Katrina Hodge - Combat to Catwalk: The Amazing Story of the Girl who went from Army Hero to Miss England

E VERYONE dreams about the day when their life will change: I know I did I just wish Id been wearing something a bit more glamorous when it arrived. As it was, I was in a pair of tights and an old T-shirt, with half my hair straightened and one eye made up. It was just an ordinary Friday night at my mums house. I simply wasnt expecting the attention.

I was upstairs with the girls getting ready for a night out. It was always the same when my old mates Hayley and Leonie came over: trying on outfits, passing the hair straighteners, fiddling with accessories. While we were up there, giggling and chatting, I heard the doorbell go. I wasnt expecting anyone so I ignored it after all, I had to consider the important matter of how to walk in Hayleys platform wedges after a month or so in combat boots. The next thing I knew, Mum was calling me from the stairs.

Kat, could you come down here, please? Weve got a lady here who would like to talk to you. Mums voice sounded tight, and a little more high-pitched than usual. She was using the tone I normally only heard if someone was rude to her in a supermarket.

Seems a bit weird, I thought to myself, a stranger turning up at our house on a Friday night. I dont have the kind of job where you leave the office like clockwork at the end of the day or week and head out with your mates to your local favourite. Im a soldier, so leave is a treasured time to take off the combats and get out the mascara. I was seriously looking forward to this night out and wasnt at all keen on the idea of an interruption from a random visitor. Catching up with the girls after what had been a while was my main priority. Im not much of a big clubbing girl, but I just wanted to do my hair, put on my lipgloss and get dancing.

She says shes from the Sun newspaper, my mum continued. I could hear her coming up the stairs. Even her footsteps were starting to sound a bit nervous. Hayley turned the stereo down in my bedroom and mouthed, What on earth? at Leonie and me.

Because this was a weird situation, to say the very least: what did the Sun want to talk to me for? And how had they found out where I lived? I rushed downstairs, pulling my baggy T-shirt down as far as I could and smoothing my hair down as I walked. Just like Mum, I was trying not to show it, but by now, there were a few butterflies in my stomach as well. What was going on? Was it some kind of emergency? A friend in trouble and a journo fishing for scandal? Or had I been mistaken for someone else? I had been interviewed for work once before, but it certainly didnt involve a night-time visit from a nameless reporter. This was the stuff of movies.

I was a bit disappointed when I got to the door: the lady looked perfectly normal. Where was her raincoat, her notepad full of scribbles, her sneaky Dictaphone? Instead, she was a perfectly nice-looking thirty-something, with neat, bobbed brown hair, a standard pair of jeans and a leather jacket. She reminded me more of a GAP advertisement than a hack. Plus, she was looking me straight in the eye as I came downstairs, with none of the shiftiness that I would have expected from a door-stepping tabloid journalist. With horror, it crossed my mind that Mum had misheard her and there was about to be a terrible misunderstanding. I took a deep breath and said hello.

I hope you dont mind me coming to find you, said the journalist politely. But I think youve got a great story, what with your combining serving in the Army with going for Miss England. She went on to explain that she had seen my photograph in the local newspaper, the Kent & Sussex Courier, and had contacted them to find out where I lived. They had told her the name of my street, but left it at that. So she had knocked at every door along the street where I live.

Of course she found me in no time: Id grown up on that street, and Id lived there forever. My childhood had been spent riding my bike up and down it and offering to do odd jobs for all the neighbours. But it seemed incredible that I could be that much of a story. In the house with my mum and my mates I felt like the most ordinary girl in the world. Just Kat. It turns out there arent that many prospective beauty queens who have also served in Iraq, though. For the Sun it was a story, for me it was a way of life. And as I looked the reporter in the eye, I knew I would never be just Kat again.

U P A TREE well, up a tree in a dress, thats where you would have been most likely to find me when I was little. I suppose I had the kind of childhood that lots of kids today dont get to enjoy I spent hours and hours playing in the street and woods, and my parents never had to worry about me staying close to the house. I lived in the same house, in Goudhurst on the outskirts of Tunbridge Wells, for my whole childhood my parents are divorced but my mum still lives there now. But it wasnt very likely youd find me indoors. I was always outside, you see, mucking about with a bunch of other kids.

I was lucky enough to live on a street where there were loads of children my age. My brother Byran is two years older than me and I hardly remember seeing him as he always had his own gang of friends. It was as if we had divided the house and garden into two: he got the TV and computer, and I got the garden and street. My entire world was outside and I would start to get restless if indoors for too long, while he could spend hours on end playing computer games, or inventing them.

The number of outdoor games I used to make up with my gang was never-ending. There was a big field at one end of the street and wed gather there, with me as a sort of ringleader among the kids our age I was around seven or eight at the time. It started off with a couple of girls, then a set of boy triplets joined in, and before long other kids would be added to the group. Our age, new to the street, bored of watching telly? Join us! Finding new recruits was easy: our games were fun and they usually involved some kind of dare or dramatic performance, so curious newcomers always got stuck in before too long.

We put together a football team and would play against kids from other nearby streets. Wed ride bikes, zoom around on roller-skates and sometimes I even used to jump on the horse in the field, totally bareback. From the age of eight or nine, I was totally fearless: Id just grab onto the poor creatures mane and gallop away, hoping for the best. I dont remember ever doubting Id survive these escapades. Who cares about the saddle? What was a horse for, if not for riding?

My first heroes were the Power Rangers. Once I had convinced everyone that I had to be either the pink or the yellow one, I was happy to high kick and spin around for hours on end. I adored pretending I could fight, that I had superpowers and there was no challenge too great for Kat! That slowly turned into my obsession with the Spice Girls. Well, what can I say? It was the 1990s! I loved Geris wacky antics but it was Mel C, aka Sporty Spice, who became my real inspiration. I really did love high kicks in those days.

My gang used to challenge each other to climb the trees in the nearby field, just to test each other out. Oh, go on, I bet you cant make it to the top of that one, was one of the most exciting things I could possibly imagine hearing in those days and the phrase most likely to make me want to take the tree on. I loved the challenge. Once up there, we would sit and chat for hours and only then realise that we had to get back down again.

My instinct would be to prove that I could get to the top of the tree it didnt matter about anything else. I ran headlong at the dare, didnt consider the risks, reckoning Id just sort out the getting down bit later on. But of course that meant I kept getting stuck. One day I had my eye on one of the bigger trees: I decided it was time to take it on, and that was that. I can clearly remember climbing up it I was pretty quick and nimble. The grass below was getting further and further away, and I could tell the other kids were impressed. There was only one problem: as I was climbing, I could hear the branches that I had been relying on to get me up were snapping away as I used them to get higher and higher. Before long, I was at the top. Yay, I had done it! But there were no branches to get down with. I was an eight-year-old in a party frock, stuck at the top of a tree. Dressed to party, but well stuck.