Amanda Owen said she gave up a lucrative modelling career after a terrifying experience with a creepy photographer.
The 47-year-old, best known for starring in the Channel 5 reality series Our Yorkshire Farm, recalled an unnerving photoshoot she took part in when she was a teenager.
Amanda’s mother was a model, and the TV star said she wanted to follow in her footsteps, but she had a “rose-tinted view” of the modelling world, and thought it would be “Vogue or Cosmopolitan”.
The mum-of-nine said her mother spotted an ad in a local paper, and arranged for Amanda to have her pictures taken by a photographer in a studio.
In her novel, The Yorkshire Shepherdess, she explained the traumatic experience that put her off modelling for life, and said she was “lulled into a false sense of security”.
“I was reluctant but I was reluctant about most things in those days. It was a kind of automatic reluctance: mother likes it so I don't,” Amanda explained.
“We should have been alerted by the grotty place we went to on the outskirts of Huddersfield, but the chap seemed ok,” she added.
She said she was asked to wear dated clothes, including a lemon dress with shoulder pads and a cardigan, but confessed she would’ve been more worried if she’d have been asked to pose in her underwear.
“He took pictures to see 'if the camera loved me' then said he would be back in touch. We didn't hear anything until a few weeks later when his picture was in the local newspaper,” she shockingly revealed.
The TV star said she and her mother had been the victims of an “elaborate” scam, and said the photographer had allegedly been filming the budding models undressing in the changing room.
“That was the beginning and end of my modelling career and thankfully mother never mentioned it again,” Amanda firmly stated.
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