TALL and big boned, dressed casually in an ordinary white T-shirt, trainers and straight jeans, Jodie Kidd looks the picture of health.

She’s the waifish model, who found fame at 15, whose willowy frame was held responsible by some for inducing teenage girls to starve.

At the height of “heroin chic” in the ’90s TV presenter Lorraine Kelly branded her a “sick, anorexic giraffe”.

But after 10 years flying from one catwalk to the next, she bowed out and is now happily pursuing a career as a radio and TV presenter.

“I can say it until I’m blue in the face but I didn’t have an eating disorder,” she says.

“It just so happened I came along when the grungy, androgynous, heroin-chic look was in. It was always ‘shoulders forward’ in the poses. I was being told all the time.”

She claims art directors painted hollows under her eyes to heighten her natural skinniness. She was a size six and 6ft 1in.

Jodie, 31, adds: “I got glandular fever because of the schedule. I was 15 when I started and I never missed a show: I’d do New York for a week, London for a week, Milan for a week, Paris for a week – it was relentless. If I did it now, I’d be a nervous wreck.”

She believes the criticism could “really have destroyed someone else”. But it made her work harder to prove she didn’t have issues.

These days she has a 32-inch waist and is a size 12-14. She’s taken part in the BBC’s Strictly Come Dancing and Who Do You Think You Are? and, for three months a year, is a presenter on London’s Capital FM breakfast show. She also works on Country Tracks on BBC1.

“I never wanted to model forever. I am who I am and I don’t really care. I’ve got bits hanging out everywhere and I’m happy,” she says.

While she’s naturally critical of her body, she says she’s a tomboy and country girl at heart who isn’t vain and barely looks in the mirror.

“I can honestly say I don’t like my body. My bum’s too big, hips are too big and thighs are too big. I don’t think about it,” she says.

“I look at Kelly Brook or Gisele [Bundchen] and think, ‘I’ve got to get to the gym’. It lasts 20 seconds, then I’m eating cheesecake.”

She comes from an illustrious family. Her entrepreneur and showjumper father, Johnny, is a grandson of press baron Lord Beaverbrook. He and her mother Wendy are divorced, and she has a brother Jack, 36, a professional polo player and a sister, Jemma, 35, who has her own make-up brand and is a mother of twins with her husband, Arthur, Earl of Mornington.

She’s single and believes her lifestyle, working and travelling isn’t conducive to romance. She’s had four relationships – she recently split from her boyfriend – which include a short-lived marriage of less than a year.

“I’d marry again, but would definitely make sure it was right.”

And while she describes her parents’ break-up after 35 years together in 2006 as “a horrific thing to go through” she accepts it as “definitely for the best. They're happier”.

She says she’s a “very loyal, passionate” girlfriend. “A bit too passionate. I storm in at 300 miles an hour, getting involved where I shouldn’t. I’m like a limpet as soon as I meet them, which is probably why I’m single now!

“I probably don’t take casual things very well. I’m a million per cent or none... I’ve got to focus more on me.”

And she’s busy. Three years ago she founded the Jodie Kidd Foundation to support charities including the NSPCC and the Monsoon Trust.

Jodie avoids wearing make-up and describes her sister as the “beautiful and super chic” one. “I’m the slob who sits there drinking a beer”.

She admits trying to steal Jemma’s clothes (“my one incentive to lose weight”). “She gets furious; I’ll be trying to squeeze into it, and saying ‘I can’t get it on!’ She’ll say ‘good!’”

As she leaves to fulfil a work commitment, she reveals that she’s proud of the height which helped propel her into that controversial catwalk life.

She says even as a youngster, coming from a tall family – her brother is 6ft 5in – she had the exuberance and character to cope with being different.

“I’m very proud of my height. I’ll wear the highest heels possible so I’m 6ft 9in,” she says as she rushes off.

Jodie Kidd spoke to Psychologies magazine, and the full interview features in the June issue. See psychologies.co.uk.