Abi Titmuss

Abi Titmuss (birth name Abigail Evelyn Titmuss), born 8 February 1976 in  Newark,  Nottinghamshire, is an English  actress,  television personality, former  glamour model and  nurse.

Early life
Abi Titmuss grew up in Heckington, Lincolnshire where her parents were teachers and she took her A levels at Kesteven and Sleaford High School where she played the clarinet. Her parents divorced when she was 17 and her father moved to Argyll, Scotland, where he remarried. Her mother was secretary of Sleaford Museum Trust.

[edit] Nursing
 Titmuss graduated from City University in St Bartholomew's Hospital in 1998. She did a nursing diploma "because I was interested in becoming a doctor, but hadn't taken A level Chemistry"   and became a staff nurse at London's  University College Hospital.

[edit] Television and radio
 Titmuss was hired as a roving reporter on the Channel 4 programme Richard & Judy, but was sacked in January 2004 when it emerged that she had been privately filmed in 2000 performing oral sex on her then boyfriend, John Leslie and on a female model, Aisha Abubakar and the stolen footage, which had been downloaded without permission from a private computer by a convicted criminal, Lanre Onabowale, (currently serving 18-years in jail for four rapes)   became public.

Titmuss appeared on ITV1's Celebrity Love Island. Other television work includes training as a chef on the 2004 series of Hell's Kitchen and in 2005, she appeared on Channel 4's The Friday Night Project as a regular guest feature and also in Abi Titmuss: A Modern Day Morality Tale, a fly-on-the-wall documentary for Channel 4. She has also starred on a celebrity edition of Channel 4's Come Dine With Me with Paul Ross, Lesley Joseph, Linda Lusardi and Rodney Marsh.

Titmuss also appeared on the reality series Deadline with Janet Street Porter on ITV2. The show followed a number of celebrities as they attempted to produce a celebrity-based magazine each week, published as a supplement to Closer. Titmuss was the fourth celebrity to be sacked from the show.

She has guest-presented shows on Virgin Radio, MTV and LBC radio.

[edit] Glamour
After readers had been asking to see her,[according to whom?]  Titmuss agreed to do a one page, unpaid photo shoot in FHM. On seeing the shoot, the editors turned it into a cover plus a six pages. The issue went on to be one of their best ever sellers and in December 2004, Titmuss appeared on the front cover again (with Swedish model Victoria Silvstedt), making history as the first girl ever to be put on FHM's cover twice in one year (as written about in her book). In 2004 and 2005, she made 38 front-page appearances on British men's magazines, such as FHM , Nuts, Zoo Weekly, loaded, GQ and Maxim magazines. She also appeared in the Sunday Times Style and in glamour pictures in severaltabloid newspapers including The Sun, News of the World, Daily Mirror, The People and Daily Star.

<p style="margin-top:0.4em;margin-bottom:0.5em;line-height:19.1875px;color:rgb(0,0,0);font-family:sans-serif;font-size:13px;">In her book, Titmuss states how she quickly realised that she wanted more control after seeing magazines pay her for one shoot and then sell the pictures many times. So she started paying for and directing her own shoots thus owning the copyright and selling them herself, with her manager.

<p style="margin-top:0.4em;margin-bottom:0.5em;line-height:19.1875px;color:rgb(0,0,0);font-family:sans-serif;font-size:13px;">In 2005, Titmuss was voted number 7 by readers in FHM 100 Sexiest Women in the World and wrote a regular sex advice column for the magazine. At the height of her fame in 2004/05, Titmuss could command a modelling fee of up to £30,000 a day for appearing on the front page of Nuts or Zoo. In 2005, Titmuss appeared in a high fashion shoot in Pop magazine, which commented on her status as the "face of 21st century celebrity".

<p style="margin-top:0.4em;margin-bottom:0.5em;line-height:19.1875px;color:rgb(0,0,0);font-family:sans-serif;font-size:13px;">After taking a break from modelling work, Titmuss relaunched her glamour career in 2007, this time as a brunette, with an appearance on the cover of Zoo Weekly and the sale of the official Abi Titmuss Calendar. On 25 April that year, it was announced that Titmuss had made an appearance for a third time in FHM's annual 100 Sexiest Women in the World readers' poll, at number 80 (she had been number 95 in 2004 and number 7 in 2005).

