Carol Smillie, lingerie model turned national treasure, is working this morning. After a two-year, post Changing Rooms sabbatical, she is dipping her bronzed, French-manicured toe back into gainful employment with a charity fashion show and a daytime television series. She has chosen the shiny white Rennie Mackintosh House for an Art Lover as the backdrop against which to fill me in on these important developments.
It’s her favourite venue for conducting media business. And business it is. It’s immediately apparent that she is in brisk professional mode. Every box on the glamour checklist is diligently ticked — 100 watt smile, smart fitted jacket, groomed hair, perfect make-up.
Barely tall enough to post a letter, but exuding determined efficiency, the soon to be presenter of The People’s Court makes it clear that she must be away at 11.40am to pick up her son from school. She then ushers me to a room as blindingly white as her famous gnashers.
“I’m not nervous about modelling,” she says, with a confidence that most 44-year-olds can only dream of. “I haven’t modelled for a while, but I’ve done loads of photographic work since then. I’m not an insecure person — when I was a model I didn’t worry whether other girls were taller or prettier than me. People used me because I got on well with the photographers. Personality is more important.”
Smillie’s personality is firmly split. When she isn’t working she uses her married name, Carol Knight, walks the dog, looks after her three children and immerses herself in life-drawing classes at the Glasgow School of Art every Thursday. At first appearance of a camera she is Carol Smillie, all shiny professionalism. When she talks of being recognised in her home town, she alludes to her bipolar existence.
“There are certain situations where you’d expect to have hassle. I wouldn’t go down to the Pollok shopping centre in full make-up, for instance,” she squirms. Of course, you doubt very much she would go there at all, but you can imagine her hustling her kids round Sainsbury’s as much as you could picture her sliding from a limo. This is an essential part of the Smillie appeal. Despite the flawlessness of her appearance and the steeliness of her career ambition, she has look of a woman who has a few apple cores and furry boiled sweets in her handbag.
“I’m not as ambitious as I used to be. My kids have taken precedence,” she says. “And having been on Changing Rooms, that kind of profile is hard to sustain. Also, I didn’t want to get into DIY shows or reality shows. I’ve no desire to be humiliated. I really don’t want my kids to go to school and for someone to say, ‘I saw your mother on TV last night masturbating a pig’.”
Although drawing the line at Rebecca Loos-style animal husbandry, Smillie has always shown a willingness to muck in, running up curtains while bantering with Handy Andy. Even at the beginning of her career, she realised that she was going to have to do more than grin and flick her hair. Graduating from local pin-up to a dolly dealer on ITV’s primetime hit Wheel of Fortune, before carving a niche as one of Britain’s cheeriest presenters, she has done her time in ways that today’s glamour girls would never dream of.
In fact, compared to the vacant, fame-hungry Big Brother casualties, she is practically an intellectual: a Mensa member (although she famously cheated on her test), a former fashion student, a grafter, a networker, a devoted mother and a fixture in the national consciousness long after the stencilled monstrosities of Changing Rooms were consigned to the skip.
“Nowadays people want instant fame and celebrity,” she says disdainfully. “In the early 1990s, Wheel of Fortune had an audience of 10m — right up there with Coronation Street and EastEnders. But when I left, I knew nobody would want to take on what appeared to be a dingbat in a frilly dress, so I wrote to all the video companies in Scotland saying I would work for nothing. I went back to local radio and worked for a tenner a day. I doubt that there are many people who would do that now.”
Smillie, perhaps showing her age, is unimpressed by the modern star system, which she thinks churns out unprepared, talent-free personalities. When not on television, she does personal appearances so she can “keep the profile up”, but steers clear of OK! magazine style saturation. Living quietly in the southside of Glasgow with her restaurateur husband, this is not difficult. “You don’t get papped in Scotland,” she jokes. “The Scottish media are too slow. We did Changing Rooms in a student hall of residence in Glasgow, and all the MDF dust set off the fire alarms. There was me, Laurence Llewelyn-Bowen and Linda Barker dancing with the firemen in the street. Nobody came down, and there was nothing in the papers.”
She sounds almost disappointed — it is obvious that Smillie plots and tweaks her career. When it comes to her public persona she is nothing if not shrewd, and her decision to keep out of the spotlight has endeared her to an adoring public. But there is also a refreshing streak of world-weary straightforwardness that could only come from years of experience in the media, and a realisation that there are more important things in life than mugging for the camera.
“I really love doing TV, but it’s shallow,” she sighs. “You should never make it your whole life.” Indeed, when talks about The People’s Court, due to take over the coveted Trisha slot later this month, there are no earnest diatribes about how grateful she is for the work.
“I’m a media whore,” she says cheerfully. “I haven’t signed anything. If the show is right and the money’s right, I’ll do it. I have no loyalty.”
As for her return to modelling, there is no doubt that Smillie has still got it. It is in front of the camera that she becomes real value for money. At every click of the shutter, she strikes a different pose, suggesting angles and ideas. Years of experience have left her acutely aware of what is required, and in between shots she chats happily about clothes (“My favourite shops are Primark, New Look and TK Maxx,” she says, pulling at the lapel of her cut-price jacket). A roll call of assets would read: likeable, unpretentious, down-to-earth. She beams the famous Smillie smile, and at exactly the time she said she would leave, she is gone. Job done.
