porter house blues

Fame, fortune, and celebrity boyfriends; naked notoriety on theHouse of Commons . . . just when it seemed you knew everything aboutGail Porter she lays bare much more: the 'soul-mate' relationshipwith her mother and how her parents' separation has coloured her ownviews of marriage It is a cold, crisp day in Perthshire, and GailPorter is emotionally drained and exhausted. She has just flown upfrom London for a rare weekend in Scotland which she will spend withher beloved mum, Sandra, in the lap of luxury at Gleneagles Hotel.They're in thorough need of being fussed over, sighs Gail, and sothey have come to a place where they could just conceivably befussed to death.

None the less, she looks delightfully rumpled today in the kindof manner only ever truly achieved by the hip or the famous. She hasher chopped, corn-blonde hair brushed flat behind pixie ears, and iswearing a denim jacket over worn combats that are decadentlyfashionable, and, doubtless, very expensive. She is the liveliest ofcompany, picking delicately at a plate of strawberries and quaffingfrom a glass of Chardonnay.

It is a weird, weird experience interviewing Gail Porter in thepresence of her mother, because later Gail will reveal her strangeattitude towards marriage and having children - both tainted, itseems, by the effect her parents' marriage bust-up had on her. Thenthere's her feelings towards men, fame, money, and the very closerelationship she and her mother have enjoyed, and which bizarrelyonly really began to blossom after Sandra and husband, Craig, splitup. There is also the price she has paid for being a winner in thegreasy flagpole climb.

It's more than a year since she posed naked and flashed herbottom for GQ magazine and caused a reaction broadly interpreted asa 50-50 blend of hate/notoriety when her naked image was projectedonto the House of Commons in a publicity stunt by FHM.

It might only have been a flickering light reflected on a wall,however she is still being criticised for it.

She'll be 29 in three weeks' time. Sometimes it is like talkingwith one of the generation of young old maids. Yet she is theliveliest company. She also has a sense of humour which containsthat grating undertone of contempt. For example, I express a tongue-partially-in-cheek theory about the attraction she felt for herformer boyfriend - that Stonehenge punk Keith Flint, of the band TheProdigy, famed for his devil's horns hairstyle and courtingcontroversy with hit songs Smack My Bitch Up and Firestarter.

I jokingly remark that falling in love must have been like amagnetic meeting of the "bolted ones" (Gail has had her left breastpierced with a metal bolt, and Keith has bolts through his tongueand nose). She fires back sarcastically with the quick riposte:"Yeah, that's it - a connection of bolts, we interlocked oneevening!"

Events that week had confirmed her status at the height of herprofession. At Maxim magazine's Women of the Year lunch at London'sPark Lane Hotel, she won Best TV Presenter, beating Gabby Yorath,Donna Air, Cat Deeley and Emma Leddon.

She had also been named as the replacement for out-goingpresenter Sara Cox on Channel 4's Big Breakfast show, in which shegets to cavort on a bed with celebrities and boy bands. She alsofronts BBC1's Top of the Pops, hosts Channel 5's popular film reviewshow and will shortly present yet another new series about theinternet, for C4.

Pretty good going for somebody who started off as a runner for InVideo and then Picardy Television in Edinburgh. TV presenters suchas Ms Porter have much in common with professional tennis players.They start young, they're relentlessly ambitious, and they stayfocused. And so, in order to chill out before she begins a three-month stint of 3am rises for the breakfast show, she is being waitedon and pampered in one of those hotels where the ugly aspects oflife have been excluded.

Gail and Sandra have come here to enjoy the quiet elegance andthe politeness of its inhabitants, many of them wallet-heavytourists, others professional people.

When I arrive I find her perched with her feet up on a chair in awindow seat at a far corner of the bar, looking like a cross betweena cheerleader, surf-chick and occasional model for a teen magazine,though her height (5ft 2) would prevent her pursuing a catwalkcareer. A touchy subject, her height. It was the first thing latchedon to when Ms Porter first began to feel the thud of the critics'pen between the shoulder blades.

"Some people can be extremely nice about you and other people canbe extremely detrimental towards you," she harumphs. "I got called adwarf. I am not very good at handling criticism yet." She does notgrudge the critics their sad amusements, but wishes they'd stick tothe facts. "I know that when I first started reading the negativethings in the press, they made up things. That Gail's manager sackedher. Which was untrue because I left my manager. Or 'Gail's Lost OutTo Donna On The Big Breakfast'. Some papers managed to get a wholepage out of this. Negative press I don't like. Obviously you don'tlike it if people think you are not plain nice. You don't likehearing nasty things about yourself, really. Nobody does. Somepeople can handle it and some people can't. I am not very good athandling it."

