Nude TV appearance is just what the part demanded

Apr 3 2008 by Ben Guy, The Journal

APPEARING nude in front of a television audience of millions was all in a day’s work for a Northumberland woman.

Demonstrating the health benefits of exposure to sunlight, Lady Elizabeth Devonport disrobed for Channel Four’s The Diets that Time Forgot programme, which aired earlier this week.

The premise for the series is that nine volunteers spend 24 days testing the weight-loss and fitness regimes popular in the late Victorian and Edwardian periods and in the Twenties.

Lady Devonport, of Riding Mill, said: “The reason I took my clothes off was that I was dealing with a group of people who were on a 1920s diet.

“It was in the 20s that doctors realised the important health benefits of going out in the sun.

“It was the start of the naturism movement and I took my group to see some naturists to explain.

“I had thought to myself that I was going to do anything the show threw at me, and so it was then that I took my clothes off.”

Lady Devonport, 60, has featured throughout the series, using her skills as a trained dancer to advise dieters of the importance of good posture and deportment.

But it was her 15-second appearance in the nude that is likely to cause the biggest stir.

Despite joking that her two grown-up daughters would never speak to her again, Lady Devonport said she had nothing but positive feedback after the show.

“I have also been plucking pheasants, skinning rabbits and swimming in the North Sea in January. It was a fantastic privilege to practically live in another period.”