Carole White - the models' mum

Chain-smoking, foul-mouthed and 60, Carole White - a mother of three whose husband is a former fashion photographer - is the latest unlikely reality TV star. The boss of Premier model agency, she is the one with the Iggy Pop hair and rasping voice on Channel 4's fly-on-the-wall fashion documentary The Model Agency. Her staff both love and loathe her, describing her in the same breath as "Auntie Carole" and "the Witch". The series focuses on tantrums, tiffs and bollockings at their glossy Covent Garden headquarters. It's like a real-life version of The Office but with skinny jeans (White is wearing Baxter today), It bags - and lots of shrieking and crying.

One critic describes the Premier team as coming across as "selfish grotesques" and "unpleasant people who treat the young models like grilled, rare meat". But there are also moments where you see how much they care about the girls - because it's in their interests. Although it's obvious that this is a cut-throat industry, ultimately if they don't look after the young models properly, they don't make the money.

The series is an attempt at a balanced look at the fashion industry. It's warts-and-all essential viewing for any teenage girl who dreams of the catwalk. The bookers at Premier - and Carole especially - are shown speaking with shocking honesty about the way their models look: who's fat, who's thin, who's not going to work any more. For anyone outside the business, it is uncomfortable.

White is not surprised at the tone of some of the coverage. "The newspapers don't like us. They view us as decadent. We're just providing careers for long, tall, beautiful girls. I think if we were a football academy or a ballet school, we'd be fine. It's because it's on someone's looks. To me, that's the magic of it. Taking a young girl who might otherwise work in a supermarket. Often the girls we choose don't realise they are beautiful. After a while they start making money. In some ways it's an education. They become confident, independent, they travel the world. It's an exciting career. It's not long-lived. But you can make more money than your parents and invest in property for yourself."

The biggest eye-opener in the series is how casually the bookers talk about "money girls" and "show girls". These are the two types of model. "Money girls" can be larger (a relative term): they are used for high street campaigns, catalogue work, advertising shoots. It's not unusual for them to earn up to £800,000 a year. "Their career can go on for quite a long time. To 30 or 35." Ouch. White says that in recent years the demand for these girls has increased - as has their size. "Before we were always looking for a B cup. With a B/C cup, you'd think, 'Hmm, a bit dodgy'. Now we're being asked for D cups regularly. If you had asked me 10 years ago if you could model with a D cup, I would have said absolutely not. I think that's interesting. The catalogues won't see skinny girls. They are responding to what the public needs."

At the other end of the scale, though, high fashion wants a very different look. "Money girls" are not welcome on the catwalk. (Why? "Because of the bosoms, probably.") "Show girls" are 16 or 17 years old. They have androgynous bodies, no breasts and must be skinny enough to fit the sample sizes used in catwalk shows. "Show girls who are really good can make £100,000 a season. If you are really flavour of the month, you can be getting £3,000 to £5,000 a show. So if you can squash in four or five a day That's hard. But you can do it." It's the agency's job to make sure the "show girl" capitalises on her earning power at the right time. It's a small window of opportunity that leads to lucrative designer ad campaigns.

White is sceptical about attempts to change the catwalk look. "If you're in fashion, you don't want to see a larger woman. Some designers used it last season and I thought it was gimmicky. Designers don't like it. They never have and they never will. They are looking for tall coathangers with no bumps. That is how it has been since men and women started designing dresses and I don't think it will change." White also defends the age of the girls. "I don't think a woman of 40 or 50 responds well to a woman of their own age modelling. Every woman, in her mind's eye, looks like she did when she was 20. I wouldn't respond to someone my age. Women who like fashion and keep up with it, it's not what they want."

White almost became a model herself. Raised in Ghana, she spent her childhood in boarding schools in the UK and a convent in Belgium. When she left school, she did a modelling course. "I didn't like it. I did tests and a couple of little jobs but it wasn't for me. It often happens. You can find the most beautiful girl and they just don't want it or they haven't got the drive." She worked as a temp and found herself booking promotional girls for events: "I realised it was something I could do really well." By 1980 she was working as a booking agent in a company which went bust. Her brother Chris Owen, her partner at Premier, then working in publishing, suggested they set up their own agency from his kitchen in Maida Vale. They launched in 1981 and within 10 years had signed all the best models in the business. White's husband deals with credit control and one of her daughters, Sissy, is a booker.

The agency's breakthrough came in 1990 when George Michael asked White to find supermodels to appear in the video for his single Freedom. "We didn't have any supermodels. So we started ringing their agents and managed to persuade them. It was quite a coup because to book models that you don't represent It's quite a big deal." Soon after the agency joined forces with Elite models and had all the greats on its books: Claudia Schiffer, Christy Turlington, Naomi Campbell, Linda Evangelista, Tatjana Patitz. "I don't think supermodels are the same nowadays. Except for Kate," White sniffs.

Ah yes. Kate Moss. The one that got away. White turned her down. "Every agent has a story like that," she laughs. "We've all done it. Corinne Day [the photographer who discovered Kate Moss] brought this girl in. She was beautiful but she was so tiny. We all had a powwow about it. You could tell she was different. But she was just so short. I would say five six. Maybe five seven. And we just couldn't see it. A few months later she did that cover for The Face."

For years White's energies went instead into Naomi Campbell, who used to call her "mum". Now they don't talk. "We were speaking. But we're involved in a court case now." That is over a contractual dispute. Also, last year White contradicted Campbell's story at the infamous Blood Diamonds trial: the two women were together on the night when Campbell was given the gift from Charles Taylor, the former president of Liberia. So what split up their relationship? "It happens. We've all moved on. It was quite an exhausting thing to look after her. It was very full-on. And we just sort of came to the end of it."

White is not one for regrets or introspection. She's onto the next booking. But doesn't it sometimes become irritating working around all these beautiful young things? "No. I love this business. I love coming to work. It fascinates me. It's my job to make sure that my booking agents sell the girls in the right way. The more they work, the more beautiful they get."