LYNN Campbell-Walter had never thought about becoming a model. Lynn, who grew up in Totton where her parents John and Joyce Walter were amateur dance champions, wanted to become a photographer when she went to work in a studio in Soho.

But when the photographer she worked for suggested she try modelling, she decided to give it a go.

At 5ft 6in, the former St Anne’s schoolgirl was too short to be a fashion model but she found success as a commercial model, appearing in adverts for everything from soap powder to chocolates.

She enjoyed a successful career from the age of 20 to 23, when she retired to have children.

Her modelling career had taken her to Beirut, where she had married and settled.

“When I first went there it was brilliant,” she says.

“But it got worse and worse. There was fighting there all the time, right on our doorstep, and shelling every day.

“It became a diabolical way of life. There weren’t any norms.

“The children’s school kept closing and there was no electricity or running water. I’d be hiding in the basement with my kids – that’s just no way to bring up children.”

Lynn had set up her own business in Beirut, making baby accessories, but it was destroyed when a rocket hit her workshop.

She returned to the UK aged 35 as a single mother with two young boys and no job.

She hadn’t thought it would be possible for her to return to modelling; it had been dominated by people in their teens and twenties when she had last worked and she thought that she was too old.

But she was surprised and delighted to find that there was now work available for more mature models. It was so difficult to find work that fitted in with having children,”she says. “Modelling was perfect because it’s part-time work that you’re paid quite well for. The industry had changed from the time I had been a model before.

“It was much more diverse and more adverts were geared towards older people because they were the ones with the money.

“I was successful at it again and it was fabulous.”

Lynn was in demand for adverts as well as fashion shoots.

“It was amazing for my self-confidence, having come out of Beirut feeling a bit jagged and knocked around.”

Lynn, now 55, continued modelling until her mid-40s.

There was still plenty of work around for her but she had the opportunity to become director of agency BMA Models, a role she continues in today.

“There is definitely a trend for more and more mature models,” she says.

“The advertisers are appealing to the people who will buy the products. The oldest model on our books is around 80. I think it’s better for people’s self-esteem to see a wider variety of models. It’s no good trying to sell to a woman in her 50s with a skinny fashion model because she can’t relate to her.”

Lynn adds that, despite the trend for celebrities to attempt to fight the signs of ageing with facial fillers and other surgery, many of her models get work specifically because they look their age. We have people who get work because they are very lined,” she says.

“We do have some classic models who I think probably use Botox but people who look like they’ve had surgery just wouldn’t get work.

“Some people are specifically looking for models with lines because they have character on their faces.”