Blundering Katie Derham calls overweight job centre worker who posed for Lucian Freud painting 'Fat Sue' live on ITV

Newsreader Katie Derham infuriated an overweight job centre worker who posed naked for Lucian Freud live on TV yesterday by referring to her as Fat Sue.

ITV1 newsreader Katie, 37, upset 51-year-old Sue Tilley who posed for the lifesize painting - that fetched a record £17million at auction - after she thought Fat Sue was her nickname.

Katie introduced the segment: "When a job centre worker posed naked for a lifesize painting for renowned artist Lucian Freud, Fat Sue, as she's affectionately known, said he got value for money because there was a lot of flesh.

"Sue Tilley, so gloriously painted now joins us from her home in central London."

"Sue, thanks ever so much for talking to us. You're a record breaker, how does that feel?"

"Yes, it is rather nice. But I'm not really happy when you call me Fat Sue, because that is not my name. And I'd appreciate it if you didn't call me that thank you" she fumed.

Blushing Katie groveled: "I absolutely apologise unreservedly - we thought it was an affectionate nickname given by you. But if not then you absolutely have the right to pick us up."

Sue replied: "No it wasn't."

An ITV source said: "Katie looked like she wanted the group to swallow her up. It's every presenter's nightmare to make a gaffe like that on live telly.

"Katie didn't intend to be mean - she's always been regarded as nice."

The painting broke the world auction record for a work by a living artist in the Christie's sale at New York's Rockefeller Centre.

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Benefits Supervisor Sleeping beat the previous world auction record for a work by a living artist, held by Jeff Koons' Hanging Heart (Magenta/Gold), which fetched £11.3 million last year.

The 1995 Freud painting depicts Sue Tilley, now 51, sleeping on a dilapidated sofa.

Ms Tilley, now a Jobcentre manager, said: "I'm thrilled. I still can't believe such a bizarre thing has happened to me. It hasn't sunk in properly."

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Asked how she felt about posing nude, she said: "At first, I was a little bit embarrassed but after a while I just got used to it and it became a completely normal thing to do, like going to the doctor."

"I never weigh myself because I can't be bothered," she said.

Asked if she would ever sit for another artist, Ms Tilley said it was "hard to know where to go" as she had "started with the very best".

It was the first time Freud's Benefits Supervisor Sleeping, which was the highlight of Christie's New York Post-War and Contemporary Art Evening Sale, had appeared at auction.

The 85-year-old British artist first painted Tilley in Evening In The Studio (1993), for which she had to lie in an uncomfortable pose on a bare floor. Scroll down for more...