She wears a blouse and tie instead of a designer dress and there’s a certain frizz to the hair – this is Christine Bleakley as a grammar-school girl with her sights firmly set on the top.

Aged 18 and head girl, she was already working for the BBC on a path that would take her to presenting The One Show ten years later.

Miss Bleakley, now 31, has since become one of Britain’s most sought-after TV hosts.

She is being courted by ITV, who recently signed up her One Show co-host Adrian Chiles – and the BBC may offer the Northern Ireland-born star her own solo chat show to stop her defecting too.

Rising star: Head girl Christine Bleakley in blouse and tie at grammar school in 1997

It is an amazing rise to the top for Miss Bleakley, who is dating England and Chelsea footballer Frank Lampard.

The daughter of musician Ricky Bleakley, 57, and his wife Mina, a 59-year-old book-keeper, she was brought up in Newtownards, 10 miles east of Belfast, with her younger sister Nicola.

Her first lead role was playing Little Red Riding Hood at Castle Gardens Primary School before she moved up to Bloomfield Collegiate Grammar.

There, aged 11, she she sang Amy Grant’s Baby Baby at the end-of-year concert.
By the time she left seven years later, she had gained three A levels – in art, English literature and government and politics.

In spite of getting the head girl’s post, she has said: ‘I wasn’t a goodie-two shoes.’

But she was 18 before she had her first boyfriend.

‘I was a very late starter,’ she admitted.

Instead of boys, she devoted her spare time to music, singing in the school’s chamber choir and performing madrigals at prize day.

She was a member of the senior choir when it was highly commended on Ulster TV’s School Choir Of The Year.

Class act: Christine now and, above circled, in an official line-up at school in 1997

Her break at the BBC came courtesy of careers teacher Helen Shearer, who had a contact there and found her work experience.

Later, when Miss Bleakley was at Queen’s University Belfast, reading politics, the Corporation offered her a job as a trainee floor manager.

Glamorous: Christine is now one of TV's biggest stars and is being courted by ITV

‘Christine always had a smile,’ Mrs Shearer said.

‘Her only problem was her curly hair.

'"I can’t do a thing with it,” she would say. But that was before hair straighteners.’