It's impossible not to warm to Kelly Brook. It's not just the huge, pearly-white smile, the wide generous lips, the pretty girl-next-door face. It's the fact that she's such a professional. She turns up for an entire day of hair, make-up, a zillion outfit changes, endless tweakings and teasings and all that type of stuff, and she doesn't bat an eyelid.
She manages to remain energetic, giggly and pleasant throughout the entire day. More than that, she fuels herself with continuous eating of the types of things famous people like her - and by this I mean women - don't usually consume. The likes of Madonna and Gwynnie et cetera seem to live on not much more than nuts and pulses. Kelly Brook, however, spends the day eating Danish pastries, toast, biscuits. It's such a relief! This 31-year-old, who is frequently voted the sexiest woman in the world by magazines like FHM , is no stick insect. 'Oh, no,' she says, popping a big chunk of sticky pastry into her mouth. 'I eat everything. I love it! I couldn't deny myself food. What a waste of a life.'
So Kelly Brook is really rather refreshing, but also not quite what I expected. I realise, when I meet her in the middle of a huge kitchen in a beautiful house in London (not hers it turns out), that she is not exactly as she seems. Most of the time I see her in photographs. I am used to seeing her in bikinis and swimsuits lounging around in St-Tropez or wherever. I've seen her looking fun and a bit demure in 1950s-style dresses. I've seen pictures of her in clinches with all her past boyfriends - the actors Jason Statham and Billy Zane and the rugby players Danny Cipriani and Thom Evans, her current boyfriend. To me she's like a silent-movie star. In fact, I think I have barely ever heard her speak. I've thought of her up there as a sort of British icon - a bit Diana Dors meets Catherine Zeta-Jones.
So it's quite odd when I listen to her talk about her life, because she really is a very chirpy girl. It's all 'nuffin's and 'somethin's, as in, 'I love my family but I don't think they think about my career a lot or nuffin.' It's sort of incongruous. I don't know why, but I'd assumed after all this time in the public eye she'd have been given airs and graces. She should do Pygmalion . She'd be brilliant.
And thank goodness for that, for I imagine she has remained the same old Kelly Brook that she's always been. She probably went to the Italia Conti theatre school saying nuffin' and somethin'.
'I started there when I was 12 years old. I was very driven,' she says. 'I was always performing as a child, and then I was determined to act and sing and dance, so I travelled for miles every day to go from home in Kent into London.' It was worth it. She popped out and immediately became famous.
Originally, she wasn't well known for acting or dancing but for being a glamour model from the age of 16 in the Daily Star (which may explain why at first she struggled to be taken seriously as a television presenter). 'Of course I look back on it and think there was something about it that was…' That was what? She pauses for a bit. 'I was very young. It was good money but, yes, to have someone of that age posing like that… I think that's probably not great.' She didn't think that at the time, though? She pauses for a bit. 'No,' she says. 'I don't think I did, but I didn't do it for very long anyway.' It also led her down the path of suggestive photo-shoots for GQ , Loaded and FHM .
Which means she hasn't been without her detractors. In the past she's been called 'stupid' and viewed as nothing more than sex on legs. Both of these assumptions are unfair. The first thing we need to set straight is that she is not stupid. This accusation has followed her since the age of 20, when she was presenting The Big Breakfast on Channel 4.
'It was very unfair,' she says. 'It was my first job. Of course I was going to make mistakes. What I couldn't understand was why people got so upset about it! It was a big programme in terms of what the media wrote about it, but not that many people watched it.'
Still, it took a long time for her to get over the fact she apparently couldn't read words from the autocue. 'Well, I couldn't, but so what? It was made into such a big deal and it was very upsetting, because it was tantamount to being bullied. I wasn't bullied at school so I couldn't understand what was going on.'
But back then Brook decided that her motto would be to keep striving. 'I suppose I could have given up,' she says, 'but what would have been the point? You have to take the knocks, you know. It's a tough business.' It's not the toughest knock she's had. Over the past 15 years or so she's been fired as a judge from Britain's Got Talent , lost her father to cancer while she was on Strictly Come Dancing , had very public break-ups with boyfriends and then, more recently, had a miscarriage.
