Emma Padfield is known across Britain for going out with top soccer stars and has been plastered across the tabloids on more occasions than she cares to remember. She's in demand as a model, is about to release a single, and is next week hoping to land a job as a TV presenter. All this, and she's still only 20. Helen Mead asks Emma how she found footballer-chasing notoriety, about her plans for the future and whether the self-confessed party-girl will ever settle down.

EMMA PADFIELD loves to party. And she spends half her life doing just that. "I go out to have a good time - I get invited to lots of premieres, shows, and events like that. I go with friends and have a great time."

She had the best time ever earlier this year when, with one of her closest mates, Kerrys, she was whisked off to the Spanish resort of Marbella for a modelling job. "We hit the town on a night. We got in at 7am and were up two hours later sitting by the pool."

The pair also teamed up to jet off to Majorca in May, courtesy of a tabloid newspaper, for a feature entitled "Meet the Most Feared Attackers in Soccer," which focused on their skills in capturing the attentions of top soccer stars.

It's an exciting life, and Emma, who lives in Nab Wood, Shipley, and London, revels in it. Even the bad side of being in the public glare has a silver lining. "It's not always flattering, the things they write in the papers," she says. "But it's a well-known saying that all publicity is good publicity."

Emma was only 14 when she was spotted by a talent scout from a leading model agency. She recalls: "I was shopping in Manchester with my mum and this man came up to us. He gave mum a card with his number on it, and told us to ring him."

The 5ft 11in-tall blonde went along and was put on to the company's books. Still at St Mary's School, Guiseley, she modelled every weekend and during the holidays.

She spent time with different agencies, then took a performing arts course followed by a year at the famous Italia Conti stage school in London, where she studied acting, singing and dancing.

She missed out on a job as Bruce Forsyth's assistant on The Price is Right, because she was only 17, and they were looking for girls aged over 18. But the disappointment did not get her down, and the story guaranteed her lots of publicity as Bruce's "new girl" who didn't make the grade through no fault of her own.

Being in the media spotlight was, says Emma "scary at first," but whenever a big story appears she is inundated with requests for magazine articles and TV appearances. Says Emma: "After that Price is Right story I had a lot of offers and took up some magazine and TV work, and did fashion shows and things."

Bigger stories were to surface, when Emma was linked with the then Leeds United and England player Lee Sharpe, who now plays for Bradford City, after meeting in a Leeds nightclub.

She's also been associated with Leeds United player Lee Bowyer, who she met in a club while filming for Graham Norton's show Football Unzipped. "He was a really nice guy," she says.

The high-profile dalliances led to Emma and Kerrys - who has been linked to Leeds United player Harry Kewell - being followed from the clubs of London to Leeds for a Channel 4 documentary about women who date footballers.

But, while she readily owns up to her relationships with soccer stars, she is keen to point out that she's not completely besotted with them. "I'm not addicted to footballers, I just happen to have gone out with a couple and I go to parties where the other guests are either footballers, actors or dancers, so it's inevitable I'll meet them."

One relationship she doesn't own up to, however, is her alleged romance with Greg Cordell, who hit the headlines when he won a radio station contest looking for two single people to get married. The union collapsed and, later, Emma met him on a TV show. "We are friends, that's all," she says, and laughs the stories off.

Adamant that she will not go topless, she's nonetheless conscious of the fact that some see her as a bit of an airhead. "A Barbie doll - but when people who don't know me make negative comments it doesn't affect me. I'm having a good time and if all they've got to do is criticise me they must lead very sad lives."

It may surprise those who see Emma as a leggy blonde and not much else, but the head-turning model is now on the verge of what could turn into a successful singing career. Her song, Don't Stop - an up-beat dance number - has been recorded on to CD and will be released when Emma has filmed a video to go with it. She says: "If it gets to number one, I'll have a big party."

On Thursday she is auditioning to co-present the TV show Men and Motors on the satellite channel Granada Breeze. If she is chosen, she will join former presenter of The Word Terry Christian. "I'm not nervous, even though I would love the job," she says.

Emma divides her time between the spacious semi-detached home in Nab Wood that she shares with her parents and 24-year-old sister, and a flat in London's Covent Garden which she shares with friends.

She is coy about her current love interest, but insists it is not another footballer. "He's an actor in a soap, who I met nine weeks ago," she says. But she does have her eye on one former soccer player. "Glenn Hoddle is my ideal. I saw him at a party in London recently and he looked about 26. I said hello to him - he's really lovely."

Emma does not know what the future will bring, but has vowed to carry on living it up with Kerrys and her other close friend Christina.

"We're known as the party girls," she says. "There was one article in a national paper that said we can make a party happen wherever we go."

Converted for the new archive on 30 June 2000. Some images and formatting may have been lost in the conversion.