MODEL Hayley Dixon is braving a national TV audience to prove she isn't just a pretty face.

Satellite and Freeview channel E4's newest entertainment show, Beauty and the Geek, matches seven girls who get by on their looks with seven intelligent but socially inept "geeks" to compete a series of challenges.

Hayley, 24, whose family live in Manchester Road, Accrington, is bidding to win a £40,000 prize in the show, which is due to be repeated on Channel 4 next month.

But she has already seen her career given a massive boost following her appearances on the show. "I'm in the middle of doing promotional work. I've done a shoot for The Sport and have shoots for The Star, Maxim and Loaded.

"It's all picking up from the show and my agent is trying to get me on page three, so it's really good fun."

Hayley, who previously worked as a sport development officer for Blackburn with Darwen Council, now lives in north London where she models and is an assistant presenter on a shopping channel.

She added: "I did a bit of modelling up north but there's not much work there so I took the chance.

"I just needed to get out of Accrington because it's always been my dream. It was always a risk and it has been hard but I think all my hard work is paying off now."

Hayley, who has a BA (Hons) in PE and sport from Leeds Metropolitan University, got on the show after applying through a modelling agency.

Over six episodes, the beauty/geek pairs became room-mates, team-mates and life coaches to one another in a bid to win the cash prize and to reach their own goal of self improvement.

Week by week, one couple is eliminated based on their task performances.

The first task was a general knowledge quiz for the girls.

"My friends in Accrington are sending text messages saying well done, you look really nice.

"They all gave me stick about a question I got wrong, but said don't worry about it," Hayley said.

"The question was what is the square root of 49? Which obviously is 7.

"I multiplied 49 by 49 oh my God! They said I think we need to go over what you learnt in maths.

"But I got the first question right, which was, What is Pb on the periodic table?' "It's lead. And I got it right! So I'm not much of a bimbo!" said Hayley.

Hayley has only seen the first episode so far and said the show was edited to highlight their bimbo qualities.

"It shows us getting questions wrong rather than the ones we got right.

"It's a stereotype everyone places on you and we were there to prove it wrong, I hope we did, I hope our personalities will come out more.

"We didn't judge a book by its cover, it was nice to see different outlooks on life."

Hayley already has a boyfriend.

"He works in IT consultancy. He is a bit of a geek! God he'll kill me for saying that."

Beauty and the Geek is shown on E4 on Tuesdays at 10pm.