Brown star was a Page 3 girl aged 15: Yesterday she posed with PM, but 20 years ago she was topless model

By Matt Sandy and Amanda Perthen

Topless pics: Ms De Piero posed for the risque shoot when she was just 15 years old


Labour's attempts to add glamour to their Election launch came under fire last night when it emerged that the candidate placed near Gordon Brown in a promotional photo posed topless when she was 15 years old.

The revelation reignites the row over the use of all-women shortlists, when carefully chosen, often glamorous, candidates are parachuted in to safe seats ahead of more qualified local activists.

The Page Three-style pictures of television presenter Gloria De Piero were taken by a photographic agency in her native Bradford without her parents' knowledge. Friends say Ms De Piero was seeking to earn some extra money when she posed for the photographs, thought to have been taken in 1988, before her 16th birthday.

Such photographs would have been illegal, as she had not yet turned 16.

Ms De Piero, 38, known as Tony Blair's 'favourite interviewer', appeared alongside Mr Brown and Deputy Labour leader Harriet Harman when Labour launched its five Election pledges in Nottingham yesterday.

Her involvement at the heart of the campaign is bound to spark fresh controversy about the way that both major political parties are using handpicked glamorous candidates to win votes.

Earlier this month Ms De Piero was parachuted into the Ashfield seat vacated by disgraced former Cabinet Minister Geoff Hoon. Labour chiefs put her on an all-women shortlist, and local activists claimed she was pitched against weak rivals to further boost her chances.

But party officials deny former GMTV political correspondent Ms De Piero was picked for her looks.


Front and centre: She was strategically placed next to Gordon Brown and Harriet Harman for a promotional photo


'Gloria has been a committed Labour supporter for many years,' said one. 'The idea that she needed help to become a candidate is nonsense. She is highly intelligent and commands great respect from colleagues in journalism as well as politics. What she did as a teenager is irrelevant. So what if she posed for a few risqué photos?'
Ms De Piero has close links with both Mr Brown and Mr Blair. She has interviewed the former Prime Minister on a number of occasions, and one of his aides said Mr Blair 'really fancied' her. However, in political terms, she is closer to Mr Brown.


The revelation will also be an embarrassment to staunch feminist Ms Harman, who has championed all-women shortlists as well as trying to ban semi-naked Page Three girls from newspapers.

Her flagship Equalities Bill declares: 'An employer who displayed any material of a sexual nature, such as a topless calendar, may be harassing employees where this makes the workplace an offensive place to work.'

One national 'red top' newspaper is currently running a campaign aimed at preventing 'killjoy' Ms Harman from making Page Three girls 'illegal'.


Launch: Mr Brown, followed by Ms De Piero and fellow candidate Liz Kendall in Nottingham yesterday


Mr Brown was all smiles when he appeared with Ms De Piero and other candidates chosen from all-women shortlists in the East Midlands yesterday to launch Labour's election pledges. He was surrounded by a 'doughnut' of glamorous women --political slang for a tight grouping of acolytes who surround a politician to make them appear more appealing for the cameras.

Hailing Labour as the 'people's party' in a speech to activists he said Labour's top priority was to secure economic recovery. In addition, he pledged to raise living standards, protect frontline services, ' strengthen fairness' and build a high-tech economy.

'We are fighting for Britain's future - and we intend to win,' said Mr Brown. He acknowledged politicians were not trusted but said Labour's promises were specific pledges that he would stick to, if elected.

Mr Cameron has faced similar controversy over his own attempts to shoehorn more young women candidates into Tory seats.

He faced a furious backlash from the so-called 'Turnip Taliban' when blonde Liz Truss was selected to fight Norfolk South West. Activists were furious to discover Ms Truss had not informed them she had had an affair with Tory MP Mark Field, when both were married.

A source close to Ms De Piero confirmed yesterday that she had posed for the topless pictures without her parents' knowledge when she was 15 years old. The source said: 'She just decided to do it to earn a bit of money. It was a photographic agency and she knew that the topless pictures could be put out to newspapers.'

At the time, it was illegal for topless pictures to be taken of under-16s - and the law has since been strengthened to extend to under-18s.

Ms De Piero was born to poor Italian immigrants in a white working class area of Bradford. She was brought up in a pebble-dashed two-bedroom terraced home which, in her early years, lacked even central heating.

Houses in the modest but respectable-street in Wibsey sell today for as little as £50,000. Her parents Giorgio and Maddalena, who are in their 60s, still live in her childhood home, which is well-kept with fresh paintwork on the walls and neatly trimmed plants in a small front garden.


Neighbours say Gloria was a 'delight' as a child but was clearly ambitious from a young age.

One said: 'Looking back on it, her passion for politics was obvious even as a little girl. She was always organising the other children when they played and loved being in charge.' She attended Marshfields Primary School half a mile from her home and excelled. Later, she attended Priestman Middle School.

A family friend said: 'She was clearly going places from early on. It was not just her intelligence and looks, she had a relentless enthusiasm that ran through everything she did.'

Her father Giorgio, a manual worker, often encouraged her with political discussions as a child.

After a brief spell at Yorkshire Martyrs Catholic College, she studied A-levels at Bradford and Ilkley Community College, where her political ambitions first took root.

She said: 'Though I really ought to have worked a bit harder on my A-levels, the experience I got in so many other areas more than made up for that.'

Ms De Piero joined the Labour Party aged 18 and campaigned heavily for Neil Kinnock in 1992. After gaining a first-class degree at the University of Central England - now Birmingham City University - she served for a year as its sabbatical student union president.

She went on to gain a masters degree at Birkbeck College at the University of London and became a researcher for ITV's Jonathan Dimbleby programme in 1997.

She worked for BBC political programmes before becoming GMTV political correspondent in 2003. She resigned earlier this year to become a Labour candidate



source: dailymail