"I DON'T think I was the kind of drama queen they wanted in the end," said down-to-earth fashion entrepreneur Jan Shutt, chosen from hundreds of hopefuls to appear in a TV fashion programme.

"I got the impression they wanted me to be a bit more volatile.

"Maybe shouting at my staff one minute and bursting into tears the next," said Jan. "This is a pressurised job and I am passionate about my work but I'm more level-headed than they anticipated."

Jan, owner of thriving fashion house Sunday Best, in Rawtenstall, has been tailed by a film crew for the last seven months as she played the leading role in the Granada and LWT production Rags to Riches.

It's a fly-on-the-wall "living soap" about the inner workings of the fashion trade, seen through the eyes of students, designers, manufacturers, department stores and retail outlets.

Jan, who also lectures at the University of Central Lancashire, "starred" as the retailer and found the film crew quite intrusive at first. But after a few weeks she almost forgot they were there - until she dropped a few howlers. Like the time she referred to Donna Karan as "Donna Kebab" or when she explained that the charity benefiting from her fashion show was "multiple dysentery" instead of muscular dystrophy. There have been some unscheduled clangers as well. Jan was being filmed writing her column for the weekly magazine Drapers' Record outside a cafe in Soho when a cafe owner began piling bags of rubbish in front of her. She said: "In the end the crew could hardly see me. I ended up stretching my neck so far to stay in shot, I must have looked hilarious."

But such hiccups are few and far between. Jan is an old hand with the cameras, having appeared on Granada and the BBC, including an appearance on The Clothes Show.

"I'm not fazed by TV at all," she said. "I just try to be myself. If I tried to cover up my accent or act differently I would just look stupid. I am confident because I am in my own environment and know what I'm talking about," she said.

She believes that pigeon-holing the trade with the catwalk image is a slap in the face for the people who have spent long hours toiling in the background.

"Whoever said the fashion trade was glamorous should swap jobs with me for a week," said Jan.

"A fashion show is the luxury part of the business. The rest of the time you are scrambling around for material or shooting across London for a meeting. It is a lot of hard work but I love it."

In fact, Jan was captured on film in a less-than-glamorous setting quite recently.

She said: "We were filmed loading up the van for a fashion show at 6am, only to find that it would not start. It was pouring with rain, my hair was plastered to my head and Carole Stuart, Sunday Best's manager, and I had to push the van down Bank Street.

"So much for the glamour of the fashion trade!"

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