A REALITY television star and author has revealed how she was sexually assaulted in a hotel room by a stranger.

Tanya Bardsley, 33, who is married to former Sunderland AFC footballer Phil Bardsley, said she woke up to find a man touching her.

Mother-of-three Mrs Bardsley, nee Robinson, originally from Richmond, North Yorkshire, told how the incident happened in March 2013 when the couple stayed in a hotel after attending a family birthday party.

The star of new ITVBe series The Real Housewives Of Cheshire went to bed early leaving her husband with his friends.

She said: "Phil left the hotel room leaving me there in a drunken, comatose sleep. I woke up in a hazy state to find a strange man at the side of the bed touching me.

"I screamed for him to get out. I then rang Phil, who quickly came with a car full of friends and he rang the police. I was badly shaken up."

Mrs Bardsley, who won the FHM High Street Honeys competition in 2003, was taken to hospital where she had a number of "distressing" examinations to find out if she had been raped.

She added: "Lucky for me, the tests came back that I hadn't been raped, just sexually assaulted.

"Thoughts kept going through my head – how many other girls might have been targeted?"

Mrs Bardsley waived her right to anonymity as a victim of sexual assault by sharing her ordeal in her self-published book, Just A Girl Who Got It All.

She revealed a man who worked at the hotel admitted he had been in the room while there was a 'Do Not Disturb' sign on the door.

Mrs Bardsley said the man admitted moving her sleeping naked body during a police interview, but denied committing sexual assault.

She added: "Months went by waiting for the police to get forensics back and for the case to go to the Crown Prosecution Service (CPS) to decide if there was enough evidence to go to court.

"After five months of it hanging over my head, the CPS came back and said there wasn't enough evidence."

Mrs Bardsley said the decision left her feeling "angry and disgusted that this man would get away scot-free".

Her new book reveals her rags to riches tale, going from being a being a single mother working at the Orange call centre in Darlington to a WAG living in a £2.7 million mansion in Cheshire's affluent so-called Golden Triangle.

After winning the FHM competition, the Fleece pub in Richmond was renamed Tanya's Charms in her honour.