First she was a Blue Peter Presenter, then a lad's mag pin-up, when an image of her naked posterior was famously beamed onto the Houses of Parliament.

But the next decade would see Gail Porter's seemingly charmed life gradually unravel, from her battles with bipolar disorder and anorexia to her diagnosis with alopecia, which saw her lose all her hair - including her eyebrows and eyelashes back in 2005.

Now she is discussing another struggle - revealing that the figure so admired by legions of FHM readers in the late 1990s were causing her embarrassment, depression and severe pain.

In a new interview with The Sun, the 45-year-old Scot admits that two months ago, she underwent a breast reduction to shrink her 28JJ cleavage.

'I always hated my massive breasts. When they were projected on the Houses of Parliament I still had no body confidence,' she tells the newspaper. 'I resorted to the point of anorexia just to get rid of them, but they wouldn’t go. If I put on weight it went straight to my breasts.'

The 5"2 star's weight plummeted to 6st and at one point she was taken to hospital after passing out at the gym.

'When I was modelling I was very thin, purely because I wanted to make my breasts as small as possible,' she says.

Her self-harm worsened - she slashed her left arm with knives, once so badly the wound required ten stitches.

She developed septicaemia, and was restless with insomnia. She drank too much and suffered dark thoughts about suicide.

After a doomed marriage to Dan Hipgrave, guitarist in the band Toploader, and the birth of her daughter Honey, now 14, Gail's health unravelled further.

She suffered post-natal depression, for which she was prescribed Prozac, which in turn sparked a suicide attempt and she was sectioned back in 2011.

However, the star gradually returned to health, abandoning medication and regularly attending the gym.

A breast reduction - always at the back of her mind - became something she firmly decided upon after two lumps were found in her breasts back in 2008.

The lumps were benign, but Gail needed them to be removed so decided to opt for the £5,000 surgery at the same time.

She went through the procedure  - detailed in Channel Five's Celebrity Botched Up Bodies airing next week - earlier this year on July 22, and now her cleavage sits at a far more manageable 28C.

'My boobs were so big on my tiny frame that my back had actually started to curve,' she told The Sun. 'When I took my bra off, my boobs would fall down to my knees and clap together. Now they stand up on their own.'

Without the extra 8lb weight of her breasts weighing her down, Gail's exercise regime is easier and she hopes to fulfill her dream of becoming a personal trainer along with performing stand-up comedy and a podcast.