We’re not looking for the best-looking girl or the most intelligent or the one with the best figure … Tonight their families and boyfriends have come to cheer them on, their little sisters have clamoured at the backstage entrance, they have met Ricky and Phil. The important thing is to have taken part and to hold our heads up high.”She is right, of course. All the women have been treated like stars; have appeared on the Big Breakfast and ITV; been made-over and pampered. “We’re all one big, happy family back here,” says Kimberley Darby, 21, an auxiliary nurse, the current Miss Cardiff and one-time Miss Cheshire “Whatever happens we are all winners, every one of us. “It is hard up there, and a look from you, and a smile, can make all the difference.” Unfortunately this is almost impossible – as, if the judges look up, their eyes rest at an uncomfortable crotch height.The eveningwear round passes slowly as each woman strides leggily up the platform and performs a twirl. Then the contestants retire to change into their swimwear in an atmosphere bereft of beauty-queen bitchiness, as if the contestants have all been away on a management-consultants’ training weekend.

Richard Syalon from Mirror Mirror – the Ilford boutique responsible for making all the dresses – is concentrating hard; Rachel Burke from MTV is doodling on her judging sheet; Ricky and Phil from Eastenders, alias Sid Owen and Steve McFadden, are nudging each other behind their personal champagne ice-buckets.Earlier, Steve Douglas, son of Miss World’s founder Eric Morley (the Douglas is to prevent him rising on the family coat-tails, says his father), fresh off a flight from Barcelona where he has been presiding over the competition’s more glamorous concerns, has exhorted his judges to make eye contact with the girls wherever possible. “But it has changed my life.”The first six contestants file along the catwalk for the eveningwear round, clicking their high heels in time to the funereal thump of a generic House CD, some visibly shaking with nerves.The judges are taking their duties with differing degrees of seriousness. Then there are cheers for the arrival of the reigning Mr UK, Phil Cooke, a 25-year-old fireman with bulging biceps from Bromley, Kent, who is one of the Miss Essex judges “It took me three attempts to win Mr UK,” he says. Our host, Ross Anderson, the former Eastenders celebrity (“Andy”, the Scottish nurse, memorably killed in a road accident after his yuppie wife told him to “drop dead”) can be heard practising the names of some of the more ethnic contestants under his breath. you could really respect yourself if you won something like that.” Certainly the pounds 30,000 Miss UK prize money – pounds 10,000 more than this year’s Booker Prize – has life-changing potential.Later, as the judges take their seats hard up against the catwalk, an air of perceptible tension fills the nightclub. “I’m trying not to think about it,” says Toni, the oldest contestant at 25 and, by day, the assistant manager of a local theme-restaurant. “But you could think to yourself that tonight could really change your life Not by being Miss Essex – that’s just for fun But Miss UK …

There was a place at next month’s Miss UK competition and then, just maybe, a shot at Miss World in the Seychelles in November. Anyone who tries to make an issue of it is just stupid.” The others nod wearily.On that Sunday evening in late July two of Britain’s most loaded archetypes, the Essex Girl and the beauty queen, collided under the lime-green lights of Faces nightclub, Ilford It made for easy television But there was more at stake than cliches. “We’ve heard them all so many times,” says Sally Terry, 20, Essex born and bred and currently employed as Posh Spice in tribute band The Spicey Girls. “I usually tell them before anybody else does – get in there first I’m proud to be from Essex. The reporter laughs and flashes his white teeth.The girls, aware they are being mocked, clap politely anyway and go back to their mirrors to take their rollers out, re-apply each other’s lipstick and pour themselves into their eveningwear for the dress rehearsal.

“How do you know when an Essex Girl’s come?” one of the nightclub sound crew says to no one in particular “She drops her handbag.”No one laughs. Every one of the 18 contestants can reel off Essex Girl jokes the way Sussex girls can recite their times tables. What follows reduces the room to a strained silence.
“We interviewed some of the lovely hopefuls,” adds the reporter, a cruel expression playing across his lips. Cue a series of unflattering close- ups selectively chosen from footage shot over the course of the day A beauty queen smiles winningly into the camera “I want to meet people and travel,” she says.

A second beauty queen grins widely: “I want to meet people and travel.” A third and a fourth beauty queen form the same trite sentence in the same estuary English. The issue is the quality of workmanship, and the NHBC says problems are being constantly addressed. As Elizabeth Male at NHBC says: “Ideally, the NHBC would eventually put itself out of business as standards of housebuilding excel to the point that no insurance is necessary!”National House Building Council (NHBC): 01494 434477 Federation of Master Builders (FMB): 0171 242 7583. A Hush Falls backstage at Miss Essex 1997, as contestants in various stages of undress gather around an impressively large television screen.