Carol Smillie was the face of primetime TV in the early 1990s, after landing the coveted gig of presenter on the hit BBC One show Changing Rooms.
The Scottish beauty fronted the show, alongside designers including Linda Barker and Laurence Llewelyn-Bowen, until Changing Rooms was cancelled in 2003, disappointing millions of viewers.
She went on to present the National Lottery, as well as her own show, Smillie's People, and even appeared on Strictly Come Dancing in 2006.
But Carol decided to quit her TV career in 2012, and started her own brand called Pretty Clever Pants, which provided women with leakproof underwear.
She sold up in 2018, and handed the business over to High Street TV, and sensationally quit showbiz altogether as she started a new career as a Humanist celebrant.
Carol now conducts humanist, non-religious weddings, funerals and baby namings, and regularly shares snaps of ceremonies on her social media accounts.
The former TV star hit the headlines last year when she was cruelly snubbed by Channel 4 when they rebooted Changing Rooms.
Bosses hired original designer Laurence, but Carol was left out of the show - which she once called “the best TV experience of her career” - and viewers were disappointed not to see her back with her old Changing Room pals.
She touched upon the embarrassing situation during an interview with Kaye Adams on her How To Be 60 podcast, and Carol said there have been moments in her career where she’s felt “foot stampy and angry”.
“I might feel a wee bit sometimes, you think 'oh, come on how can a man carry on into his seventies or beyond on TV?', but it's just unthinkable for a woman to do the same, apart from maybe Gloria (Hunniford),” she fumed.
She said she’d given up thinking that women would be treated fairly in showbusiness, and that was the reason why she walked away from her illustrious TV career.
“That's just why I don't do it anymore. I just think it's better to move on and not get angry about things that you can't really change,” Carol sadly explained.
The 61-year-old said opportunities “dried up” after she hit her 50s, and she chose to adopt a healthy approach to being rejected for “far less interesting, exciting, well-paid” jobs.
“Everyone has their day. You can't always be at the top. That's fine,” she mused.
Former model Carol now lives in Glasgow with her husband Alex Knight, who she wed in 1991, and their three children - Christie, Robbie and Jodie.
