Model display for Debbie in the TV spotlight

The television presenter turned founder of one of the country’s first modelling schools is nobody’s fool.

Her London School of Modelling has just been the subject of an ITV2 reality show which has propelled her business into the spotlight.

“When I moved to London from Yorkshire, I just couldn’t believe that there was nowhere offering modelling courses like ours,” says the 32-year-old.

“So I set about starting my own.”

It wasn’t until she opened her school, which offers would-be models the chance to learn the tricks of the trade in a two-day boot camp, that Debbie realised it had all the makings of a hit docusoap.

Born in Sheffield, Debbie’s first sortie in front of the camera was aged three when she appeared in the Pink Floyd video for The Wall.

Bright at school, she was a straight A student and went to Newcastle University where she gained an honours degree in history.

“I just loved history, but I always wanted to perform.”

Show business is in her blood. Her grandfather was a performer and her mother is a singer. She went to stage school and although she felt she would end up on television she always had one eye in the business opportunity.

“There is both performing and business in our family so that allowed me to see things from both sides.”

Her flair for business could be seen at an early age when she took part in the Young Enterprise Scheme while at school.

“I was managing director of a jewellery business and it did really well and whetted my appetite for business, but my first love was show business.”

After leaving university, Debbie also left her family in Leeds and moved to London where she worked as a runner and then producer on shows such as the Big Breakfast and for the Disney Channel.

“I lived and breathed television production. But then I decided that I wanted to have a go at presenting.”

In 2008, she began co-presenting an internet podcast called StudentCooking.TV and she also appeared live on Living TV’s Market Kitchen. The show received a Royal Television Society Yorkshire region award in 2008 for best contribution to new media.

She then devised a quiz show, Quizmania, which she hosted.

But by 2009 she decided she wanted to leave television and work for herself.

She had just married Jonathan Ansell, a former member X Factor finalists G4.

The pair got engaged after Ansell proposed to Debbie in front of more than 2,500 people on stage at the end of his final show of A Night at the Opera at the London Palladium in November 2008.

“I had no idea what he was planning,” says Debbie.

“It got to the end of the show and he announced that we were going to sing together and invited me on to the stage, I thought it a bit strange as I can’t sing this is going to be the end of his career.

“I had no idea what he was up to and neither had anyone else. He hadn’t run it past anyone.

“Then when I got up on stage he got down on one knee. It was the most amazing proposal ever.

“My mum was in the audience screaming and then all the cast came on stage and sang. It was unbelievable.”

The couple had met three years earlier in a London nightclub.

“It was 3am and I saw him sitting in the doorway of the club. I’d seen him on X Factor and thought he was gorgeous. I realised this was likely to be my only opportunity to talk to him. We started talking and three years later we were married.”

Shortly after they married Debbie decided to set up the London School of Modelling.

“I’d had enough of television and I wanted to run my own business. I always thought of myself as a bit of an entrepreneur.

“I just couldn’t believe that there wasn’t a modelling school, they are everywhere in America.”

Debbie says the school isn’t just for a young person determined to be a model.

“Our weekend courses are perfect for hen or girlie weekends and they are also fantastic for building up people confidence and self esteem if they are going for a job interview.

“Above all people have a brilliant time when they come to us. they get to experience what its like to have photo shoots, and be on the catwalk and get a make-over.

“I created the school to show that the world of professional modelling is not just about high fashion and catwalk. Whether you are curvy, leggy, petite, plus size, mature, strangely beautiful or beautifully strange, modelling agencies could still need someone like you.

“Of course it is also great for people who are just starting out in modelling. We have been very successful in getting jobs for people. We have a lot of contacts.”

Debbie has also started her own model agency and has signed up some former students.

But it was the interaction between her larger-than-life staff and the students that gave her the idea for a television series.

“Having worked in television for a long time I know what makes good TV and I knew that we were on to something. I mentioned what I was doing to a friend of mine and they completely agreed with me.”

Debbie approached ITV and they agreed to a five-part television series for ITV2. Model, Misfits and Mayhem followed the teachers and students at Debbie’s school as well as Debbie herself as principal.

The ITV2 show takes an intimate look inside Debbie’s school and each episode centre’s around a new intake of modelling hopefuls, who are trained, sent out on test shoots and found work.

“It was strange being in front of the camera again. I thought I’d moved on from that stage in my life and there I was with television camera’s moving into my school.”

She admits the programme may have made the school look rather disorganised but she says since it aired business has never been better.

“It was really hard, they’d film for four days and then would take three days off.”

The programme was made harder for Debbie as she had only recently given birth to her baby daughter Siena just before filming started. Siena is one next week

“It was really hard to be away from her for so long. But I am a bit of a control freak and I like to be in charge.”

Debbie refuses to get a nanny for Siena unlike many working mothers in London so finds juggling motherhood and career quite hard.

“My mum came down from Yorkshire while they were filming which really helped and Jonathan was at home quite a lot.

“That is the good thing with his job. When he’s not working he’s home all the time and can look after Siena while I am working and then when he’s away touring I am at home more. It is hard as we don’t have any family living nearby, but it seems to be working.

“I don’t want to miss Siena’s first words or her first steps and I think if we had a nanny that’s what would happen.”

Debbie doesn’t know whether there will be a second series of Models, Misfits and Mayhem but for the moment she is content to concentrate on her business and for being a good mother to Siena.