Dani has the latest word on TV

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All in all, there are seven of us assembled in the East London studio, what with hair, make-up, lights, stylist and so on. And there is Dani Behr.

She is chatting on her mobile downstairs. I am upstairs with the photographer's assistant, fretting. We don't know if we have enough time to fit in the interview and the shoot. I ask if anyone actually knows how long we have Dani for. Apparently not.

How about, I suggest, one of us just asks her? The assistant stares, appalled. 'No!' He hurries downstairs and makes whispered phone calls. 'Well,' he announces when he reappears, 'in the end, I... I just asked her.' He looks perplexed. 'And she says she'll stay as long as we want.'

The infamously cold, hard, horrid Dani Behr was so helpful, as it turned out, that had I left the tape recorder running, I would not be surprised to learn that she is still there talking now. She came with neither a PR chaperone nor a list of prohibited questions. She told jokes, did funny accents, and kept us entertained all day.

'You poor thing, having to touch my disgusting feet,' she apologised to the stylist. 'Even I don't like to touch them!' Dani was so keen to get the interview under way that she more or less started without me, leaving me scrabbling for my notepad to catch up.

I had been under the impression that we were there to discuss Dani Behr the fledgling actress, promoting her latest film which had its UK premiere this week, but this misapprehension was swiftly dispatched. This was the one and only, the world-famous TV star DANI BEHR announcing to the nation her triumphant return.

For all those who remember Dani Behr (and for a Channel 4 yoof TV presenter, that is a surprising number of us), she was the 17-year-old catapulted to fame as The Word 'bird' eight years ago, the sexy, moody blonde who flunked her lines.

After The Word, she was generic TV blonde, all diamond-white teeth and smouldering eyes, fronting a succession of largely forgettable post-pub shows like Hotel Babylon and Dani Dares. The programmes' merits were as obscure as her presenting skills, but in the event this did not matter, for she achieved stratospheric celebrity in the tabloids by playing the Footballer's Girlfriend, first on the arm of Ryan Giggs, then of Les Ferdinand. Long before Posh, before Denise, before Geri, there was Dani, flashbulb queen of the B-list paparazzi, and not yet 21.

And then, a little over two years ago, she gave it all up. At the tender age of 23, Dani turned her back on television and decided she would try to be an actress. 'Everyone expected I'd do the parts where you go in, take your kit off and shag the leading guy, and I just didn't want to do that. I wanted to do proper acting.'

And so she did - playing minor, unglamorous parts ('I've looked rough in every film') in low-budget British struggles. There was Rancid Aluminium, with Rhys Ifans, then Party On, and now there is Goodbye Charlie Bright, a slight, amateurish tale of adolescence on a South London council estate.

It stars Paul Nicholls, formerly Joe Wicks of EastEnders, and Dani plays his love interest - or at least, she did. Alas, the final edit cut her 20 scenes to four, thus demoting an already modest part to the status of glorified extra.

To her great credit, Dani is generous towards everyone involved in the film - 'so talented, such fun, great guys' - and accepts her relegation with grace, but her private conclusions were evidently more grim.

'When I started acting,' she explains, 'I said to myself, I'll give it two years, and if I'm crap or it doesn't work out, I'll be the first to say, all right, love, we'll go back to presenting, shall we?' This is what she is saying now, louder and louder, in her husky North London voice. Her problem is getting anyone to listen.

Dani chooses her words with care, but cannot disguise what a disagreeable surprise this has been. The acting experiment alone, she freely admits, had already brought its indignities.

'It was very humbling, and quite annoying at times, you know, when you've been spoilt. The Word was the only audition I ever did, and because I was so successful, from then on I've just been offered things. I went from a profession where I was being offered everything, and you can charge what you want to charge pretty much, to where you are going to all these auditions, and working for free.'

But worse still, when she gives up and turns back to presenting, 'People are like, yeah, but you know what? This person's really hot right now, we're going to go for them. And I'm like - what???' And this, to a woman who considers herself the personal inventor of the young female presenter.

'Where did all these people come from?' she says to herself. 'Now everyone's a presenter! First of all I was like in shock, because I expected to go straight back in where I left off, and they were like, yeah, but we've got all these new, younger girls. I was always the youngest!'

A child star not so long ago, Dani is understandably preoccupied with age and refers repeatedly to being 25, sometimes as a boast of youth, other times of seniority. A nasty moment, then, but happily for Dani, her famous self-confidence - a solid-gold, bullet-proof self-belief and a thing of awe to all those who meet her - came to the rescue.

'I thought, hold on a minute, I've got eight years of presenting experience. I know there are some trendy presenters out there, but I know I'm better than most of them. Secondly, I have way more experience than them, and I look better than I ever did. Yeah, everyone's a presenter now, but without mentioning names, most of them are not any good.'

I ask which presenters or shows she does rate, but she cannot answer this as, being so busy, she hardly ever watches television. Who, then, does she consider her competitors?

