Gail Porter claims she didn't earn a penny from her famous naked FHM shoot which was projected onto the Houses of Parliament in London in 1999.
Gail Porter
The 48-year-old star was one of the most in-demand presenters in the 1990s appearing on children's TV series 'Blue Peter', 'Top of the Pops' and 'The Big Breakfast' and her fame and beauty led to her posing for a number of lads' mags, including the FHM issue that made all the news channels due to her bare bum being beamed onto the historic building.
Gail - who at one point boasted a 28JJ chest before she had breast reduction surgery in 2016 - declared herself bankrupt in January 2017 and she has now claimed that she was ripped off and was never paid for stripping off for those publications.
In an interview with the latest issue of New! magazine, she said: "I never got paid a penny for any of the lads' mags shoots. "Remember the picture of me naked on the Houses of Parliament? I didn't see a penny for that. I was young. I went in, I did the shoot, I didn't sign anything. And that was that. The biggest-selling FHM in the UK ever, my naked arse on a building, and I didn't get a penny."
Gail's main mistake was that she was too trusting of the people she was working with at the height of her fame and assumed that everybody would act in a professional and honourable way with her.
She said: "I trust everybody and think everyone will look after me and that's not the case in life. I ended up bankrupt and I never got a penny for a single photo shoot I did. But look, I loved every single minute of it. It wasn't the nicest thing, going bankrupt though.
"I had bailiffs outside the house, banging on my door. They asked what assets I had and I gave them my £200 telly because it was all I had. I offered them my bike but they didn't want it! That was a worrying time. I shoved my bills under my bed and they just kept building up and I kept ignoring them, hoping they'd go away. But I was panicking like crazy."
Gail - who has 17-year-old daughter Honey with her Toploader guitarist ex-husband Dan Hipgrave - is now in a position where she is earning enough to get by, but she makes sure she is careful with the money that she earns because she doesn't ever want to be that position again.
She said: "I scrape by. I have certain little jobs, a few online things and voice-overs. I make sure there's enough piled up, but I do have to be careful with my finances.
"I'm not a massive spender, the work just wasn't coming in. I even applied for a job at my local library and they wouldn't hire me! They were like, 'You're Gail off the telly! Don't be silly, you don't need a job here.' Seriously I'm a grafter. I wanted to work but no one wanted me."
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