Linda Lusardi has admitted she now ‘cringes’ at her page three modelling days and ‘believes it was wrong,’ as she reflected on her past in a candid new interview.

The 66-year-old former glamour model was one of Britain’s best known page three girls in the 1980s and 90s. 

Linda, now an actress and TV presenter, explained: ‘I cringe at it now. The further I get from it and the more times are changing and atтιтudes are changing to all that sort of stuff, I suppose I find it slightly embarrᴀssing.

‘It wasn’t anything to be ashamed of in those days, but looking back now, with today’s eyes, it’s like everything in those days is shameful. The way men treated women was shameful.’

Linda, who was voted the UK’s most popular page three girl ever, was 18 when she began posing for topless page three pictures and continued to appear for the next 12 years. 

She admitted: ‘Most of my jobs were on calendars which were on beaches. We’d have an absolute ball and I was in that bubble where everyone was doing the same work, so you didn’t feel looked down upon, although the public didn’t look down upon you in those days.

Linda Lusardi has admitted she now ‘cringes’ at her page three modelling days and ‘believes it was wrong,’ as she reflected on her past in a candid new interview

The 66-year-old former glamour model was one of Britain’s best known page three girls in the 1980s and 90s

‘But now, looking back, I realise how wrong it was and how women shouldn’t be depicted like that and the language men used for women in those days was wrong.’ 

Linda told Kaye Adams on the latest episode of her How to be 60 podcast: ‘It feels like a different life now – I gave up nearly 40 years ago. 

‘When people say page three it jars with me now, because it’s so un-PC now. It really doesn’t fit with today’s society at all, but at the time I was quite proud of it. It was just seen as something that was everyday; it was in people’s newspapers.’

Linda also told How to be 60 that she now sympathised with former MP Clare Short, who proposed banning newspapers from publishing pH๏τographs of topless models in a Private Members Bill in the House of Commons in 1986.

At the time she was vilified for the campaign, but Linda said: ‘In retrospect I do have some sympathy for Clare Short, absolutely; she was just ahead of her time.’

Linda was working as a filing clerk in a tax office when she was stopped on the way home from work and offered work as a model.

But she admitted that while her dad was proud of her new career, it caused embarrᴀssment to her mum. 

‘My Mum was a tax officer, so she wasn’t too pleased when people came in the office and said: ‘ooh your daughter’s in the paper today.’ She was slightly embarrᴀssed,’ she said

‘But my dad just thought it was great. If people didn’t know it was me, he’d tell them: ‘oh, she’s a page three girl,’ which sounds really weird these days that somebody would be proud of that, but things were so different then.

Linda explained: ‘I cringe at it now. The further I get from it and the more times are changing and atтιтudes are changing to all that sort of stuff, I suppose I find it slightly embarrᴀssing’

Linda was working as a filing clerk in a tax office when she was stopped on the way home from work and offered work as a model

Read More Ex-glamour model Linda Lusardi shocks fans as she reveals her age

‘Page three had just hit the heights. It was quite well thought of in the modelling world. I know it’s quite unbelievable now, but it was and it was quite hard to get onto those pages.’

She added: ‘It felt quite liberating at the time and I loved the pictures, I thought I looked really nice, my figure looked nice. I was earning lots of money, I was travelling all over the world.

A popular TV personality, Linda went on to a successful TV career, with roles in Brookside, The Bill and Hollyoaks and a year in Emmerdale as Carrie Nicholls, an ex-girlfriend of regular Tom King and mother of his secret child Scarlett. 

She has also taken part in Dancing on Ice, Celebrity MasterChef and The Real Full Monty.

Speaking of her topless modelling days she told Kaye Adams: ‘It’s always the thing you became most famous for, isn’t it? And although I’ve done acting and Emmerdale and Brookside, it’s all people want to remember me for. And that’s fine.’

Linda, who shares two children Lucy, 29, and Jack, 26, with her actor husband Sam Kane, 56, is appearing in panto at Easter and Christmas and hopes to front a TV DIY show later this year.

She revealed last year that she had undergone a non-surgical face lift which had left her looking years younger, but she said at 66 she no longer worried about her looks or her figure. 

‘Becoming a pensioner has made me push that away,’ she explained. ‘I don’t care if it goes to pot now. It already has gone to pot, but it used to worry me and I used to hide it.

Linda, who was voted the UK’s most popular page three girl ever, was 18 when she began posing for topless page three pictures and continued to appear for the next 12 years

A popular TV personality, Linda went on to a successful TV career, with roles in Brookside, The Bill and Hollyoaks and a year in Emmerdale as Carrie Nicholls

‘I think a lot of women, once they turn 60, feel they still should be the same size they were at 30 and they’re constantly on diets, constantly going down the gym.

‘I’ve had enough of that – your body does need to be heavier when you’re older. It’s normal to be another stone heavier than you were when you were 30.

‘I still want to keep active, just so that my joints keep working. I play badminton once a week and I exercise at home a bit, but that pressure has gone now.

‘I am a pensioner, I can’t deny it and I think you’ve just got to embrace it. Life’s too short to be worrying what other people think all the time, what size you are all the time, whether you’ve got your lipstick on or not – just get on with living.

‘I might have 20 years left if I’m lucky. I’ve got to spend them doing what I feel comfortable doing, not what everyone else thinks I should be doing.’

Kaye Adams: How to be 60 is available on all podcast providers