'It's been really weird. I mean, I didn't have any competitors before. I could list the really bad ones, but I don't want to mention names. You know, complete airheads. The people that I would be in competition with for jobs I suppose might be Davina, or Denise. But we are, like, totally different personalities.'

Such as? Uncharacteristically, she takes a moment to assemble her answer. 'As a presenter, I like to think of myself as a really brilliant interviewer. And I'm very versatile. I think Davina's probably more prime-time than me now, because she's gone down that more commercial route, whereas Denise's fans, I call them Sun readership, you know, tits-out-for-the-lads vibe. I think Denise is very good - for what she does.'

Dani rattles off her credentials - she knows everyone, she's done everything, she's been on stage with Glenn Close. 'I'd say I'm one of the very few presenters that can do prime-time TV and a really trendy kind of cool show. Producers say I'm one of the few who can do that. And I'm probably, image-wise, a bit more glamorous, I guess.'

Wow. Had I never seen Dani on TV, I for one would be convinced that she is a genius. In fact, at this point I wonder if I have mixed up this glossy powerhouse with another, inferior, presenter. Perhaps that blonde I remember from my telly is not the woman now talking to me at all!

But the throaty giggle and celebrated legs are unmistakably Dani Behr's. This is the same woman. Which does at least clear up one mystery. Dani is not exaggerating when she recalls the avalanche of name-your-price TV offers she received, but they were mystifying, for the evidence showed conclusively that she was not a very good presenter. Not the worst, but thereabouts.

But now, having met her, I can safely say that were I a TV producer, I would give her a job on the spot. She's a thousand times more charismatic than other presenters I have met off-camera. Just shaking Dani Behr's hand you are hearing cash registers ringing, and thinking, 'Get that girl in front of a camera!'

And the bionic charm never flags. She has learnt about handling the press the hard way, after consistently vicious profiles by female journalists. 'I was seen as this hard bitch, and I'm the complete opposite - I'm a complete and utter softie.'

Despite appearing to speak freely, even intimately, she is meticulously careful to cover her back. She was a gregarious child - 'but not an exhibitionist'. She vowed never to go out with a performer, no relationship could accommodate two egos - 'not that I'm an egotistical person', and so on. It takes a chilling store of pain to maintain self-censorship that rigorous.

So what unbelievably bad luck it is to be saddled with such a burning ambition for a job she is not particularly good at. Dani comes from a big, well-adjusted, middle-class family in North London, unconnected to showbusiness, yet all she ever wanted to do was perform. She tried dancing, but wasn't terribly good at it. She tried singing, and at 14 was signed to a label, but it came to nothing.

'So I thought, well, acting has got to be my thing,' she laughs. Now she concedes that she is 'no Judi Dench', and she is left with presenting. 'I know my limits,' she says engagingly, several times. 'I'm not in denial.' But she is stuck in the belief that she is a brilliant TV presenter. And she inhabits a world tantalisingly close to authentic fame - private jets to Aspen, Riviera yachts - and shares it with friends ('you know, George Michael') whose claim on the prize she covets is indisputable. It must be an exquisite kind of torture.

Where her need to be on TV comes from is a puzzle, because she displays little of the emotional damage that scars most celebrity-seekers. She says she loves the job, not the fame, and cites in evidence that she and her boyfriend of six months, J from boy band 5ive, live a 'normal life'.

She is obviously, and infectiously, very much in love. She won't do nude, topless or bikini photo shoots - 'I've always been quite moral like that' - and is 'so not a ladette; I have to behave like a lady'.

She has gained weight after giving up smoking, and although clearly preoccupied by this, she is not tyrannised. She cannot fit into the clothes chosen for the photo shoot, but although she insists there has been a mistake - 'No way is this a size 12!' - she endures the indignity of being winched and heaved into the trousers with good cheer.

'I just don't understand these celebrities who want to be famous,' she says earnestly. Then: 'I don't want to mention names.'

'Oh, go on,' I say, because I have a feeling she does.

'Well, for example, I'm just worried about people like Geri. It seems like she just wants to be famous, and that's it, and being in the papers seems more important than anything else. And I just worry for her, because the press will turn on her again, that's what they do. They'll say, "Oh my God, she's too thin, she's anorexic, she's done a Victoria Beckham."

And she's courting it. In a way, horrible as it sounds, she's asking for it, because you know, she's on everything, she's on like four covers, showing off how thin she is, and yeah she looks fantastic, but the thing is, she's got a big enough personality to not have to just wannabe famous, do you know what I mean? She's a successful pop star, she doesn't need to do all that. That's insecurity, and that's what worries me, people that just want it themselves more than just getting it. Because I've never wanted it.'

I have no idea if Dani does or doesn't know that public opinion would probably bracket Geri's relationship with fame and her own much closer together. I am wondering how to introduce this when she unleashes a personal sales pitch so flagrant, and so fragile, I am floored.

'I am who I am,' she says, as if reading from a list, 'and I think I'm a good person to work with. I'm punctual, I'm professional, I'm a good friend, and fun' - she searches for a second, then - 'and mad, and crazy and just... just good. I'm an OK kind of chick, do you know what I mean?'

 

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