But what does she expect when she was so savvy about exploitingher sexuality? It was her decision to pose for that provocativeseries of photos in GQ and FHM. A cynical gamble in making thecrossover from children's TV presenter on Fully Booked to programmeswith more adult appeal. She explains: "When I finished Fully BookedI got asked to go along to GQ to do a photo shoot which was supposedto be a fashion thing. I ended up doing that famous picture of melying down on the ground in a blue room and showing my bottom off.They asked me when I got there, do you fancy doing it? I did thinkI'd quite like to have a picture like that of myself to keep. Yeah,I fancy that. Yeah, why not. I did it and then everything went kindof mad after that. It was shock horror, children's-television-presenter-has-a-bottom shock. It was right after the Richard Baconscandal with the drugs and Blue Peter, and I think the tabloids wereout to get the children's TV presenters and to get at the BBC."

Just how badly the shrink-wrapped little sculpted buttocks shotswere received in some quarters could perhaps be measured by Gail'sbrief appearance to welcome The Corrs on stage at Wembley Arenaduring the Net Aid concert last summer. Ringing out over the cheersfrom the heaving goulash of bodies at the front of the stage camemuch louder jeering directed at Gail.

The experience at the concert would have taken the starch out oflesser mortals. But Gail says: "There is a spontaneity about acrowd. I don't remember a lot about it. It was like being in shock.'You are on in 30 seconds,' they said. I thought: 'I can't go outthere.' Everyone was in such high spirits. I don't think they wouldhave cared if it was me or Eddie the Eagle. Anyway, that wasn't agood place to measure popularity."

Just then, a very attentive hotel waiter arrives with trays offood, gesturing to the one with no animal produce (Gail's a veggieand floss-thin to boot). There's avocado, plum tomatoes, wildmushrooms and asparagus. "Err, could I actually have a plate offruit," she interjects. "I am allergic to oil so that is not goingto be much use to me. I get a rash. No banana, thanks; yeuch.Strawberries, yes."

Which seems like a good point to change course and raise thismother-daughter bonding exercise which only happened belatedly fouryears ago when Sandra, 52, and husband, Craig, separated. So it wasa get-to-know-you thing on the basis of a daughter needing toprotect a discomforted mother?

"When I was growing up we weren't that close," says Gail. "It wastypical mum, dad, son and daughter. When my dad and mum split up, itwas like Ab Fab. I became the mother of my mum. I suddenly wanted toprotect my mum. She had been married for 27 years." Protect heragainst what, precisely? "Against being on her own. She'd had 27years of being with someone which is something that I have neverexperienced and I doubt very much I will experience. You get marriedat 21 and then suddenly everything is topsy turvy. I wanted to spoilher and look after her."

At this point Sandra, who has been dutifully keeping mum whilepretending to be buried in the hotel's leisure activities brochure,pipes up: "I quite enjoyed it, all the attention." Gail continues:"From knowing a mum who was raising you when you were younger,taking you to your classes and doing a mum's thing to nowdiscovering that you have actually got a best friend there as well.You can be there for each other. We communicate all the time. We aresoul mates. I tell her everything."

Everything? "Oh yes," says Sandra. "We help each other." Gail:"That's why I wanted her to come on this weekend. I was justexhausted. I am absolutely flat-out busy. I was emotionally drained.That's why I said, well, you come with me.

"I knew that she wouldn't give me a hard time. She'd just bethere. That I don't have to talk if I don't want to talk."

Does that mean it is harder when you have got to present yournext beau for your mother's approval - that her expectations aremuch higher? You know the kind of thing: hey mom, I'd like you tomeet Keith of The Prodigy; ignore the Frankenstein bolts, themisogynistic lyrics on his records and the There's Something AboutMary hair gel, because, really, he is a nice bloke.

Gail says: "She accepts it. And gets on with it. I do the samewith her. I am very lucky. That's why I phone her every day. I amjust glad that we found that. So many people don't."

Though they are separated, Sandra still works with Craig in thebuilding contractor's company they run together. "It's bloomin'weird if you ask me," says Gail. "I don't talk to my dad as much asmy mum because my dad is not as open as my mum. My dad is very much'well done, did you have a good day at work dear', hear what I wantto hear and that will do me. I am absolutely delighted - not thattheir marriage didn't work out, that sounds awful. But when you aregrowing up and you know that they are not getting on very well andthey are staying together for the sake of the kids. It wasn't bad.It just kind of happened. We get on great with both of them. It ismore like a friendship now."

