Chucked off  The Big Breakfast but big on MTV. Kelly made many fans in her short residency on The Big Breakfast and she's made many more by appearing scantily dressed in all the lads' mags. Then there were the Triumph bra billboards which are probably responsible for causing car crashes all over the country... 
You may have been lucky enough to see her running around Waterloo Station in her underwear, advertising Playtex. Turn on your computer for a bit of gaming and you could see her promoting Fighting Force. Watch a bit of pop music and there she is again in Pulp's Help The Aged video. Buy a men's magazine and she's more than likely in that too - winning an award in GQ last year for Services To Mankind 1999, third in the FHM 100 Sexiest Women in the World 1999, fifth Sexiest Woman on the Planet - voted for by readers of Excess magazine. Log on to the internet and there are hundreds of sites devoted to her, some of them USA based. She's everywhere except The Big Breakfast it seems and wherever she is it's impossible not to look. Large breasts, long legs and a simple, beautiful dark appearance, uncomplicated, unsophisticated and usually undressed. What-you-see-is-what-you-like with kelly. But although she is alleged to have had her problems with words of several syllables, Kelly Brook is bright enough to be earning more than you and me and having fun while she does it, fun like she had when she started off in modelling, "I had two weeks in Portugal - five days shooting, the rest sunbathing - and thought 'Hey, this isn't too bad, is it?'" 
the rumour that she was thrown off The Big Breakfast after a memo was circulated about her inability to pronounce long words, she refutes, "There was no memo. Before I started they said, 'How can we make your first show really easy?' I said, 'Keep the script simple, no big links, no big words, so me and Johnny can have a bit of banter.' All of these things got written down ona piece of paper which was left in a meeting, some jobsworth found it and it ended up on the Net. Then the press got it. It was never an issue - okay, some things I might not be able to pronounce but the press made a big deal ou of it." She avers that she wasn't sacked. "They wanted me to do all the Melanie Sykes stuff, but how can you be demoted on air? I wasn't sacked, I could have stayed, but you have to move on, you can't go down. i knew I wasn't going to have an easy time. It's a high-profile show. I'm not going to be disheartened." 
And Kelly is on her way back up. She recently had a small role as a raver who overdoses in the club-based thriller Sorted and is now on MTV's Select. You can't keep Kelly down and even if the TV work were to dry up completely, there's still those amazing assets to model. If you were the boss of an underwear company who else would you want modelling your bras? 
 
 
 

Girls Of FHM 1999 - "Kelly Brook"

Tragically stopped from brightening up our mornings by tabloid fury, the Kent beauty is sure to bounce back...
In 1985, girl-haired synth twiddler Paul Hardcastle alerted the world to the plight of the American soldier in Vietnam with his stuttering anthem Nineteen - a homage to the age of the average US squaddie out shooting locals in Vietnam. And while it's true that 19 is no age to have your life frittered away by pot-bellied generals 10,000 miles from home, it isn't especially young if you're a giggling student, say, or one of the spot-faced imps who like to get the orders mixed up in McDonald's. 
However, 19 is positively embryonic for anyone presenting a live, two-hour TV show five days a week. Add the pressures of endless bad press and a domineering co-star who barely lets you get a word in edgeways, and most of us would gleefully return to stacking shelves at Netto. But The Big Breakfast presenter Kelly Brook is made of sterner stuff - "thicker stuff", the tabloids might say, even though she'd got nine GCSEs (count them: history, geography, maths, English, English lit, biology, drama, media studies and French). In the cut-throat world of television, good looks, a fine figure and a warm smile haven't been enough for the Kent beauty - who came a triumphant third in this year's 100 Sexiest Women poll - to win over detractors. Hindsight is a wonderful thing, but we're sure Kelly wouldn't have been quite so bullish in this interview if she knew that she was to be dumped from the show a few short weeks after it was printed. 

"I think I've had the most horrendous press ever," Kelly chuckles. "So what? I'm the one working with Johnny Vaughan every day. I'm the one meeting celebrities and getting the big pay-cheque. The press can pull me down as much as they want, but they still use a picture of me with my tits hanging out on the front cover to sell their papers." 

Blessed with the gift of the gab and currently dating Britflick sensation Lock, Stock And Two Smoking Barrels actor Jason Statham, the only crime that bubbly Kelly can really be considered guilty of is having a hard time keeping up with blabber-mouth Vaughan. Is she simply mis-cast? 

