Deborah Hirzel
Deborah Hirzel, 51, from York, has been married for 29 years and has three children. She lived in California for 13 years, and worked as a dental assistant. She has modelled for Klass Clothing, Mappin & Webb and Visit England, and is the current Classic Miss British Isles.
“Although modelling was suggested to me in my teens and 20s, it wasn’t something I really considered until it unexpectedly happened in my mid 40s.
“In 2013 I was a semi-finalist in Specsavers Spectacle Wearer of the Year which led to a shoot in York. I loved being in front of the camera. A friend asked me to model in a charity fashion show. I got involved with She Loves York. This led to signing with an agency and I started modelling at designer fashion shows.
“In 2016, I got my first commercial advertising job for Nestlé After Eight. When the kids were amused to see a large image of their mum in the supermarket, I thought, ‘wow, can I call myself a professional model now?’ I was 47.
“No two jobs are the same. I have dressed up as a postal worker, bartender, waitress, played a mum, a daughter, a care worker and a patient. I have worked in TV dramas including Victoria, Gentleman Jack, Downton Abbey, National Treasure, Strike and Emmerdale. Last year I was scouted for a national beauty competition. I am the first ever Classic Miss British Isles for women 45-plus.
“I consider modelling a full-time job now. There is a lot of rejection in this industry. I don’t think I could have handled that when I was younger but it really doesn’t bother me now.
“My advice for anyone wanting to be a model would be to get a good agent. Be prepared to work really hard. People think it is a glamorous job and it can be, but alongside are very long days, lots of travelling, early starts and last-minute bookings. But I couldn’t imagine doing anything else.”
Deborah is represented by Face Model Agency in Leeds on 0113 245 8667 or email info@ face-agency. co.uk
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components. It looks like a laptop knocked up in Pinocchio’s workshop.
The kit also includes upwards of 20 electronic components which children can use to further extend the capabilities of their Raspberry Pi, which is after all useful for far more than game playing.
It’s not cheap at around £280 and you could buy the components separately for a fraction of the cost, but as a present for an inquisitive youngster, it might literally be priceless.
The £300 Kano PC is a laptop that takes a similar approach, but comes mostly preassembled, though you can see the innards through the transparent plastic case. And because it runs Windows it can compete with conventional laptops and netbooks at the cheap end of the market.
The Kano is probably the closest you can get to building a laptop from scratch, but the opposite is true of desktop PCs which can be assembled by anyone aged 12 and over, and will when finished be as good or better than anything on the shelves at Currys.
That’s because most of those are themselves DIY jobs, put together from parts freely available on the open market. The only difference is that the assembly is done at a factory in the Far East, not in someone’s bedroom.
There are only eight components involved in a standard PC: the motherboard, processor, memory, hard drive, network adapter, optional graphics card, power supply and a case to put them in. You need to know which ones to pick, but online retailers like www.awd-it.co.uk will take the guesswork out of it by selling you the first three of those items as a preassembled bundle, with very credible models starting at less than £200. An inquisitive secondary school child will soon have them installed in a £30 glowing neon case and hooked up to the other necessary parts. This is an education in itself and can foster a lifelong understanding of how computers are supposed to work and what to do when they don’t.