Although Gail's much publicised relationship with Keith isofficially over after only five months, it was, at first, a liaisonwhich she found a bit overwhelming. They were introduced by fellowpresenter Sara Cox, whom Gail had met briefly through a few jobs andwhose boyfriend is also in The Prodigy.

" 'You have got to meet my friend, Keith, you would just get onso well,' said Sara. You get that sort of thing from everybody inthis industry," says Gail. "It was her boyfriend's birthday and shesaid Keith would like to take me to the party. Keith phoned and wewent to the party together and we just got on like a house on fire.He is extremely ambitious, like me. He is not freaky at all. When hefirst walked in I thought, is this the same person? He is a lovelybloke. So normal. Down to earth. He has a passion for his work."

But with the relationship over, Gail has moved out of Keith'sEssex mansion. She had moved in when she returned from the Maldives,where she had been reporting for Wish You Were Here?, only to findher West Hampstead flat had been burgled. "They nicked my TV, video,computer and car, which they used to drive to an estate and dumpedit. Stuff they could sell easy. Photographs, personal things,everything was on the floor when I got back. I was in a massiveamount of shock.

"They must have known whose flat it was when they saw thephotographs. After the burglary, I phoned Keith. I ended up stayingat his for ages but it wasn't convenient."

Now renting a flat amid the Bacchanalian delights of Soho, shenotes: "I don't really know anything about long-term relationshipsbecause I have not been in one before."

Does that worry her mum? "No, I was in one," says Sandra. "For 27years."

"Hence the reason I won't be in one, that's for sure," says Gailsourly. So her mum's matrimonial bust-up has been sufficient reasonto put her off marriage for life?

"Yes, I have seen lots and lots of relationships just crumble,"replies Gail. "Everybody seems to be divorced these days. That mightbe a tragic thing to say. All I am saying is that if you actuallylove someone that much and you want to be with them then you don'thave to marry them."

Nor does she want children. "Just because society says I have gotto have kids. I love kids but I don't want one. People aredifferent. Mum is not getting grandchildren by me, there is not ahope in hell of her getting grandchildren.

"People just expect you to have children. Oh well, you are awoman, fall in love and have children, that's your job. I don't wantto have kids. I am just happy doing my thing and I want to get onwith it. The state the world is in at the minute I don't know if Iwant to be 20 years down the line looking back thinking, oh gosh, Ihave got to look after this kid who might hate me by then. It is nota bad thing."

Which leaves the way clear for Gail, a middle-class girl raisedin Joppa, near Edinburgh, to complete her goal to become one of thetop TV presenters in Britain and run her own production company. Shehas recently set up the company Heroine - "with an E", she corrects -and has written six major projects with partner Charlotte Wheeler, aproducer friend.

"People were always saying we were very funny together, why don'tyou write something, so we did. People aren't going to want GailPorter for ever.

If they don't, at least I have got something to go back on. Itmakes sense to have your own production company.

"It's not about money. I just wanted to get on. You do get paidwell, yeah. The great thing is now that I can look after my friendsand my family."

Given her sensible upbringing and education - Portobello HighSchool, Media Production course at Watford College - and a careerstretching ahead of her that could last 20 years or more, youwouldn't expect her to self-destruct in the traditional blizzard ofbooze or drugs. No, really. Mooning for the camera seems to havebeen her biggest mistake so far. Any regrets? "You must be joking. Iam sitting in the Gleneagles Hotel living the life of Reilly. Mylittle brother, Keith, works with adults with learning and physicaldisabilities.

"It makes you put this all into perspective. I am having a laugh.Maybe it is just because I am extremely annoying that you think Ihave been around longer than I have. But it is only three yearssince I quit Fully Booked.

"I am just a girl from Edinburgh. I've done what I wanted to do:got on TV. I'm having a great laugh doing my job and I don't want tochange the way that I act for anybody."

Even as a child, she says, she had a fantasy of being on thetelly. With her best pal, they played TV games like TheProfessionals. "I'd be riding on my bike and I'd be Bodie or Doyle,whatever, and we'd talk to one another on our walkie talkies. We dida lot of make-believe, except I just carried on, made it last forever.

"You see - I am Dorothy. I am always in Kansas, mate. That's thefrightening thing."