven't actually watched it since I auditioned - I'm out of the house by the time it starts. But Kelly's a stunning girl and it's a really hard job.

What's the toughest job you've ever done?

Probably sales assistant at B&Q in Edinburgh, just because it was all so boring. I worked there for four hours every Sunday afternoon. I had to wear this tittle badge which read "Gail - happy to help". I lasted two months.

Did you ever accidentally discover any couples misbehaving in the shed display?

No, I worked in hardware, which was quite a long way from sheds. But I did a Saturday job at Chelsea Girl when I was 15 and once let a transvestite into the women's changing rooms. He had this deep voice and big beard. He wanted to try on a dress that was obviously way too small for him. I didn't know what to do, so I let him in. It was a communal changing room and all the women flocked out en masse, screaming.

We're running a feature in this issue on women's best sex ever. Any special occasions you'd like to tell us about?

I can't think of one particular "best time", but there have been a few occasions where I've woken up in the morning and I've immediately thought: "That was perfect." But it's not just the sex - it's the whole evening that makes it count. Everything has to flow, so you have a really brilliant night out and then afterwards you go home and do it here, there and everywhere. Then you wake up in the morning, cuddling.

How can men tell when a women is enjoying sex?

I don't know. I've faked it a lot.

That's terrible! You should never fake it!

Should you not? Welt, I'd never do it now. Those were early relationships, the kind when the guy just doesn't get it at all.

How did you fake it? Was it a howl or a growl?

Oh, I don't remember. It was whatever noise went with the occasion. Whereas all the time I was actually thinking: "God, I didn't know I had that crack in the ceiling. I must get that fixed."

There was a piece about you in the Daily Mirror last March with the headline: "I haven't had sex in two years." Has it really been that long?

I couldn't believe they did that. I'd been promoting a safe sex campaign and I had to answer certain questions, one of which was: "When was the Last time you had sex?', I'm not very good at telling blatant lies, and they kept pressing me. How long has it been? A year? Longer than a year? Then suddenly there it was in the national newspapers.

So it was true, then ?

It's been a while, yeah. But I don't go out that often, and when I do I'm really nervous of people. You don't know if they only like you for what you do. But my plan for this year is to get someone who'll come round to see me part-time for a bit of sympathy and a hug every now and again.

You give the impression you're not too bothered...

I am! I am! It's a nightmare. It was my 28th birthday party last month and I'd psyched myself up beforehand to get a snog. It was a school uniform party so I was dressed as a little schoolgirl - and I still got nothing. I'd have loved someone to have come up to me and say: "Gail, do you fancy a snog?" I just don't think men fancy me. From talking to my friends afterwards, I reckon I must have been about the only person at my party who didn't manage to cop off.

Okay, here's some news to cheer you up. At the halfway stage in the voting for the 100 Sexiest Women of 1999, you're number 16.

Wow, really? You've just made me feel like a special little princess. That's amazing. I'm well chuffed even to be considered.

Who would you put at number one?

I think it would have to be Isabella Rossellini. She looked incredible in Wild At Heart. And Brigitte Bardot still looks amazing.

You're joking aren't you? That craggy-faced old bat with all the cats ?

No, hang on, I'm thinking of the wrong person. I meant Raquel Welch. And Helena Christensen looks beautiful as well. Or Skin from Skunk Anansie. She's stunning - really beautiful features. She's got lovely big eyes and lips.

Maybe, but she hasn't got a hope of making the list. Finally, as a well-known Star Wars fan, are you disappointed by the title of the new movie?

A bit. The Phantom Menace sounds too much like something Jim Carrey ought to be in. But I'm still desperate to go to the premiere in America. In fact, that'd be an excellent date to take me on, if anyone's got a couple of tickets.