Alek Wek was 19 when she was approached by a model scout from a top London agency at a fair in Crystal Palace park. Her mother, she remembers, was horrified, thinking her daughter was about to become a Page 3 girl. She laughs loudly: “I had to point out that I wasn’t really built for that.” Wek, one of the most successful models of the past two decades, has inherited her father’s height and extraordinarily long limbs, her mother’s cheekbones and her “little booty and big smile”, but she’s not exactly glamour-girl material. But the agent persisted, finally convincing Wek’s mother that theirs was a reputable agency, and her daughter’s career began. The Guardian
