Gardeners' World star Rachel de Thame's life from modelling past to cancer battle

Rachel de Thame used to be a model (Image: BBC)

Gardeners' World is back on BBC Two with Rachel de Thame offering invaluable tips. She may be a gardening expert now, but the TV presenter has followed a number of different career paths.

From the age of 10, she trained as a professional ballet dancer, but she contracted glandular fever aged 15 and decided to give up her dancing career when she turned 19. She went on to study drama and art before working for a well-respected international firm of art dealers in London.

In 1986 she married her first husband, Stephen Colover, and while pregnant with her first of two children with him, she was recruited by a modelling agency. After appearing in a number of TV adverts, she was put forward for acting roles.

She starred in the miniseries Merlin and in the feature film Bodywork. However, she chose not to pursue acting as a career and in 1998 she signed up to gardening school.

Shortly after, she was recruited by Gardeners' World, initially presenting every week. However, following the birth of her second child with her second husband, Gerard de Thame, she only makes occasional appearances.

READ MORE Garden star reveals cancer fight on TV [INSIGHT]

Rachel de Thame was diagnosed with breast cancer (Image: BBC)

She and her second husband now have two children and they live in West London and the Cotswolds, Gloucestershire, having moved from Oxfordshire.

In 2018 she was diagnosed with breast cancer and began treatment, opening up about her diagnosis following an absence from Gardeners' World.

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Rachel said: “I haven’t been hiding, but I was diagnosed with breast cancer at the beginning of the year and so I have been undergoing treatment for that.

"I’m doing well and coming towards the end of it. It’s caught early so that’s all very positive, so on the whole it’s better not to be working too much just now.

“I know there’s a big message this year at Chelsea about the importance of gardening for your general health and mental health…..if you’re going through some chronic illness, whatever it is…. it’s vital to go out and be in a garden.”

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She is an advocate for people testing the water with their careers and opened up to the Guardian about her own decisions.

She said: "It's important not to worry too much about getting your career direction right when you're young.

"Life is a series of very different stages and there is no reason to assume that what you start out doing will bear any relation to where you end up.

"I've gone from receptionist, to modelling, to acting and finally being a gardening TV presenter. Nothing is really a disaster while you're young.

"If someone wanted to get into either modelling or TV, I wouldn't know what to tell them - I fell into both."

Gardeners' World airs on BBC Two on Friday at 8pm