Flourishing Fearne

Having presented live television since she was 16, she seems almost genetically engineered to fill silences, to do all the work and to riff cheerfully on the most insignificant of subjects.

We are sitting in Villandry on Great Portland Street, near the BBC studio where she presents her Radio 1 weekend request and chart shows. Her hot chocolate arrives in the form of a glass of hot milk and little bar of chocolate to be melted into it. And she's off.

'Oh my God, I've never seen anything like this,' she says, all over-pronunciation and shocked, kohl-lined brown eyes. 'Do-it-yourself hot chocolate. This is very bizarre. I'm not quite sure what's going on. Stir it in? Seems a bit solid to be a drink.'

Fearne, 27, is undoubtedly one of this country's most successful presenters. She has hosted Love Island, Live 8, Comic Relief, Children in Need, The Xtra Factor and the BRITs.

She was chosen by the BBC to interview Princes William and Harry for the Concert for Diana in 2007, which marked the tenth anniversary of the princess's death. This was a significant gesture of trust. Many thought the job should have been undertaken by a journalist with a touch of gravitas: Sir Trevor McDonald or Huw Edwards, perhaps. 'I knew there would be some noise about that but I think they wanted someone the same age as the princes,' she says.

'They didn't hire me so that I could pretend to be a journalist for the day, they hired me so that I could have a chat with them. They are like thoroughbred horses with gorgeous skin and cheekbones,' she says.

'You could tell that Harry was burning to say something a little bit controversial. He was on the brink the whole time and he has that anger, but William is very calm and collected.'

You are more likely to see Fearne on the screen than in the style or party pages, which makes her somehow less visible than, say, the fast-talking, fashiony Alexa Chung with her Arctic Monkey boyfriend.

Fearne is neither exotic nor pneumatic but she has a freshly scrubbed kind of beauty. She has no self-consciousness about her own celebrity.

'When I got my first job on TV, the first show went out and I walked out on to my local high street thinking, "OK, where are you all? Here I am, have a look, this is me." And it didn't happen. Then I grew up,' she says. She appears to view herself as a worker bee - the people she interviews are the famous ones.

Her best friend is a nanny rather than Kelly Osbourne or Kimberly Stewart. But she did meet Will Young recently at a civilian party and is rather taken with him.

Fearne was brought up in suburban Northwood. Her father Mick, a signwriter, set up his own business when Fearne was 12. 'We were really tight for cash at times,' she says. 'My mum worked as a delivery woman for Next, an orthodontist's nurse, a cleaner. I remember her having a million jobs at once and now she has lunch with her friends and goes to art lectures and she deserves it. My dad is a workaholic and won't stop until he dies.'

Fearne started dancing at five; doing jazz, tap and ballet at the local dance school. She remains devoted to exercise - a dedication that has just cranked up a gear, thanks to a commitment to climb Mount Kilimanjaro later this month in aid of Comic Relief.

An unholy team of stars are booked in for this climb including Chris Moyles, Cheryl Cole (who has apparently done no training as yet), Gary Barlow and Denise Van Outen. 'I've doubled the amount of exercise I normally do and and I'm not drinking,' says a suddenly competitive Fearne. 'If Chris Moyles isn't drinking then I'm certainly not drinking.' She took up acting classes at 14, as an excuse to abandon a much-hated Saturday job in her grandfather's florist shop.

'I'm sorry, Grandad, but I can't work for you any more,' she said. 'I'm going to be an actress instead.' She auditioned for anything and everything and when, at 15, she went to see the Disney Club people, she thought it was some kind of drama. 'It was basically, "Welcome to Disney Club! Here's a cartoon!" And then us titting about and then another cartoon.

For about two hours,' she says. Her high-energy, clear-faced, ultra-enthusiastic delivery caught on and before long she was presenting Saturday morning's Diggit.

As Cat Deeley and Ant and Dec will testify, the transition from children's television to adult television is a gruelling one. 'It was like, "Here are your luminous orange jeans and we are going to put your hair in bunches and you'll look 12 forever.''

It took a few years to find the courage to say, "Look, I'm 19 and all my friends are going to uni and I'm a total loser in a Disney T-shirt and it's not fair."'

She wanted to front Top of the Pops. 'But it was such a slog and as soon as you went into a meeting they'd see a kids' TV presenter, always happy, always bubbly, pisses around, hasn't got any passion. It takes a long time to prove yourself.'

She got the Top of the Pops job in 2003. Her skirts got shorter, revealing marvellous pins. She started covering herself - arms, legs, hip, ribs, feet - in tattoos, 'which, to some people, still suggest a dangerous lifestyle'. She kohled-up her eyes and got herself a Fame Academy boyfriend, Peter Brame, who turned out to be a keen cocaine user. 'At first I was very naïve to the whole situation,' she says. 'I had never seen drugs, I had no clue. I am a lot more worldly now, but when we met I was 21 and I was like, "What's wrong here?" Then he told me he took drugs and it was a massive shock, and we stumbled through this bizarre relationship where we lived separate lives and I'd get up to go to work when he'd be coming in. It was really difficult.'

She ended the romance and, to this day, has no patience whatsoever with drugs. She met her current boyfriend, an American model turned photographer called Jesse Jenkins, in a bar in LA three years ago.

They split up last spring and she enjoyed a summer fling with the delectable Welsh presenter turned actor Steve Jones (who has allegedly had assignations with Halle Berry and Pamela Anderson). Photographers camped outside her Richmond cottage hoping to get a picture of them together. She has now reconciled with Jesse and is quietly joyful about the whole thing. 'We are back together. It's early days and we are going to take it really slow but I am very happy,' she says in nervous, setpiece clichés.

Professionally, she's entering an experimental period with a foray into the world of documentary-led presenting with an ITV show that comes out in March as part of a three-part series about beauty. 'It is about body shape and it delves into the dark depths of the pro-anorexic websites, which are hideous. If I was someone a bit delicate or vulnerable when it comes to eating then this would not be the show for me. I have never done anything this intense and I would like to go in this direction.'

Fearne doesn't go out much. She'd rather work, read or curl up with someone cosy in pyjamas. She likes a good camping trip and if it rains, all the better. She is a terrible cook but falls all over the latest flax seed or goji berry fad. She shops on the high street. She's one of us. But shinier.

Hair by Juan Carlos at One Make-up using L'Orèal Paris. Make-up by Justine Jenkins using Lancùme and Liz Earle. Prop styling by Lizzi Zita at DWM. Location: Castlebar Cabin (www.airspaces.co.uk)

Fearne presents ITV1's coverage of the BRIT Awards on 18 February. Her show The Truth About Beauty airs on ITV1 in March