Vernon Kay has revealed that a drunken night out with his friends kick-started his career after he was scouted by a modelling agency. The broadcaster, 48, had been working for his cousin in his DIY shop at the time when he was asked to do a catwalk by a scout while attending the BBC Clothes Show Live.
Appearing on former Radio 1 DJ Nick Grimshaw and Michelin-starred chef Angela Hartnett’s podcast Dish, the host of TV's All Star Family Fortunes said: “It was me and two friends and we went there basically to do a little bit of Christmas shopping, but we knew that the Clothes Show Live was full of girls.
“Three guys, night out in Birmingham the Thursday before. It was great fun and we just ended up, once we’d done a lap of it, you think ‘Do you know what? It’s not all it’s hyped up to be this, let’s just sit in the bar’.
“So we just sat in the bar and we talked about football and this, that and the other. And then this guy, who I’m still friends with today, James North from Select Model Management, came up to me and said, ‘Listen, you’ve got the look of the moment, would you mind doing this catwalk show for us?’
“And then it was more my mates going ‘Go on, do it! I dare you! You’ll have a right laugh!’ So I’m like ‘Yeah alright then’.
“I was absolutely bladdered, and I tried walking in a straight line and I’m all over the place and then at the end of it, the guy said ‘Look, if you want to we’ll offer you the chance to come down to London and see how it goes’.”
He added that his parents had a “proper northern reaction” by just telling him to go do it and that by the following Friday he had moved to London. After doing magazine modelling, Kay moved into presenting and hosted various TV shows for ITV including All Star Family Fortunes, Splash! and 1000 Heartbeats. He has also presented his own shows on BBC Radio 1 and on Radio X.
Kay admitted that he did not originally “have a clue” what he wanted to do but knew he would not be in an office job. He said: “This sounds really weird, I knew deep down that I wouldn’t be tapping keys, I wouldn’t be in an office, and my dad always encouraged me to be a lorry driver, ‘cause he always used to say, oh, you can always come and drive for me.
“So that was always an option, but I knew it wasn’t what I was going to do. I just had this feeling. So I thought I better carry on the education so at least I get one hair on the chin. But I had this sixth sense, this weird feeling that something was going to happen, and when the scouting to be a model happened, it was exciting. It was something different.”
Kay is married to fellow TV presenter Tess Daly and they have two daughters together. Dish, hosted by Nick Grimshaw and Angela Hartnett, is available on all podcast providers now.
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