CATWALK'S QUEEN OF THE TANTRUMS 'LACKS FRANKNESS'

HER former assistant describes her as the supermodel from hell. Victoria
Beckham called her a complete cow. And yesterday Mr Justice Morland said
she lied on oath.

The tantrum queen of the catwalk might have won her case yesterday but it
has not improved her reputation.

Capricious, hot-tempered, impossible to deal with, and that is just her
friends talking, even Naomi Campbell was forced to admit during
cross-examination last month that her behaviour was notorious and that she
had a reputation for tantrums.

Yesterday the judge was even more blunt. "She has shown herself to be over
the years lacking in frankness and veracity with the media and manipulative
and selective in what she has chosen to reveal about herself. I am
satisfied that she lied on oath."

Piers Morgan, the Editor of The Mirror, is now keen to see Miss Campbell
back in the witness box on perjury charges after that damning rebuke.

Her startling witness box confession that she is a drug addict was also the
most graphic declaration yet that the fashion world operates in a blizzard
of cocaine.

The drug suppresses appetite but regular use makes users irritable and
paranoid. Miss Campbell's behaviour changed from awkward to ferociously
unpredictable.

Friends from her childhood and teenage years recall her as a sweet, quiet
and charming girl. But the court was played footage of Miss Campbell, as
supermodel, in full tantrum flight, tussling with a woman after she had
filmed her without permission.

Kate Moss, her fellow supermodel, partner in hedonistic crime, and another
recovering cocaine addict, said on the film: "You called her an ugly bitch
with the head of an alien." Pure Cambell.

Her entry into the world of fashion designers and model agents came when
she was only 15. Beth Boldt, a talent spotter for the model agency Elite,
saw Miss Campbell in Covent Garden. "Excuse me, you're beautiful," she
said. "Have you ever thought of modelling?" Before long she was earning
AUKP1 million a year and was beginning to find cocaine irresistible. It was
to change her into a sharp-tongued prima donna.

Robert de Niro, another former lover, called her "an exhausting woman" .
She became notorious for her offensive language. She was arrested for
allegedly assaulting her personal assistant Georgina Galanis.

In 1993, her agency dropped her, although it later took her back. John
Casablancas, of Elite, called her manipulative, scheming, rude. "You cannot
imagine the pleasure I had in sacking her. She was odious."

Now she is in therapy and attending anger management classes. But Michael
Gross, author of Model: The Ugly Business of Beautiful Women, said
yesterday: "Models have been taking drugs since the 1920s and they always
will. The only thing that changes is the substance. It's like fashion."