Durham University student Josephine Kime was hoping maybe to help a camera crew when she applied for work experience at Tyne Tees TV. Instead, she found herself presenting a series on the region's top hotels.

When Durham University student Josephine Kime wrote to ITV Tyne Tees asking for a work experience placement, she expected to help around the office or watch a camera crew at work.

Instead, the 21-year-old from Harrogate found herself presenting a six-part series about top hotels in the North-East.

She was as surprised as anyone to get an on-screen role in Hot Hotels. "I thought going out with a film crew would be the biggest thing I'd do," she says. "I'd been trying to get work experience at Tyne Tees for quite a few years. I thought it would just be a couple of days. Doing a series was quite unexpected."

Kime isn't exactly a stranger to public appearances. She's been modelling - mainly catwalk work - since she was 13, after being spotted at The Clothes Show exhibition by a scout from a model agency.

As the presenter of Hot Hotels, she found herself taking part in a variety of activities, from horse riding and clay pigeon shooting to cookery lessons and wine tasting.

Her letter asking for work experience filtered down the Tyne Tees chain to producer Wendy Homewood at the time she was planning the Hot Hotels series. As she's York-based, it was thought she was best placed to deal with the request from Harrogate-based Kime.

"I rang Josephine and said I didn't know if I could do anything for her, but said to come over for a chat. I thought I'd probably send her out with a news crew," explains Homewood.

"She came in, this 6ft blonde with a very good CV and obviously a bright girl. We chatted for quite a while and I thought, 'you could present'. She looks like the sort of girl who'd be at these hotels."

Eventually, Kime was offered the job, and is now considering a career in broadcasting. "Modelling is not something I want to do for a long time. Besides, you can't. By the time you're 25 there's a limit to the things you can do," she says.

"You can work into your 30s but I don't really have that quirky London look. A lot of agencies say, 'you're more like a 1990s supermodel and don't have a quirky face'. There's a limit to the work I can do."

Filming Hot Hotels, which took her all around the region from Berwick to York, was fitted around her university studies. When she wasn't in front of the camera, she was in her hotel room studying. "Most of my friends were getting up at noon and going to lectures but I was busy working," she says.

The former Harrogate Ladies College pupil will find out whether she's passed her degree around the time that the series is broadcast.

Hot Hotels tells the stories behind some of the region's leading hotels and B&Bs. Homewood wanted to show that, contrary to opinion, the best hotels aren't confined to the South.

"There's an enormous interest in hotels. You can't open a newspaper or magazine without reading about some fantastic hotel somewhere in the world," she says.

"People are decorating their homes like hotels. They inspire and affect decoration. They've very important in modern culture but most people are like me - afraid to stay in those type of hotels.

"People tend to assume in the UK that if you want to stay in the nicest hotels, you have to be in London or the South-East. That's not the case. I wanted to show we have very nice places in the North-East. In a sense, it's about the pride we have here."

Most of the hotels featured are individually owned places. Many of them are award-winners, several of the restaurants have Michelin stars. The aim wasn't to review the facilities, but tell the stories behind the buildings and of the people running them. At the main location each week, Kime gets involved in activities taking place there.

At Langley Castle, in Northumberland, she attends a wedding and finds out how a 14th century castle was turned into a luxury hotel. She joins the cocktail hour on Newcastle's Quayside, has a cookery lesson from TV chef Rosemary Shrager and undergoes a chocolate facial at Seaham Hall.

Not everything went to plan, mainly because of the weather. A golf lesson had to be cancelled because it snowed. A horse riding sequence was filmed in pouring rain.

Kime admits that TV presenting was very different to modelling, where the main requirement has to do with appearance rather than doing anything. Homewood says it was more a question of getting the novice presenter to be herself than teaching her how to do it.

"It's one of those things where you get better as the series goes along," adds Kime.

Now that she's finished university, she's trying to determine where her future lies. "I don't know whether that's exciting or frightening," she says.

"I'm going to take some of the Hot Hotels show around to agencies in London to get their reaction. It's a case of being persistent, although I don't think I'll get anything as nice as staying in lovely hotels."

She has the promise of more work experience. When she met PR guru Max Clifford backstage at ITV's The X-Factor show a few months ago, she asked him if he'd give her some work experience. He said yes. Proof that if you don't ask, you don't get - and sometimes you get more than you expected, like a TV series.

* Hot Hotels begins on ITV Tyne Tees on Tuesday, June 28 at 7.30pm.

Published: 18/06/2005