A TALENT-SPOTTING company which claimed to help budding performers find fame has folded.

Big Break Magazine was investigated by trading standards officers after canvassers across the region stopped young people in the street offering to help them break into the entertainment industry for a fee.

Now the business, based in Darlington, has collapsed - and those who paid to appear in the magazine will not recoup their cash.

The company's director, Fiona Blackmore, told The Northern Echo last night that she had no money to pay back customers.

"I am ruined," she said. "All my money that I have put in, I have lost. We are going through the insolvency process now."

Ms Blackmore, 35, refused to say how many people had signed up to the magazine but blamed bad publicity for the company's collapse.

"Everybody will be notified," she said. "There will be an apology."

Of customers who will lose their fee, she said: "I have lost a hell of a lot more. There's nothing I can do about it."

The company vacated its Weir Street premises two weeks ago. Mother-of-one Ms Blackmore said she was four months pregnant and having to re-mortgage her home in Ingleby Barwick, Teesside, to survive.

Her solicitor, Timothy Sutton, of Smith Roddam Solicitors, in Bishop Auckland, County Durham, declined to comment on the insolvency.

Lindsay Macinnes, from Catterick village, North Yorkshire, paid Big Break £195 after she was stopped by a canvasser in Northallerton town centre.

The married mother-of-one, who hopes to become a model, attended an interview and signed a contract agreeing to pay the fee.

"I hadn't realised that was what I was signing up to," she said. "I wasn't going to pay but a bloke from the company phoned me and said they would send the bailiffs around if I didn't."

The charge was for a photographic session, a set of prints and an advert in the Big Break "casting directory", none of which she received, she said.

After paying the money she heard nothing and tried to contact the company.

"The office number was unobtainable and I left messages on mobile phone numbers, but no one came back to me."

The unemployed 24-year-old fears she will never get her money back. "I feel gutted," she said.

People who have paid can contact Darlington trading standards. Manager Nigel Green said: "We are interested in any complaints which we can link to the directors to try to prevent similar things happening in future."