"I knew what Johnny was like before I joined the show," she shrugs. "And he's fantastic at what he does. You have to have a lot of confidence to sit there when he's telling a big joke and then start one of your little stories. It is difficult, but I've only been on the show a couple of months. I love working with Johnny, and we'll grow together. I'm not Denise Van Outen, I never said I was going to be, and I never said I was a fantastic presenter. I just said, 'I'm Kelly. I've never done it before, but I'll give it a go.'" 

What's your role in The Big Breakfast? 
I'm Johnny's sidekick. I'm happy for him to take the spotlight - I'm not going to compete for my place in the show. I do the job I'm asked to do. 

What's the story about all your ideas for the show being rejected? 
It's not true at all. It was one of those throwaway comments - someone said to me, "Have you come up with any ideas for the show?" and I said, "Loads, but they told me to stick to presenting!" Then it escalates to "The Big Breakfast says 'No' to Kelly's ideas". They'd love me to come up with ideas. But they're so good that they don't need ideas from me. 

Hasn't Channel 4 been a bit slow to defend you when you've been slagged off? 
Well, they're a big company and they don't feel the need to prove that The Big Breakfast is a good programme. The way you prove that is by doing a good show - I don't have to prove that I can pronounce this word and that. I make mistakes, we all do. And people at home don't sit and analyse it - they just switch it on while they're half asleep. The Big Breakfast won't fail - we're as popular as we've ever been. 

There's been a bit of a ruck between you and Gail Porter, hasn't there? 
I met her on Saturday and she was so upset about all this bollocks about her going for "The Big Breakfast job" - which doesn't even exist! I'm doing the job, so there's no job to be had! Gail was more upset about it all than I was. She'd said in some interviews that she was going for a big job; it was assumed she meant The Big Breakfast, and the press wanted a story. 

But didn't you say: "You've not got the job, Gail!" on live TV? 
Yeah, I did. It might have sounded bitter, but it wasn't meant to be. The show's a lively, fun show and we take the piss out of people. And other shows take the piss out of me. I tun a programme on and they go, "Kelly Brook - she's thick," but I don't take it in. I don't sit there going, "Oh no! No-one likes me!" 

Did you know you look a lot skinner in the flesh than on the box... 
People say that. The screen puts pounds on you - and I have to wear cardigans because the bosses don't like me to be hanging out in the morning. I'd like to wear more skimpy things. 

At least the cardies keep your armpits covered up - are you like Julia Roberts under the woollens? 
No! I get the occasional day when I haven't got time - but I don't think I've ever had a bush as hairy as Julia Roberts. Under my arms, I mean! There's your headline, eh? "Kelly hasn't got a bush as hairy as Julia'." Ha! 

Funny you should say that - because there are a few pictures of you where you appear to have forgotten to wax your bikini line. 
There's one where I'm sure someone airbrushed the hair on. I remember that they were nothing like that when they first came out. I'm a waxer! 

Why did you change your name from Kelly Parsons? 
It's not much of a change, is it? If I knew I'd have to live with it, I'd have made it interesting. Basically, I was doing a shoot and the Daily Star wanted the pictures. They didn't like Kelly Parsons, and wanted to call me Kely Brook. I said okay, thinking it was a one-off, but it stuck. 

Does getting up at 3am bugger up your sex life? 
No, you just cram it in when you can. I see Jason nearly every day anyway - I finish at 10am and he's an actor so he doesn't work every day. We probably see each other more than a couple who work nine to five. 

Do you get recognised at inopportune moments? 
Me and my mates had been out for a dinner a few weeks back and we were walking through Soho - a bit drunk - and as we passed a peep show we thought it'd be a laugh if we all piled in. But as we were walking in, the woman at the door recognised me and we fled, because we just knew that it would have been in the papers the next day - "Kelly Brook: porn addict." 

Do you want to clear up this story about a Big Breakfast memo - leaked to the press - that said you can't pronounce tricky words? 
There was no memo. Before I started they said, "How can we make your first show really easy?" I said, "Keep the script simple, no big links, no big words, so me and Johnny can have a bit of banter." All of these things got written down on a piece of paper which was left in a meeting, some jobsworth found it and it ended up on the net. Then the press got it. 

So which guest would you most dread: Slobodan Milosovic, Anna Kournikova or Adriana Sklenarikova? 
Ha! Slobodan Milosovic is quite easy - it rolls off the tongue - and Anna Kournikova is quite easy too. The last one's the hardest. And I bet you've got those written down phonetically, too! 

Interview by Mike Peake.