Gail Porter has claimed that she was never “paid a penny” for the shoots she did for lad mags in the 90s.
The Scottish presenter, 52, said she was “quite vulnerable at the time” when she signed up to appear in the publications and never even got given a free copy of the magazines she was featured in to keep.
The former Big Breakfast host admitted at the time she thought it was a bit of fun. But as she’s got older, Porter feels she and other female TV stars at the time “got taken advantage of quite a lot”.
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 magazines that I did. Some 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’.”
The former Top of the Pops presenter added that her mum, who has since passed away, and her grandad had kept copies of the magazines for her but that she doesn’t want to look at them.
Following her experience, Porter said she would never strip off again to re-create her infamous 1999 FHM shoot.
At the time, the TV star’s naked image was then projected onto the Houses of Parliament in a bid to drum up publicity for the men’s magazine’s ‘sexiest women’ campaign.
Porter was devastated by the stunt, which she never consented to, and re-created the photos on her own terms, 11 years later at age 39.
When asked if she would ever re-create the image again in her fifties, she said: “Never in a million years”.
Porter said the backlash she received in the wake of the marketing ploy left her in a depression and unable to leave her home at the time.
She reflected: “Then the negative comments started and I go really depressed, so depressed I didn’t want to leave the house.”
