Food News, with Christine Rutter

SVELTE TV Gladiator Rocket is full of surprises.

You might think this rising athlete would be a paragon of virtue when it comes to healthy eating.

She's got legs that run for miles, toned muscles and a figure with a hint of the supermodel about it.

However, if 29-year-old Rocket looks like a catwalk contender, surely she is a fallen one.

I chatted with the star shortly before she was due to appear in the panto Aladdin in Pendle.

And the woman whose body is the envy of women nationwide revealed that the path to fitness was littered with pitfalls.

The six-foot beauty revealed she was once a junk food addict.

"My diet used to be terrible," she said. "I wasn't one for cooking so at night I would eat all sorts of heavy junk food.

"My coach's wife taught me to stop frying my food and start eating a healthy diet on a regular basis - and to eat cereal at night if I was peckish."

She knows when to put the brake on her eating.

"When my bottom wobbles as I run to the corner shop I know enough is enough," said Rocket, whose outstanding physique is on show to millions of viewers weekly in a revealing Gladiator leotard. "People think I was born slim but I put on weight easily on my bottom and hips. I have the same fight as everybody else to keep it off."

Rocket cites treacle tarts and her mum's home-cooking as her real weaknesses. "My mum makes jerk chicken as well as rice and peas but it is so fattening," she said.

Although today she follows a diet full of fresh fruit and veg, Rocket - real name Pauline Richards - doesn't always miss out on her favourite foods.

"I have a treacle tart from time to time and my mum won't take no for an an-swer with her Christmas dinner," she said.

Rocket will be travelling from her home in Dunfermline to be with her family in Wolverhampton this Christmas.

"My mum cooks chicken Caribbean-style on Christmas Day and makes a rum-laced Caribbean cake which lasts about two weeks," she said.

Despite her fame, the 12st 3lb Gladiator is still down-to-earth. She seems genuinely taken aback when you compliment her figure.

"I'm not one of those people who actually thinks they look great," she said coyly.

The former British Pentathlon Indoor Champion helps maintain her shape with a gruelling training session which has to meet the demands of her athletic and Gladiator schedules.

She claims she is "lazy" but proves she has both the power and determination to cope with the rigorous demands of training, which include a daily four-hour schedule of jogging, weight training, technique improvement and sprinting.

Rocket, who is hoping to compete in the pentathlon at the Commonwealth Games, said: "Gladiators is high priority on the financial side but athletics is also high priority. I hope to juggle both."

Converted for the new archive on 14 July 2000. Some images and formatting may have been lost in the conversion.