Ten Things You Never Knew About Kelly Brook

By Mayer Nissim, Entertainment Reporter

Kelly Brook may have her critics, but after starting off as a model, she's shown a great deal of tenacity and strength in forging a successful showbiz career. It's not been without its setbacks - like her short-lived stints on The Big Breakfast and Britain's Got Talent - but Kelly has brushed aside those disappointments and returns to the public eye this month when she replaces Jerry Hall as Celia in Calendar Girls. Before she steps out on to the West End stage, we uncover ten things you may not have known about Miss Kelly Brook.

1. Born Kelly Ann Parsons to cook Sandra and scaffolder Ken in Rochester, Kent on November 23, 1979, Kelly studied at the prestigious Italia Conti stage school. Other alumni include Noël Coward, Naomi Campbell and Pixie Lott.

2. After Kelly's mum sent a photograph of her daughter to a modelling competition (which she won), she was picked up by a glamour agency at the age of 16 and ended up doing swimwear and lingerie shoots for the Daily Star, Loaded and the rest. "When you look at those pictures from that time, I had the body of a porn star and the face of a child. That was probably the appeal and why I was successful. That's the sad truth of it for me," Brook admits.

3. She's now happily attached to 22-year-old rugby star Danny Cipriani, but Kelly also dated gruff-voiced Brit actor Jason Statham for seven years before their break-up in 2004. Between the two, there was a failed engagement with Titanic baddie Billy Zane, who she met on the set of the controversial Three and again shared the screen with in Fishtales.

4. Everyone remembers Kelly's appearances on Strictly, though sadly she had to quit the show after the death of her father, but that wasn't her first big dancing showcase. You can see Kelly in a briefly-glimpsed slowie with Huck Whitney of The Flaming Stars in the video to Pulp's 1997 Top 10 hit 'Help The Aged'.

5. In 1999, Kelly replaced Denise van Outen on The Big Breakfast but she left the show after just six months. A leaked report suggested that scripts had to be simplified for Brook's benefit and claimed "words that have recently caused trouble include 'intrepid' and 'satirical'". Miaow! Kelly later said: "I was 18, I've got big boobs, it was my first TV job and people literally sat and scrutinised everything I did and wrote down every mistake. At that age it's hard to deal with."

6. Those big boobs have probably helped Kelly pick up a number of awards for her stunning good looks and she pipped Cheryl Cole (then Tweedy) and Angelina Jolie to the title of FHM's sexiest woman in the world in 2005.

7. As well as appearing in episodes of Superman prequel Smallville, Moving Wallpaper and Hotel Babylon, Kelly has presented the woeful [Celebrity] Love Island, Living's Dirty Dancing: The Time of Your Life and of course, was hand-picked by Simon Cowell to be a fourth judge on Britain's Got Talent.

8. Eight months on from her unceremonious sacking from that show after just a few days, Kelly stuck the knife into the '90s John & Edward. "Basically, I just don't think Ant and Dec liked me," she claimed. "Their egos are such that they were saying to themselves, 'How dare she think she can come on to our show?' and since then they've been very vocal about their displeasure at me being there."

9. Despite a history of raiding her babysitting bosses' blue movies, Brook's own foray into film hasn't been a complete success. She's clocked up credits in the Italian Job remake, House Of 9, School For Seduction and, unforgettably, Deuce Bigalow: European Gigolo - where she played a buxom girl in a painting during the title character's stoned fantasy in an Amsterdam café.

10. Kelly appeared topless as a table dancer in the stage production of Eye Contact in 2000 and returned to the theatre last year for Neil La Bute's Fat Pig. The promo pics for upcoming production Calendar Girls feature Brook holding two strategically-placed iced buns to cover up her 32E chest. However, when the ads arrived on the Tube, the buns were digitally-enlarged so as not to offend commuters.