If Miss Crockett could see me on Changing Rooms, running up people’s curtains without even tacking them, she’d laugh herself silly. She taught me how to use a sewing machine, at Hutchesons’ grammar school in Glasgow, in her fabrics and fashion class, but I was never much good at sewing.
I can remember making some God-awful drawstring gym bag in yellow gingham with my name embroidered on the front which kicked about for a long time afterwards. Miss Crockett was a stickler for preparation, for doing things properly, but on Changing Rooms we haven’t got time.
She was a teacher of the old school. She had silver hair, was terribly polite, and we sat down and did as we were told in her lessons. Teaching was her life and she cared passionately about it. She was a kindly woman. I remember once taking in a favourite jumper which, shock-horror, had a cigarette burn on it (I didn’t smoke, but my boyfriend did), and she darned it for me, which I thought was quite cool.
Hutchy (as we called it) was a school for young ladies then - it has since become co-ed. I loved my time there and did OK, but it was an academic school and I wasn’t up there with the high achievers. Art was my best subject. My ambition was to be a fashion designer, but when I went to the careers office for advice I might has well have said I wanted to be a pop star. They didn’t know what to do with me.
To gain the necessary qualifications to get into art school I went on to Cardonald college, a further education establishment in Glasgow, where I came across the teacher who had a huge influence on me.
Anna Sambucci was a friend as well as a teacher. She taught art and she was glamorous and she made art lessons fun. She was very enthusiastic about my work, and very committed, and she was the first teacher to make me feel completely successful at what I was doing. I really felt she was on my side.
She was Scottish, married to an Italian who had a restaurantdelicatessen, and I often used to see her around Glasgow with her husband. She didn’t look like you expect an art teacher to look. She had long blonde hair and wore designer clothes and beautiful jewellery. Her nails were always polished and her hair perfectly styled, and she had an air about her that I thought was attractive and interesting. I wanted to be like her.
I went on to Glasgow School of Art but realised it wasn’t for me and gave up after a year. While I was there I blagged my way into modelling, mostly photographic work because I’m a bit short for the catwalk.
Changing Rooms has been the most successful job of my career, and the only part of my education that has helped me on the show is sewing. Nobody ever asked me if I could sew when I began presenting the programme, but it shocked me how few people even knew how to thread a sewing machine, so I just took it on. I got bored waiting around.
My sewing has come on so much - just from having a go with other people’s bits and pieces. I’ve made some horrendous mistakes upholstering sofas up and down the country, but I’m quite good at it now. My 40th birthday is coming up and my husband is going to build me an arts studio where I can finish off all the sewing and other projects I’ve started and abandoned. I want to finish everything off myself. I want it done properly. I wouldn’t like anyone else giving my home a makeover.
TV presenter Carol Smillie was talking to Pamela Coleman
The story so far
1961 Born in Glasgow
1973 Attends Hutchesons’ girls’ grammar school, Glasgow
1975 Sunday school teacher at Cathcar Old Parish Church
1979 Cardonald college
1980 Glasgow School of Art
1987 First television appearance as hostess on Wheel of Fortune
1991 Reporter on local radio in Scotland
1991-97 Reporter on The Travel Show, BBC2
1993 Co-hosts Hearts of Gold with Esther Rantzen; becomes presenter on BBC’s Holiday and National Lottery show
1995 onwards Presenter of BBC’s Changing Rooms 2001 Hosts Teaching Awards ceremony (BBC1, November 4, 4.10pm)