She is, understandably, reluctant to talk about her pregnancy. She had been with her boyfriend Thom Evans for only a few weeks when she found out she was pregnant, but she lost the baby five months later. Since then she has said, 'It was the hardest and most terrible time in my life.' Now she says, 'It showed me who Thom was. He was amazing. We didn't even know each other that well but there he was. We met, I got pregnant, that didn't work out, but he's great. We are the best of friends who love each other a lot.' She says all her friends love him, too, and that's saying something. 'Usually they don't comment, but this time they've all said, "Oh, he's so great, Kelly. You've got to keep this one!'
Brook says she deals with her professional setbacks by making sure she doesn't put all her eggs in one basket. 'I have a business as well as my acting career,' she says. With her financial hat on she designs lingerie and swimwear for New Look. Today her new underwear collection is hanging up on a rail at the back of the room. It's very pretty, all push-up 1950s-style bras in lace and gingham with matching knickers.
'It's lovely, isn't it?' Brook says enthusiastically. 'It's what suits me. I've got curves. Most girls have curves, so that's who I design for.' She thinks her curves make her popular not just with men, but with women, too. (Statistics bear this out: after topping FHM 's 100 Sexiest Women in the World poll in 2005, she was voted best British female body by readers of Grazia magazine.) 'I can't bear the fact that girls these days think you have to be thin to be beautiful and successful. I'm not thin,' she says. 'I don't starve myself. I don't look at my face and body and think I need surgery or a boob job or a bum lift. It makes me very angry when women in the public eye talk about what work they've had done, because it makes other women feel devalued. They should just shut up about it!' She takes a bite from a Danish pastry. 'Sorry,' she says, giggling a bit.
She's refreshingly opinionated, Brook. This, she tells me, is because her family is made up of many different types. 'They do more interesting jobs than me,' she says. 'My brother's in the Armed Forces and he's off to Somalia and places like that. He does something really meaningful. My aunt's big into politics. What am I? I say, "I've just been with Ant and Dec!" and my family are like, "Whatever." They look at me and just carry on chatting. It's no big deal.'
After The Big Breakfast fiasco Brook hit the headlines for dumping her then boyfriend, Jason Statham, and going off with the American actor Billy Zane before she'd told poor lovelorn Statham of her defection. 'That was terrible,' she says. 'Jason was the love of my life. I'd met him when I was 17 and I really loved him, but I was so young. It was always going to happen, I suppose.' What was? 'That we'd split up. It couldn't last.' Zane, she says, was different from the men she'd dated previously. 'He's so bohemian!' she says. 'He taught me so much about everything. We went round the world and he told me about art and theatre and opera. I was blown away by him, really.' Zane came to support her when she was on Strictly , but then her father died and everything went into free-fall. 'I think both of us knew,' she says. 'He has a little girl now. I'm very happy for him.'
But what about her? What makes her happy? 'Oh, well, I love designing my collection for New Look,' she says. 'And I'm very happy with Thom.' She says they lead a pretty simple life. 'We have a house in Kent and we like to be there. We go out, meet friends, that type of thing.' I remind her that she once said she thought it an achievement to have got to 30 without being married or having children. 'Did I say that?' she asks. She looks slightly shocked. 'I think I was trying to say I am proud of the fact that I've earned my own money, done things the best I can and never asked for handouts. I think it was more that.'
What would she like to say when she hits 40? The opposite, I imagine? She laughs. 'I don't want to pressurise Thom,' she says. 'Actually, I'd like to work on being more focused. I often think if I had been better at focusing on one thing exclusively I'd have had an acting career like Kate Winslet or a career as a top dancer. But in many ways I've gone with what people want me to do rather than what I want to do. I am changing that now.'
In what way is she changing it? Is she going to concentrate solely on acting? Or dancing? Or…'I'd like to focus more. Anyway, I have to remember, it's not the be all and end all, this business. There's always something else to do.'With that, she gives me a huge smile and tucks into another delicious-looking Danish pastry.