The former Big Brother star seemed to have it all: the darling of the lads’ mags with a millionaire fiance. But now she faces the biggest challenge of her career to date, writes Stephanie Bell

Life has been something of a roller-coaster for former model and Big Brother star Orlaith McAllister. After her famous stint in Big Brother 6 in 2005, it seemed that things were just getting better and better for the Belfast beauty.

Her career as a glamour model rocketed after she bared her surgically enhanced 32D boobs to millions on the Channel Four show.

With a glamorous new life on the London celebrity circuit came a fairytale romance and, in 2006, a beaming Orlaith announced her engagement to millionaire property tycoon and TV presenter Gary McCausland.

Life seemed perfect when, just a few months later, Orlaith gave birth to their daughter Eva.

The couple’s high-profile partnership led to an exclusive deal with leading celebrity magazine OK, which featured the first pictures of the proud new parents with their daughter in a photo-shoot at their plush London home.

But just a month later, the dream had ended and the image of the Belfast girl’s charmed new life had crumbled.

Orlaith’s life ever since has taken a series of unusual twists with the birth in April of her second child, Anthony, to ex-fiancé Gary after “a one-night stand”.

And just last week the once sought-after model spoke about her pain at trying to bring up her two kids as a single parent on benefits.

“This is the lowest I have ever felt in my life. It’s been a struggle, but it’s the way me and the kids have to survive,” Orlaith told Sunday Life.

“Everyone has to go through times when they have to juggle things and find it tough and this is my time.”

It’s a huge comedown for the bubbly beauty queen who just a few years ago was riding on the crest of the celebrity wave after making a household name for herself on Big Brother.

Born in 1979 and one of six children, Orlaith went to the University of Ulster where she completed a Business Studies degree.

With plans to one day open her own business, the beauty world was already tugging and over the next few years she competed in a number of competitions, winning Miss Belfast and coming runner-up in the Miss Northern Ireland contest in 1999.

She was beaten by former Blue Peter presenter Zoe Salmon, who described her as “a normal, friendly, fun person”.

Orlaith was Belfast’s Woman of the Year in 2005 and, in February 2006, had another go at a beauty title when she was selected to represent Belfast at Miss Great Britain, losing out to Danielle Lloyd, who later had her title removed.

She was 26 when she entered Big Brother, describing herself as: “a shopaholic, who enjoys boxing and snowboarding”.

Before entering the house she had a boob-job, inflating her from 32AA to 32D, and made headlines across the UK and beyond when she bared her new boobs on the show and invited housemates to touch them.

After leaving Big Brother Orlaith embarked on a successful career as a glamour model, appearing frequently in lads’ magazines such as FHM, Loaded, Nuts and Zoo.

She was also a Page 3 girl in The Sun, and told the paper: “I've always wanted to do this. It's a fantastic honour.”

While in the public eye, Orlaith has been romantically linked to a number of famous personalities including Calum Best, Gary Lineker and ice hockey player Curt Bowen.

But it was her engagement to Gary McCausland in 2006 which seemed to seal her fate as a national celebrity.

Their shock split in April 2007, just two months after Eva’s birth created sensational headlines.

Fans were once again shocked when last week, Orlaith publicly confessed to being a skint single mum struggling on benefits to bring up her two children.

“I’ve been living on the breadline, but I’ve always made sure that, when the money comes in, I go out and get what I have to,” she said.

Her hope now is to go back to her original career plans as a teenager and open her own beauty business.

She said: “Everyone plans that they want to be married with kids and all of that, but it must have been written in the stars like this for me.

“In a year’s time it is going to be different and it will make me a stronger person.”