<p style="margin-top:0.4em;margin-bottom:0.5em;line-height:19.1875px;color:rgb(0,0,0);font-family:sans-serif;font-size:13px;">After announcing in late 2007 that she would take a break from her glamour modelling career to concentrate on acting, Titmuss returned with a new Nuts shoot in April 2009 to promote her final calendar.

[edit] Acting
<p style="line-height:19.1875px;color:rgb(0,0,0);font-family:sans-serif;font-size:13px;">Titmuss first acted during her university studies and then took part-time acting courses at the Central School of Speech and Drama, paid for from her nursing work. After reducing her glamour model work, Titmuss took a further short course at the same establishment.

<p style="margin-top:0.4em;margin-bottom:0.5em;line-height:19.1875px;color:rgb(0,0,0);font-family:sans-serif;font-size:13px;">According to her book The Secret Diaries of Abigail Titmuss, the first theatre producer to audition her for a role was Marc Sinden: <p style="line-height:19.1875px;color:rgb(0,0,0);font-family:sans-serif;font-size:13px;">In March 2006, Titmuss made her London theatre acting début, playing a prostitute with a multiple personality disorder in Two Way Mirror by Arthur Miller, at the Courtyard Theatre in Kings Cross, for which she won a Fringe Report Award for Best West End Début.

<p style="margin-top:0.4em;margin-bottom:0.5em;line-height:19.1875px;color:rgb(0,0,0);font-family:sans-serif;font-size:13px;">In 2006, Titmuss had a small role in the film ''[http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Goal!_2 Goal! 2] and in 2007 appeared in the second series première of Rob Brydon's Annually Retentive, which aired on BBC Three and as a character called Gezebelle in an episode of Katy Brand's Big Ass Show'', a sketch comedy series for ITV2.

<p style="margin-top:0.4em;margin-bottom:0.5em;line-height:19.1875px;color:rgb(0,0,0);font-family:sans-serif;font-size:13px;">Between 26 February and 23 March 2008, Titmuss appeared in the black comedy Fat Christ at the King's Head Theatre in Islington, London.

<p style="margin-top:0.4em;margin-bottom:0.5em;line-height:19.1875px;color:rgb(0,0,0);font-family:sans-serif;font-size:13px;">She has been cast in small roles in British independent films Do Elephants Pray? and Mixed Up. In 2008 she played the role of the 'Mysterious Girl' in Beat 24 Films UK independent feature film Frontman.

<p style="margin-top:0.4em;margin-bottom:0.5em;line-height:19.1875px;color:rgb(0,0,0);font-family:sans-serif;font-size:13px;">In 2009 she was cast in the 25th anniversary production of John Godber's play Up 'n' Under at the newly refurbished Hull Truck Theatre, Hull. Titmuss played the role of Hazel the fitness instructor, starring alongside James Crossley(formerly the Gladiator "Hunter") and soap actor Lewis Linford ("Lee Naylor" in Emmerdale). She also had a part in the BBC TV series Hotel Babylon, playing a nun.

<p style="margin-top:0.4em;margin-bottom:0.5em;line-height:19.1875px;color:rgb(0,0,0);font-family:sans-serif;font-size:13px;">From November until December 2009, Titmuss appeared in Shakespeare's Macbeth, playing the character of Lady Macbeth with the Seagull Rep. This production opened at the Seagull Theatre, Pakefield, Lowestoft, Suffolk before transferring to other East Anglian venues including The Cut at Halesworth, Bungay's Fisher Theatre and Quay's Arts Centre.

<p style="margin-top:0.4em;margin-bottom:0.5em;line-height:19.1875px;color:rgb(0,0,0);font-family:sans-serif;font-size:13px;">On 18 February 2012, she played the role of Tara Edmonds in an episode of BBC TV's Casualty. She said that landing the part gave her a sense of self-esteem that she had lost doing the glamour work.

[edit] Publications
<p style="line-height:19.1875px;color:rgb(0,0,0);font-family:sans-serif;font-size:13px;">Titmuss produced a book, co-written with Jayne Lockwood and published by Virgin Books, on 7 July 2005 called Ten Fantasies (ISBN 978-0-7535-1037-7), in which she reveals her ten most secret sexual fantasies. She said that she did not want her mother to read it.

<p style="margin-top:0.4em;margin-bottom:0.5em;line-height:19.1875px;color:rgb(0,0,0);font-family:sans-serif;font-size:13px;">Her memoir, The Secret Diaries of Abigail Titmuss (ISBN 978-0-7553-1790-5), was released by Headline Review on 24 July 2008 on which she collaborated with Heat journalist Lucie Cave.