Passed/Failed: An education in the life of Carol Smillie

Carol Smillie, 46, presented Wheel of Fortune, Changing Rooms, Dream Holiday Homes and Smillie's People. She currently presents STV's Postcode Challenge. She also hosted A Brush with Fame, the ITV portrait-painting competition, and is a columnist and a model. She has just launched the Learning and Skills Council's "Skills Street" campaign, which offers advice on skills to the residents of a street.

My two earliest memories are of having my nappy changed – and, when put in my pram to go to sleep, of being frightened by the wallpaper. (Yes, even then!) I had a fairly idyllic childhood. We didn't have a babysitter because my parents didn't go out without me.

I lived next door to Simshill Primary School, Glasgow, and was desperate to go there. I loved it, but I remember getting into huge trouble for using an eraser, which you weren't supposed to do because they wanted to see where you'd gone wrong. I made a mistake, rubbed it out with a dirty rubber, then used a wet finger, making a hole in the paper. I couldn't sleep for worrying about it. I got hauled in front of the class and humiliated. After that, I just used a better rubber.

My friends were going on to the local secondary school, but my parents wanted me to go to the fee-paying Hutchesons' Girls' Grammar, aka "Hutchesons' Grammar School for Young Ladies". Were we young ladies? By today's standards, we were angels! I knew it was a huge financial effort to send me there, so I had to knuckle down. Academically I didn't shine, but I learnt confidence and a lot about life. There were some very bright children, but I wasn't one of them. The school guided them towards the professions, which weren't for me, but I didn't feel a failure. My children are now at Hutchesons', and I tell them, "I don't care as long as you give it your best shot".

I got seven O-levels – fabric and fashion was one – and I scraped some of them. I left the following year with three Highers, but I needed five to get into Glasgow School of Art, so I went to Langside College to get the other two. I only got one. There was too much freedom. So I went for another year to Cardonald College, where I didn't know a soul and got my head down.

I finally got to Glasgow School of Art when I was 18. I spent the first year not sure it was what I wanted to do. There were people with green hair and pink shoes, on another planet. I got a job in a cocktail bar and took up modelling, which fitted around my studies. My tutor was into abstract art, throwing paint at the wall, etc. I wasn't. Another tutor, a lovely man, said, "If I were you, I'd stick with this modelling malarkey. You can do art at any time". Maybe it was his way of saying, "I don't think you've got what it takes".

I left at the end of the first year. My parents, however, thought that modelling was a very dodgy career choice. Was I going on the game?

These days, I go to art school once a week, to do life drawing and portraits. The pressure is off, so it's purely for pleasure.