By Liz Hands, The Newcastel Journal

As a little girl Camilla Priest would watch supermodel Cindy Crawford on the catwalk and think to herself: "That's what I want to do some day."

Now the Sunderland teenager has a shot at the only career she has ever wanted after triumphing over 11,000 hopefuls to win Channel 4's Model Behaviour contest.

The 19-year-old, from Hendon, Sunderland, will grace the January cover of Glamour magazine after impressing judges with a winning combination of steely determination and English rose looks.

She has also won a year's modelling contract with top agency Select - which has Helena Christiansen and James Gooding on its books - along with male competition winner, 24-year-old South African Nathan Roberts.

"I am so excited to have won the contest," Camilla told The Journal yesterday. I really didn't know what to expect. Some days I was feeling confident and other days I didn't believe I was in the running. You just don't know what the judges are looking for.

"But I was really determined. I knew in my heart I could do it and I just gave it my all and hoped that would be enough."

Camilla is now so in demand for glossy magazine photo shoots she is intending to make London her permanent home and is busy flat hunting in the capital.

"I have known for three weeks that I had won," she said, "and I've been really busy with castings since then.

"I don't know what the future holds but I have wanted to be a model since I was a little girl and my ultimate ambition would be to be a supermodel.

"I grew up watching Cindy Crawford on the catwalk and it would be fantastic to have her success."

Viewers have been glued to the nationwide search for a model which saw eight finalists sharing a London flat as they tried to make it in the fashion industry. They were whittled down to four with Camilla and Nathan up against Verity Williams, 18, originally from Durham, and 19-year old Rochdale boy Matthew Holbrook. In the final episode last Friday, the foursome flew to New York to take part in a fashion shoot before the judges finally picked the winners.

Camilla, a former pupil of Monkwearmouth Comprehensive School, was living with her parents, Margaret and Ken, and brother Jonathan, 16, before taking part in the contest. She left school at 16 to train as a nursery nurse, then did a brief stint as a receptionist before finding promotion work with Newcastle-based AM Models.

"But this is my first real chance to be a model. This is my real break," said Camilla.

"I've already seen the Glamour cover, but it I can't wait to see it on the shelves. I don't know what this is going to lead to but I am determined to make it in this business and I am going to give it my best."

From the NY POST

November 18, 2002 -- It was a sadly classic case of too much too soon.
Gia, a supermodel at the age of 17, was the poster girl for cruelly shattered dreams that cost her her life at the age of 26.

As friends, family, fans and the fashion world today mark the 16th anniversary of her death, a chilling documentary has just been completed that serves as a stark morality play for those tempted to live a young life that is fast and furious.

Titled "The Self-Destruction of Gia," the film presents an incredible portrait of how a beautiful and successful model could fall so far, so hard.

"I just kind of knew somewhere inside of me that she would not live a long life. That girl was spared nothing, and AIDS literally ate her alive," said her mother, Kathy Sperr, who points to the deadly insatiable demand for reckless heroin consumption that triggered the AIDS virus.

In this new, blunt look at one of the highest-paid models at the time, Gia's drug therapist, Robert Hilton, talks of finding her in a Lower East Side shooting gallery dressed in an exotic nightgown after coming from a fashion shoot.

She was nodding off in an abandoned building on Rivington Street surrounded by other heroin addicts using communal needles.

"Even among addicts, Gia's appetite for heroin was extraordinary - the addicts were amazed that such a little girl could go down there with that much money, buy that much heroin and do it all and not die. There were weekends when she would go down there and spend $2,500 on heroin," Hilton said.

Famous fashion photographer Scavulo, who put her on countless covers of Vogue and Cosmopolitan magazines, tells the camera, "It's a very sad, sad tragic story."

The documentary was shot, produced and directed by brother and sister team J.J. Martarano and Geraldine Martin.

"The story of Gia Marie Carangi was up until 1986, when she died, the most unfathomable tragedy," Martarano said.

"Together with her mother, we have formed the Gia Carangi Foundation, and we have our own Web site, www.thegiacarangifoundation.org. Our aim is to help awareness and prevention."

Gia traveled to New York's fashion world from Philadelphia when she was 17, and Scavulo knew she had the stuff that fashion queens are made of.

"She came here with great drive and ambition to be the best. And she was," Martarano said.

But in the fashion world, which chews you up and spits you out, be careful what you pray for.