Abigail Clancy: I have a passion for fashion

Sep 4 2008 by Emma Johnson, Liverpool Daily Post

Emma Johnson talks to model Abigail Clancy about her new television show and her life as a Wag

FROM the cool catwalks of LA to a steaming restaurant kitchen, and even rumours of a forthcoming trip to the jungle, it seems there is no stopping Abigail Clancy.

Now the 22-year-old, from Woolton, appears to have bagged herself her biggest job yet, as a presenter on ITV2’s hot new style and shopping programme, The Fashion Show.

Abbey, who shot to TV fame on Britain’s Next Top Model, where she was narrowly pipped to the title, takes top billing in the show where she is described as a “model and Scouse icon”.

She joins Big Brother’s Little Brother presenter, George Lamb, and fellow model Michelle de Swarte for the show, which features celebrities discussing their style secrets, fashion hots and nots and must-haves.

For Abbey, who last year took on the self-proclaimed “world’s first supermodel” and ex-Britain’s Next Top Model judge Janice Dickinson, in the TV show Beauty and the Best, before facing the wrath of fiery chef Marco Pierre White in Hell’s Kitchen, the show was the logical next step in her whirlwind career.

She says: “I have a passion for fashion. I love clothes and shopping, so the Fashion Show is perfect for me.

“Also, presenting is the next big challenge for me. And I love keeping up to date with trends through shopping and magazines.”

Each week on The Fashion Show, which starts on September 12, Abbey will go head to head with Michelle on fashion-related tasks from creating the perfect revenge outfit for one recently dumped girl to creating the ultimate disco outfit for a night on the tiles.

And, although like fellow Wags Coleen Rooney and Alex Curran, Abbey is regularly seen coming out of Liverpool’s most famous fashion boutique, Cricket, laden with their famous bags, she insists that she is not a designer or die kind of girl.

She likes her high street, too.

“It’s good to mix and match,” she says.

“Maybe a Primark dress with Prada shoes. It’s not what you wear but how you wear it.”

While the show may be all about clothes shopping for the moment, Abbey’s free time is taken up buying things for the home she shares with her boyfriend, former Liverpool striker Peter Crouch.

Abbey recently left her home in Liverpool and headed off down south, following Peter’s move to play for Portsmouth.

And the bubbly blonde has admitted she is already feeling homesick for Liverpool and her mum.

She says: “At the moment I'm living out of boxes and I really miss my mum. I used to see her every day.”

On The Fashion Show, Abbey will advise members of the public on what looks good on them, but, despite scoring higher than both Louise Redknapp and Cheryl Cole in a poll of the world’s sexiest Wags last year, Abbey says she is still very critical of her body.

In this month’s issue of FHM magazine, where she appears scantily clad on page after page, Abbey confesses that she doesn’t actually like seeing pictures of herself, and actually prefers to be airbrushed. She says: “I don’t care what all those other women say: I think airbrushing is fantastic.

“I absolutely love it.

“To be honest, I can’t bear looking at a picture of myself that’s just been taken on a camera.

“I’d like to see a picture of myself in other people’s eyes. Because I always think ‘my legs look fat’ or something.

“Take those paparazzi photos of me on the yacht in Ibiza. Everyone else thought they looked lovely – I thought I looked like a pasty beached whale.”

* THE Fashion Show is on ITV2, from Thursday, September 12

emmajohnson@dailypost.co.uk