BBC Documentaries
Being Gail Porter
2020 • E7 Jan 13, 2020 60m
In 1999, Gail Porter was one of the UK’s most sought-after female TV presenters. Most famously, she helped sell over a million copies of FHM magazine after her naked image was projected onto the Houses of Parliament. Then over the next 20 years, things took a turn for the worse: she suffered post-natal depression, alopecia and was sectioned under the mental health act. In 2014 she even ended up sleeping rough on a park bench. How did this happen?
In this documentary, Gail takes a tell-all journey into her past. Travelling to her hometown of Edinburgh, she meets friends, relatives and medical professionals and asks why she has such extremes of emotion? And how can that explain her story? The result is an honest and deeply personal exploration of mental health, self-harm, anorexia and depression, as well as a stark reminder of how the world has changed since her 1990s heyday.
In this documentary, Gail takes a tell-all journey into her past. Travelling to her hometown of Edinburgh, she meets friends, relatives and medical professionals and asks why she has such extremes of emotion? And how can that explain her story? The result is an honest and deeply personal exploration of mental health, self-harm, anorexia and depression, as well as a stark reminder of how the world has changed since her 1990s heyday.