Sunday Times Magazine - Pret A Porter

The telephone in dressing room 55 is ringing out unanswered, and back at BBC Elstree reception a security guard enthusiastically agrees to help me locate the recent occupant, Gail Porter, who is here to record an edition of Top of the Pops, which she presents.

As we trawl through swing doors, down corridors across walkways, I ask the guard if he knows what Gail Porter looks like. He turns and smiles. Does not speak but rather, mouths the words, in a wolfish, slavering, lip-smacking kind of way.

F***ing horny, he says. All right then. She shouldn't be too hard to spot.

We knock at the door of dressing room 55. No answer. The security guard opens the door. Empty. A tall man with a barrelled waistline walks past. We're looking for Gail Porter, I say. She's around, he says, keep looking. We keep looking, the security guard striding ahead, peering here and there, arriving at an open door, knocking politely, saying, excuse me, have you seen Gail Porter? I am a step behind, look in the doorway myself, to find a make-up room and a woman standing over a chair, just breaking into a smile, looking down at the chair, in which a small child is sitting, legs dangling. Wait a minute, that's not a small child. That's Gail Porter.

Gail Porter. Gail Porter. There you are.

The security guard realizes his mistake, shuffles slyly, more lamb than wolf now, his moment blown, backs away from the door, which I enter. Pleased to meet you, Gail Porter.

She is dressed in a denim jacket over a T-shirt that came free in the post, denim jeans with a turn-up that she bought from a shop called Shop in Soho's Brewer Street. Mud on the jeans, she complains, brushing at the legs, from walking the dogs this morning. Adidas trainers with Velcro fastenings. A black belt worn loose and low slung, a thick black Japanese wristwatch that sends her messages in Japanese which she cannot understand. Loads of make-up. But that's just for the telly. Porter never wears make-up unless she's on television. Except lip gloss, which is the only item of make-up she ever carries with her.

This is Gail Porter. Omnipresent young presenter of popular television programmes. Top of the Pops, not Newsnight. The Movie Chart Show, not The South Bank Show. All smiles and chirrups, filling the screen with her saucer eyes. She has been in dreamland since 1978, six years old, losing herself in the original Star Wars film at the ABC on Lothian Road. Becoming Princess Leia, falling for Luke Skywalker, wanting to live make~believe.

Age, 28. Height, 5ft 2in. And a half. Weight, six stone and a half, just under. Yes, she says, the script already written, I'm small... and short... and elfin.

She is so slight that you can't quite figure how she filled the frame in the series of photographs - Gall Porter naked! - taken of her in the men's monthlies. No wonder FHM magazine had to blow up its picture to 10 or 15 times life-size, then project it onto the Houses of Parliament. If she turned sideways she would be in danger - almost - of disappearing. She has no side. None that I could see, anyway.

Conversation flows freely from and around her while she sits gabbing away to the two female make-up artists. She seems open and disarming as they gossip - some old pop star who has a hedge of hairs in his nose! Ugh, says Porter - and chew over the minutiae of their lives.

I learn that she has a boyfriend called Keith - he seemed lovely, but we were surprised he was quite shy, I will hear someone say to her later - that he has four dogs, and that she has recently moved in with him after a burglary at her old home.

Was it last night, or the night before, that Keith fell asleep on the sofa and Porter went up to bed and when she woke up in the morning there was an arm around her shoulder and when she turned in the bed it wasn't an arm but, and I quote, a f***ing dog's paw.

The make-up women tell Porter, confidingly, that she is the only one of the current trio of Top of the Pops presenters that doesn't get rehearsed before delivering her cues to camera during the show. You can see she is flattered by this tribute to her professionalism. You can see that the women like her too. She exchanges phone numbers with one of them, promises to take her shopping in Shop. She picks up a pile of cue cards and leads the way back to dressing room 55 to collect her Polaroid camera that she always brings to the recordings.

On the coffee table in the dressing room is a scrap of paper on which is written "Re: forest" and a phone number. She is trying to buy Keith an acre of forest for Christmas. He likes the country, lives in a rural idyll in Essex and is Keith Flint, a member of the Prodigy, a band who would sooner be seen dead than perform on Top of the Pops. Porter met him a few months ago, after a mutual friend suggested they might get on, and they arranged to go to someone's birthday party. She is a little coy, if not downright gooey, on the subject of him, but it is apparent that being in Porter's orbit has taken Flint into worlds undreamt of by the Prodigy. and their admirers.

For instance, she went to the Maldives filming for the 1TV holiday programme Wish You Were Here and Flint went too, though not to appear on camera. It was here they discovered the joys of diving, which is Porter's latest passion. They are taking lessons, which mostly seem to involve sitting at the bottom of a pool and reading about all the exciting places in the world to go diving.

