Chantelle Houghton life and biography

Chantelle Vivien Houghton is a British television personality. She was the first 'non-celebrity' to feature in the Channel 4 reality TV show Celebrity Big Brother in 2006.

Born in Wickford, Essex, Houghton was born to parents Alan and Vivien, and has an older brother Gregg. Chantelle attended Bromfords Secondary School in Wickford, the same school that Big Brother winner Brian Belo also attended, she left school at 15 with seven GCSEs, she worked in a bank and as an insurance telesales rep. Houghton is a vegetarian .

Media career
Houghton's mother stated she was to be represented by publicist Max Clifford. However, he replied on TV tha Houghton is said to have £500,000 worth of offers for modelling, TV appearances and interviews. Clifford believes that her fame would be brief but explosive: "I think it will be a very exciting five or 10 minutes. Maybe we can stretch it to 15."

Houghton has also appeared on The Paul O'Grady Show and is good friends with former Big Brother contestant Chanelle Hayes. She also had her own post Big Brother show called Chantelle: Living the Dream. Houghton's first magazine cover was weekly celebrity magazine, Sneak magazine.

Houghton has appeared as a guest on several TV shows since winning Celebrity Big Brother. These include:

* The Friday Night Project on 10 February and 17 February 2006 as a co-presenter to Alan Carr and Justin Lee Collins, replacing Debra Stephenson, due to her heavy filming schedule for Coronation Street
* Channel 4's 8 Out of 10 Cats, as a contestant on 10 March 2006
* ITV1's The Mint, as a guest
* BBC's The Weakest Link, as a contestant on 5 May 2006, which also featured sometime reality TV stars Michael Barrymore and Russell Grant; and Big Brother's Big Mouth on 17 August 2006, during the final week of the seventh series of Big Brother.
* CBBC's Comic Relief does Beat the Boss, alongside Dragons' Den star Duncan Bannatyne and comedian Joe Pasquale
* ITV's GMTV, for an interview in November 2007
* ITV1's Call Me a Cabbie as a trainee in 2007
* BBC TV Drama Hotel Babylon as the girlfriend of Chris Moyles.
* BBC Three's Snog Marry Avoid? on 16 February 2009 in which she was stripped of all her heavy make-up and shown her quoted: 'natural beauty' .

Houghton also presented her own dating show called Chantelle's Dream Dates, where she gave girls on the street a makeover and got them to date one of three male contestants, similar to Davina McCall's show Streetmate.

In May 2006, she signed a £300,000 deal with Random House to publish her autobiography. It was released in October 2006 called Living the Dream which sold 50,000 copies. Extracts from the book were read out by Simon Amstell on the 14 February 2007 edition of Never Mind the Buzzcocks which caused Preston, who was a guest on the show, to walk off the set.

Houghton came second in The Independent's 'Britain's Happiest People' list.

Houghton was nominated in the Most Popular TV Contender category at the 2006 National Television Awards, but was beaten by Nikki Grahame, herself a former Big Brother contestant.

Houghton has written several columns in magazines, most notably OK!'s BB7 columnist and NEW 's BB8 columnist. Before becoming NEW 's BB8 columnist she had another column in NEW magazine entitled "I Want It Right Now" in which she shared make up and fashion tips.

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