No wonder she fights her corner - Showbiz - Evening Standard
       

No wonder she fights her corner

She is reality TV's latest bad girl. Rich, beautiful, and spoilt, Jasmine Lennard is fast emerging as the queen bitch of Five's new series Make Me A Supermodel.

The 19-year-old has clashed with almost all her fellow finalists, shocked host Rachel Hunter by allowing cameras to film her naked in the bath and confessed to lesbian affairs. The judges have accused her of being manipulative.

And today the Standard can reveal the reasons for her behaviour - she is her mother's daughter.

Her mother is former Bond actress Marilyn Galsworthy, 54, who has her own history as an on-screen bad girl. In The Spy Who Loved Me, she met an untimely end in a pool of sharks.

Her personal life has been almost as dramatic. Her ex-husband, and Jasmine's father, is former Sacha shoes magnate Brian Lennard - whom she divorced after discovering he had gambled away much of their fortune.

Ms Galsworthy named their three daughters after his mistresses - a "tribute to those who didn't make it".

And in 1995, she gained notoriety for her part in an extraordinary society sex scandal.

Insurance broker Manoli Olympitis was poised to marry society interior designer Emily Todhunter. But Ms Galsworthy had other ideas aimed at scuppering the happy nuptials, as she put it, of the "Greek sponge fisherman's son" and the "curtain hanger".

She claimed she and Mr Olympitis had been engaged in a passionate 18-month love affair and - an allegation later dismissed in a libel case - that she was carrying his unborn child.

Mr Olympitis denied ever having romanced the former actress, admitting only that he once knew her.

"There are two categories of women", she pronounced at the time. "Doormats and goddesses.

Today she says that Jasmine is exactly like her. "Emotionally we're identical," she says. "Neither of us have a verbal shredding machine, whatever we're thinking just flies - and I mean flies - out of our mouths. We're both pretty volatile."

Speaking from the family home in Fulham, she claims Jasmine has always been a star.

"When Jasmine was little she used to come and watch me perform. She used to really love it," she says.

"When she was at school she would insist that her clothes were organised the night before. Sometimes she would change four times a day.

"She's always been very cute, very witty and very naughty - forever getting herself into pickles. When she was three-and-a-half she went to Lady Eden's - they had to wear white gloves and curtsy and while she was there, I was told she just talked through everything.

"There's always one naughty girl and Jasmine was it, but she was very intelligent - she just didn't want to apply herself to academia."

Her mother, however, has little sympathy for Jasmine's on-screen tears and tantrums over the Make Me A Supermodel bosses' decision to give her a new cropped hair style. "When they cut off her hair I just thought, don't you make a fuss - you did it to yourself when you were little."

Ms Galsworthy, who has two other daughters, Jessica, 22, an Oxford graduate and Pandora, 16 - says Jasmine's real ambition is to be a TV presenter. She went on the show to get exposure.

She said: "One month ago who had heard of Jasmine Lennard? Now who hasn't?"

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