Gail Porter was known as a bubbly blonde lads' mag pin-up until she lost her hair to alopecia. She talks to Hannah Stephenson about her fight back to health following her suicide attempt and why she still self harms.

GAIL Porter breezes in to the hotel, dressed all in black apart from funky white baseball boots and showing off her new false eyelashes, which she flutters with pride.

''I haven't had eyelashes for about five or six months - aren't they good?'' she says brightly.

The chirpy TV presenter and lads' mag pin-up, whose naked body was once famously projected on to the Houses of Parliament, is incredibly beautiful without hair or make-up. A former fixture in FHM's 100 sexiest women in the world list, Edinburgh-born Porter has unwittingly undergone an image change since losing all her hair to alopecia two years ago, following the split from her husband, former Toploader guitarist Dan Hipgrave, with whom she has a four-year-old daughter, Honey.

Now, she says, people are taking her more seriously. She is no longer known as the bubbly blonde TV presenter famous for baring her boobs. When she lost her hair she became 'Brave Gail' and 'Tragic Gail', she smiles.

''When I first worked in the media, I had blonde hair and big boobs. I hate my boobs, always have. No one's interested in what's in your mind if you're blonde with big boobs. Suddenly, when my hair fell out, people were saying 'God, she does charity work'. People are more interested in that now. We can make fun of my head now and get a lot of attention for it.''

She has no doubt that she wouldn't have got the more serious work had her hair not fallen out.

''I'd still get fluffy things, which I was getting so bored with, anyway.''

Around 50 per cent of her workload is devoted to charity and ethical projects - from Fairtrade to the Woodland Trust and Barnardos - while her TV work has expanded to documentaries such as So You Think You Can Nurse? for Channel 5 and another on foreign adoption. She has also written her autobiography, Laid Bare.

''I have a lot of dreams about having hair, which is quite bizarre. I wake up sometimes and go to flick my hair, which my boyfriend (cameraman James Lloyd) finds quite upsetting. I have dreams about getting my fringe cut or dying my hair and then I wake up.

''I met someone yesterday who said I looked really well, sort of shiny. I said 'What, like a conker?' But I'm just happy.''

Her zest for life is infectious and it's easy to understand how this wide-eyed, elfin presenter, who began her career as a runner for a variety of production companies, found fame in the children's show Fully Booked, going on to present Top Of The Pops and Dead Famous and guesting on shows including Wish You Were Here? and Big Breakfast. She's mega-fit, has two black belts in martial arts, is a gym babe and does plenty of running for charity. At 8st 10lbs she looks healthy and glowing, a far cry from the six stone she dropped to at the height of her anorexia more than a decade ago.

She fishes out two pairs of impossibly high peep-toed platforms which she's just bought for an awards ceremony, and indeed they are sexy and daring, just like her.

''Since I've not had the hair I buy so many more shoes. I don't know why. It's compensating - the top's gone so the bottom will look good. Think about the money I'm saving on my hair - I used to go to the hairdresser's every three weeks.''

She has no idea if her hair will ever grow back and says that life is too short to try out all the lotions and potions which might help the process.

And she boasts that she's done alopecia the best way - she has no body hair at all, so no bikini line to worry about, no legs to wax, no razors needed.

Her outward exuberance belies the inner angst she must have suffered as she went through anorexia, alopecia, manic depression, divorce and once attempted suicide - and she's still only 36.

In March 2005 she took an overdose of pills washed down with a bottle of vodka, rang her doctor and then Hipgrave.

''What a selfish, horrible thing to do,'' she reflects. ''It makes my skin crawl. I would never contemplate anything so ridiculous again.

''I didn't realise how depressed I was. It wasn't intentional. Everything was just getting out of control. I was suffering from depression (she had been diagnosed as bi-polar), I was absolutely exhausted and I was going through a divorce. I was on auto-pilot every day. I didn't feel anything about anything. I was numb.''

She insists her suicide bid was due to her coming off Prozac too quickly. She is now on different anti-depressants and has odd days when she feels really low, but then she focuses her thoughts on her daughter to snap herself out of it. ''Before I had Honey, if I woke up in the morning and was feeling bad, I'd take the phone off the hook, no one could get hold of me, I wouldn't answer the door, I'd shut the curtains. Now I think, tomorrow's going to be better.''

One look at the deep weals on her left arm shows the years of self-harm, the knife wounds she inflicted on herself to numb the rest of the pain she was feeling inside. It's a subject she finds hard to talk about.

''I've been asked about self-harm many times and I've always denied it. My agent said 'You don't, do you?' and I said 'No'. I was embarrassed to admit it, but I do do it.

''I began self-harming after my relationship with Keith Flint (Prodigy frontman) ended. I've had 11 stitches in this arm and I got a tattoo to cover up the rest. Physical pain was better than emotional pain. I like to think I'm quite tough so it was a relief.''

Worryingly, the last time she cut herself was at the beginning of this year, which she says is quite good because she was doing it quite regularly before that. But she has had to deal with another crisis - earlier this year her mother was diagnosed with lung cancer. The tumour is inoperable, so she is undergoing chemotherapy and radiotherapy. Specialists say she has a 40 per cent chance of survival.

It's the one time in the interview that Porter's happy outlook changes, as the tears well in her huge eyes.

''She doesn't smoke and is the nicest woman you'll ever meet. But we are all very positive. She has a few complications but she'll be fine. She's my mum, she's got to be."

The illness has pulled the family together. Her father, who is divorced from her mum, has been very supportive, says Porter, who had a rift with him when he left after more than 20 years of marriage.

''Now we speak and it's nice, because what's the point in wasting any more time?'' she says.

Time is healing. Porter has a good relationship with her ex-husband and is working through her on-off relationship with James Lloyd. But she's not sure if she'll ever marry again.

''If I ever got married again, I'd be naked in some field with some Wiccan guy covering me in black paint. It would have to be something completely bizarre.''

* Laid Bare by Gail Porter (Ebury, £16.99.)