Returning from the Maldives, she spent a night with Flint then returned to her home, a rented flat in a block in Maida Vale. The flat had been burgled during the holiday. The burglars had taken her TV, video, computer and, because she had left the keys to her car in plain sight and because her car, a Seat, had been parked right outside the flat, the burglars used it for their getaway, before dumping it on the edge of a nearby estate.

She makes light of it now, saying it was karma, time to move on, but the burglary was obviously a cause of some distress. She could see they'd been sifting through her photographs. She thought, right, get out now, left the flat that night and only returned to collect the rest of her possessions. She says she is happy in Essex with Flint for now but will buy somewhere else in London eventually. Prices are so ridiculous at the moment, she says.

I thought I had read somewhere that Flint - by repute the animated, crazed performer of his band - has body piercings, but Porter assures me this is wrong. He's tattoos, I'm piercing, she says. I've got my nipple pierced. I had them both done but I've only got one now. I got one done and then I had to take the ring out when I had an x-ray for something (she does not elaborate on the reason for the x-ray), then it healed up, and because it's such a tender area I couldn't go through the pain of having that one done again, so I did the other one instead... anyway, I highly recommend it.

We walk up to the long corridor outside the Top of the Pops studio. This is the backstage area where bands congregate before their performances, and Porter likes to hang out here. Sir Cliff Richard comes up, all smiles and hugs for her. Last week, apparently, filming had temporarily broken down while they were on stage together. Porter had turned and started dancing with Sir Cliff which the audience found very entertaining.

She asks me to take a Polaroid of her and Sir Cliff, which I do. Sir Cliff looks at the picture and says, look at those big eyes and that thick hair. He is, of course, referring to Porter. I'm so lucky, she says, as we walk away what a great job.

The corridor is suddenly filled with people. There's Martine McCutcheon surrounded by a substantial entourage. I think Porter thinks Martine is a little stand offish. There's a Dutch band in fancy dress. A cowboy in chaps and a sailor. The cowboy sends the sailor's hat spinning through the air for several yards along the corridor and the sailor leans forward so the hat falls directly onto his head.

Tom Jones and Cerys from Catatonia are in the green room, playing pool. Another band, Phats & Small, pose for Polaroids with Porter and they all write suggestive messages to each other on the bottom of the pictures. You're the writer, what shall I put, says Porter, chewing the end of a pen. She scribbles briefly, writes, it's not just the gel that's making my hair stand on end! Phats & Small seem satisfied with this.

She takes her fliptop phone and makes a call, to Flint, I guess. Hi, just thought I'd give you a ring before I go on...As she talks a man with heavily pockmarked skin walks past, touches her lightly, indicates that he wants to speak to her. She comes off the phone and says, was that Bryan Adams? I say was it? And it was. He wants to apologize to her for some minor event that happened months ago. Porter talks to Adams, Adams talks to Sir Cliff, Porter takes Adams and Sir Cliffs photograph. What a great job, she says, those big, round eyes shining at the fun of it all.

There are some mean-spirited people around, you know, journalists and the like, who think that Porter took her clothes off to get famous, driven by an excess of ambition and a desire to escape the confines of children's television, where she previously plied her trade as a presenter. She nearly cried on the programme Never Mind the Buzzcocks, when presenter Mark Lamarr made repeated gibes along these lines.

Then there are other people, you know, journalists and the like, who say that taking her clothes off was misguided, a professional disaster that harmed rather than enhanced her career.

Not surprisingly, she disagrees strongly with both interpretations. According to her, there was no grand design. She went along to the photographic studio, just over a year ago, believing she was going to be pictured in dresses for the magazine GQ. During the session the photographer suggested some no-dresses pictures. She can't think now why she agreed on the spur of the moment, she just thought, sod it, let's do it. She was flattered to be asked, saw no harm in it and, important to her, imagined that her recently deceased grandmother, Mary Twiddie, would have approved.

Her grandmother had quite a collection of magazines and books about Hollywood, full of glamorous photographs of the stars. When Porter was a child, they used to look at these pictures together. She had not long since died of cancer, which was the first real sadness Porter had known, growing up in Edinburgh. She was sure her grandmother would have been proud of her.

After that first session Porter called her mum, Sandra. I went, Mum, I've just done a photo shoot. She went, ooh, that's nice, dear. I went, I took all my clothes off and laid on the floor. You can only see my bottom, I look like a bike rack, and she went, noo, you didn't. I went, I did, she went, oh my God, then she calmed down and was fine about it. Then she said, oh, what are we going to tell your father? I said, just tell him what I told you, I took my kit off, it's not a problem. I haven't done anything to hurt anybody.

She sent her mum the Polaroids from the session and her mum phoned to say she thought they were lovely. She phoned her grandfather too. Horatio Walter Stanley Twiddie. He said, dear, there's wars going on, there's people killing each other and dying of drug abuse, your bottom's not a major concern.

