Gail Porter has opened up about the shocking moment she discovered that a photograph of her naked body had been projected onto the Houses Of Parliament without her consent.
The former Top Of The Pops and The Big Breakfast host, 53, was one of the most popular TV stars in the 1990s and posed for a number of lads’ mags as a result, including Loaded.
But in 1999, her nude photoshoot was projected onto the Houses of Parliament without her consent, as a publicity stunt for FHM’s ‘sexiest woman’.
Featuring in the BBC Two documentary Loaded: Lads, Mags and Mayhem, which airs this evening and is available on BBC iPlayer, Gail revealed how she ‘felt a little bit stupid… a big bit let down’.
Speaking about the incident, she revealed she was never paid for the shoot and didn’t know about the stunt until she found photographers and journalists outside her home and her name being mentioned on BBC News.
She recalled: ‘It was the 9th of May, 1999. I got up in the morning and I was in my bathroom. I was doing my teeth and I had BBC News on in the front room, and I heard my name and I thought, “BBC News?” They’re quite sensible. Why are they talking about me?”
‘And then I had a look outside my front window, and there was journalists, photographers, outside the house and I thought “Oh s***.” I went straight into the front room and I just saw this image.
‘I felt a little bit stupid, a little bit let down. Well, a big bit let down, that this was a big PR stunt for a magazine, and the only person that wasn’t informed was the person’s image that they used, which was me.
‘I think it was one of the biggest-selling FHMs ever. They kind of just used me as a pawn in their game. I was new to the industry and when they said they weren’t going to pay me, I just assumed they didn’t pay anyone. I was an easy target, I guess.’
‘Consent would’ve been nice, because I most probably would have said no,’ the TV star insisted.
She added: ‘Just even walking up the road, lots of people pointing at you, and sort of you know, making sure you knew that they’d seen you naked.
‘I’m a people-pleaser as well, well I definitely was in the ’90s. That was all I was good for, was talking about my a*** in FHM. I let people take advantage, and I shouldn’t have done.’
Elsewhere in the documentary, Gail revealed what it initially felt like to take part in magazine shoots, describing them as ‘like being in a movie’.
She said: ’90s TV, it was just fun. No-one was worried about being OTT… Of course, if you’re on TV, suddenly people are paying attention to you.
‘This was all new to me, and it had gone from our local press, in Scotland, going, “Oh, wee Gail from Joppa, she’s done really well, we’re really proud of her”‘. To suddenly, you’ve got the world at your feet. I was having a ball.
‘Loaded, I think I only did one shoot for them. I mean they were nice enough when I turned up, but they did manage to get all the clothes in the wrong size, and they go “Oh, that doesn’t fit. Oh, that doesn’t fit. Oh, that doesn’t fit”. Maybe you should just wear a sheet.
‘When I got asked to do FHM, they wanted me naked. I phoned my grandma up and I said “Oh, they want to take a picture of my a***.”
‘And she kind of… “Oh, I remember back in the day, we had pictures of Marilyn Monroe, and we had these pictures, and it was all very lovely. Ah do what you want”‘.
‘And I was like, “Yeah, all right, then”. Good enough for Grandma, it was good enough for me. I was a little bit… nervous.
‘But then, because everybody else seemed to just be fussing with my hair and making sure, you know, there was fake tan on my back, and my mum was there and there was wind machines going, and it was quite exciting.
‘I was getting all done up. It was like… It was like being in a movie. It was just fun. It was make-believe. I felt quite empowered.’
At her peak Gail was arguably one of the most recognisable presenters on TV, but she has said her undeniable popularity didn’t get her rich.
The Scottish star became a household name thanks to regular appearances on The Big Breakfast, The Movie Chart Show, VH1 and BBC music show Top Of The Pops.
But the former pin-up has previously insisted she earned little money during the early years of her mainstream career, citing the amount she received per episode on Top Of The Pops as one of her lowest earners.
She told The Telegraph: ‘I think £500, and then you’ve got 20 per cent to your agent, then you’ve got to pay your rent. All the front covers of magazines, I never got paid for any of them.’
Weighing up her biggest payday, Porter says a voiceover for a Sainsbury’s commercial provided a moderate income.
‘It was a few hundred quid a week, and you can’t complain about that,’ she recalled. ‘But other than that, I can’t remember well-paid jobs.’
Porter previously admitted she wasn’t paid for her magazine work, at a time when lads mags were at their commercial peak.
She told The Daily Star: ‘I never got paid for anything that I did – I never got paid for FHM, GQ, or a lot of the magazines that I did.
‘Some of the others may have got paid, but I never did and I was quite vulnerable at the time. They were saying “This is going to be great for your career, it will be great fun, and think of the pics you can give your kids when you’re older.”’
In October this year, Gail revealed she asked for a job in her local bookshop when she was struggling with homelessness.
The TV presenter, who was declared bankrupt in 2017, previously experienced a period of homelessness for six months.
After losing her hair completely in 2005, alopecia sufferer Gail found that her work opportunities faded rapidly, causing her outgoings to be far greater than her income.
Appearing on Lorraine, Gail recalled her financial hardship during this period as she she struggled to land television work.
She said: ‘I remember going to the local book shop going, “Do you have any jobs going?” ‘And they said, “Come on you’re Gail Porter,” and I said, “No genuinely, can I have a job?”
‘I saved as much as I could and I have an amazing daughter whose 22 now and money just goes out.’
She added: ‘I’d lost my hair, work wasn’t coming in, bills were coming out. It can happy to anybody. I never expected it would happen to me.’
Gail is now a patron of the Fair Credit Charity – which alleviates financial hardship through community lending.
