But after winning Miss Nottingham last September she couldn’t help but enter Model of the Universe in
But after winning Miss Nottingham last September, she couldn’t help but enter Model of the Universe (in Turkey), Miss Great Britain, Miss Europe (in Poland) and now she is off for her first fitting for a dress to wear at Miss England. “I’m after white – I want to make sure I stand out,” she says.It all started when she read about the Miss Nottingham contest in the local newspaper. “It said ‘Wear club wear’, which I thought was strange because I’m used to watching them in ball gowns. But who wouldn’t want that title and £4,000 in gifts? It’s every girl’s dream,” she says excitedly. “Think of this: a watercolour portrait of yourself worth £2,000; a silk ball gown; a free trip to Model of the Universe in Turkey… things like clothes and make-up – and the attention!”At Miss Nottingham, the organisers provided outfits for the swimwear section She was given a bikini with handkerchief bra “I’m not very confident with my body. Luckily another girl with a bigger bust asked me if I’d swap I wore a little sarong and bra top with a matching handbag It was ever so cute,” she says.
“All the time I’m thinking, ‘My thighs are wobbling, look at my cellulite’, but all the girls think like this and make it 10 times worse than it really is.”When she was announced as the winner she had her coat on, ready to leave “They called my name four times,” she says. “I was chucked on stage – all my family screaming and the crowd cheering Everyone was looking at me. It was such a buzz.”Jane Earl, 16, is the youngest contestant for Miss England, and winning pageants is all she has ever known – she has been a serial contestant since winning Miss Aintree Rosebud at the age of four. It led to a bizarre childhood for her, traipsing along the Welsh coast with her mother, visiting seaside resorts such as Rhyl, Llandudno, Prestatyn, in search of the next sash.
“I have about 50 sashes under my mum’s bed because my bedroom is too small,” she says; they include titles such as Miss Jubilee, Miss Bolton, Miss Sunbeam, Miss Southport Rose, Miss Ford News. When there are no big competitions on the horizon, she’ll scour the local newspapers for more low-key pageants.She won Miss Wyre and the Merseyside heat of Miss England this year – two big prizes – as well as Miss Aintree, a local competition “It was overwhelming to win Miss Wyre,” she says. “I’ve been doing the toddler section, teenage section and then I win the adult section. When they present you with a big sash, a tiara, a bunch of flowers, a trophy and a cheque, it is like being in another world,” she says dreamily. Her school friends thought it was all a bit cheesy, and wondered what the hell she was doing.
But they had to think again when she won a cheque for £700, a holiday to Ibiza, £250 of hair vouchers, a weekend at a Holiday Inn in Liverpool and a year’s gym membership. “I’m putting £400 in a savings account for when I go to university,” she says.For the post-feminist contestant, it seems, there is more to life than the beauty circuit. Indeed, this year’s Miss World contest has been rocked by the principled stand of some contestants, who are refusing to travel to the host country, Nigeria, in protest at its decision to stone a single mother to death for adultery.As for Earl, she’s looking at the bigger picture, too. “My real ambition is to become an RAF pilot,” she says.Sounds like a good line for the judges at Thursday’s big showdown.Miss England, Liverpool Olympia, at 7.30pm on Thursday. The media brouhaha surrounding the BBC’s latest review of political coverage created a false sense of excitement, rather like some of the BBC’s reporting of politics itself. Such was the frenzy, it would have been no surprise if Mickey Mouse and Anthea Turner had become joint presenters of a new programme. Instead, when the review was unveiled last week we got Jeremy Vine, or rather, more of Jeremy Vine with some incremental changes.