But somehow it was. After one picture appeared in GQ there was a minor fuss. SO GQ printed some more pictures from the same session and there was a little more fuss. Then FHM asked her to pose for them. She was a bit annoyed about the fuss, thought, oh for goodness' sake, get over it, so went ahead and did it. She says FHM neglected to tell her they were going to project her bottom onto the seat of the government. She was in the bathroom one morning, getting ready to go to the gym, listening to the news from the television in the other room, when she heard her name mentioned and rushed in, and there was her naked self plastered all over the news, at 6.30 in the morning, thank you very much.

Then the magazine Esquire said, will you do some for us too, and she thought, oh no, I can't do any more, and Esquire, very fleet-footed, said, how about we do a big this-is-the-last-one-ever? So Porter said, oh, all right then, and, actually, the Esquire pictures are her favourites.

At the time, she knew her father, Craig, wouldn't want to talk about it, wouldn't even want it mentioned, like, didn't happen, oh no. It wasn't that he was annoyed, just that he preferred to pretend there were no such pictures. He just about acknowledges it now, she says.

Her parents, both in their early 50s, separated about three years ago, not long after her grandmother's death. She and her brother, Keith, had seen it coming, not that there was any great hostility in the air, so much as a growing apart. Her father ran, still runs, a construction business and her mother had worked with him for many years and has continued to do so since the separation.

Porter thinks that living and working together must be an awful strain, coupled with raising children. They had got along fine for years, her parents, but it just fizzled out and splitting up became inevitable. She is really pleased, she says, because they were both unhappy and now they're really happy, especially her mum, who has found a new partner - the cheeky monkey - and has just been on holiday with him in Saudi Arabia.

She thinks her dad may have met someone too, but he plays his cards so close to his chest that she can't be entirely sure. She imagines he'll sit her and her brother down one day and tell them formally what's going on... or maybe not... she can't be sure.

She knows all about her mum's romance because she was there when it blossomed. She had taken her mum on holiday to Puerto Banus near Marbella earlier last year, and it was there that her mum met this Canadian surgeon who is based in Dubai.

Porter had joined them for dinner one night, feeling unaccountably nervous, filling spaces by telling a long inappropriate joke with the punch line, no, I haven't blown a seal, that's frost on my moustache. The surgeon had laughed heartily but her mum had shot her looks of suspicion and incomprehension. She was glad her friend Dec from Ant & Dec was also holidaying there with his girlfriend. She was happier playing gooseberry with them than with her mum. Porter herself had not had a long relationship for some four years before meeting Flint. She'd had dates, of course, met some lovely people, she says, but nobody who had made her go, wow.

She had been surprised to find herself "accused" of being a lesbian in a recent article in a tabloid newspaper. This apparently was based on the observation of the male reporter who had interviewed her while she was with her best girlfriend, Charlotte Wheeler. She could not be offended - as it happened, she was not a lesbian, but so what if she was? - even though the intention had been to criticise. The reporter had also reported that Wheeler, who works in television production, had more star quality than Porter, which amused them both.

Porter and Wheeler have recently formed a company, Heroine, to develop light entertainment ideas and scripts for television and film. They have already had one idea optioned and are excited by the degree of interest in their other projects. It's because we're so f***ing funny, says Porter. She is particularly pleased with the company name, which they dreamt up after a few drinks, going from poppy to opium to heroin and, finally, heroin with an "e", on the grounds that they were going to produce highly addictive ideas and were, themselves, highly addictive chicks.

They met when Wheeler was working in the children's department of Carlton Television and Porter came along to present a programme, Sticky. This, she thinks, is one of about 30 programmes she has presented. She tries to reel off the names but gives up, can't remember them all.

Her main jobs at the moment are Top of the Pops, a film programme for Channel 5, and Virgin Radio, for whom she works as a DJ. There are various other cable and satellite shows, and always other projects in the offing. She denies she lost any work off the back of the "Gail Porter naked!" furore, or that she was ejected from children's television, where she has not worked since.

Top of the Pops, of course, is not children's television. Not quite. Porter goes into the studio to begin the recording, stands in front of the corralled audience, is dwarfed by them as she delivers word-perfect cues. It's still No 1, it's Top of the Pops! She gets in a tangle saying Phats & Small, fluffs the line twice, laughs, remains unfazed, gets it right on the third go.

In a quiet moment she is surrounded by a group of young men who ask her to autograph their tickets. She asks each their name and checks the spelling - Neil, is that N E I L? - before writing a message. They are students from Southampton, from "uni", relieved to have made it to Elstree in time after a mad dash on the train.

One of the production crew sidles up to me, says, practically out of the corner of his mouth as if disclosing a state secret, we all like her here, which I would say is apparent. She smiles at the uni boys, says, see you later. Thanks, Gail, they say, one after the other. Then Tom Jones serenades Cerys from Catatonia. Then Porter says, it's a great job, this.