Finola Hughes Talks About Being a Spy, Dancing with John Travolta, Fashion and Style

Around town at the moment are large posters of Finola Hughes, soap actress, author, style guru and host of the #1 rated Style Network reality series "How Do I Look?" which started its sixth series last year:

"They made me wear a pink dress, and I'm really not a pink dress girl at all. Eventually I only agreed to do it if I could wear my skull and crossbones necklace, which is my homage to growing up in the punk era!"

The Irish connection is immediately apparent in her first name: Hughes's father was born in Cobh, County Cork, and she has many childhood memories of the large city in the south west of Ireland:

"We spent every summer in Cork, just sitting on the doorstep outside the pub. All our relatives are there. When we first went to Cobh, mum pointed out the thirty houses, two pubs and two churches - I guess you just went from one into the other!"

She last went to Ireland around 15 years ago, when she and her brother went on what she called a "pilgrimage" to see all their relatives:

"We went all over the country, and saw everybody. We must have put on 10-15 lbs in weight from all the food! We ended up in Cobh, at dad's grave. He was born in an area that was directly on the strand, facing towards the mainland. He was the one who had kept the family together by writing lots of letters, but now both my parents are dead, it's my cousins in Cork who have taken up the torch. They also researched our family tree too; my grandfather was Welsh, and he came over to Ireland and met my grandmother."

Born and educated in Notting Hill Gate in London, Hughes was educated at private school and studied ballet at Art's Educational from the age of 10, making her first public appearance at the Royal Opera House in Covent Garden a year later. Hughes then joined a ballet company for 12 months before returning to London, where she worked as a dancer in television and had occasional small parts in films.

In 1980, she originated, and portrayed for one year, the role of Victoria, The White Cat, in the London-based original company of the musical "Cats" which led her across the ocean to the USA: