There was a time in the mid-2000s when it felt as though “everyone” had seen her topless, says Keeley Hazell. Page 3 was a staple of the tabloid press, lads’ mags were booming and she was one of the country’s most recognisable glamour models. “There was excitement, but also a lot of shame and embarrassment,” the softly spoken Hazell reflects. “Topless modelling never really aligned with me as a person.”

Hazell, who was born in Lewisham, London, left modelling in her early 20s and moved to LA to become an actor. But the emotional impact of her time in the industry has stayed with her, partly inspiring her 2025 book Everyone’s Seen My Tits: Stories and Reflections from an Unlikely Feminist. She describes the writing process as a “release” when we meet in London, where she has been preparing for an Edinburgh fringe theatre/comedy show based on the book. “I was able to give myself a voice,” she says, for “a period where I felt voiceless”.

The show makes her think “of the image of Russian dolls – I’m performing as me, but then I’m also performing as a version of me”. This sense of having multiple identities is nothing new for her. She remembers “presenting differently” to the Keeley Hazell people saw on magazine covers, “in vintage clothes and very grungey”. So much so that she was rarely recognised in the street, even at the height of her fame. When asked if she was a Page 3 model, she would deny it. “I’d be like, ‘Are you saying I look like a Page 3 model?’ And it was a really interesting experiment because they’d often be like, ‘No, no, you’re way more classy than that.’ It was weird because they were talking about me but I also felt separate from it.”

Hazell’s introduction to glamour modelling was fast and unexpected. At 16, she left school and started working in a hair salon, where a colleague encouraged her to apply to become a model. She had some photos taken and sent them off to “a bunch of addresses” given to her – one of which, unbeknown to Hazell, was the Daily Star’s “beach babe” competition. She won, and a few months later entered the Sun’s “Page 3 idol” competition. “I won that too, and that was the start of my career.”

Modelling was very different to her life at home on a council estate. “I went from growing up there to owning a luxury apartment overlooking the Thames.” Hazell was a “canvas”, and she knew she could be made up to fit a photographer’s image. “I was so young, there was so much exploitation, I was not emotionally or mentally prepared for it.” Safeguarding, she says, was basically nonexistent. “There was so little protection for women entering that industry. I had no idea about the things I needed in place, and my family didn’t either.”

Looking back, Hazell almost can’t believe Page 3 was real. “It was just a wild thing to grow up with … those images were so readily available in newspapers and in newsagents.” There are times when she thinks of those days fondly; she was earning more money than she thought possible and got to travel the world. But she regrets “not having more control” over things. “A lot of the time I was just numb. I’d drink a lot and tell myself to enjoy the party.”

Today, she gives carefully considered answers, with the air of someone who has had the time and space to process it all. Therapy has helped enormously, she tells me, particularly when it came to dealing with the fallout from a sex tape sold to the Sunday Sport. It was “terrifying” to write about the experience and “in a way relive it” Hazell says. “So many women experience some aspect of sexual violation and abuse in any realm, the shame for me needed to be ridded.”

The Edinburgh fringe show is the latest chapter in that process. It begins in 2019 with her auditioning to play Keeley Jones, a character inspired by her, in Ted Lasso. She didn’t get the part but she did land a recurring role in the series and serves as a staff writer. Hazell can’t tell me much more about her solo show’s structure – she’s still in the writing process. “Right now I’m just staring at a laptop, ordering food and thinking, this is difficult,” she says with a laugh. She is certain, though, that it will be funny. “Trauma and humour are intertwined … even within the spiralling and the PTSD of it all, it should be a humorous retelling.” And it feels freeing to have, at last, complete autonomy over the Keeley Hazell people see and hear from. “It is incredibly powerful to have a voice.”

• Keeley Hazell: Everyone’s Seen My Tits is at Pleasance Courtyard, Edinburgh, 5 to 29 August