Leilani Dowding (born 30 January 1980 in Bournemouth, Dorset, England) is a Page Three girl, glamour model, television celebrity, and former beauty queen. She is biracial, with an English father and a Filipina mother.

Biography

Early life

Dowding did well in school, earning eleven GCSEs and three A-levels. While studying for an economics degree at Royal Holloway, University of London, in Surrey, the nineteen-year-old entered and won the 1998 Miss Great Britain competition. In Hawaii later that year she became the first woman of Asian descent to represent Britain in the Miss Universe pageant. She is also related to Air Chief Marshal Lord Dowding.[citation needed]
Career

After her success in beauty pageants, Dowding dropped out of university to pursue a full-time modelling career. Although she had not originally considered topless modelling, she started appearing as a Page Three girl in The Sun newspaper in 1999. British tabloid newspapers and magazines have featured her regularly since then, both in topless and clothed glamour poses. Her younger sister Melanie ("Mel") Dowding also had a brief career as a Page Three girl, and the sisters have posed together for photoshoots.

Dowding has been a guest on various British television shows, firstly appearing on Jerry Springer style talk show 'Guilty' disputing her prospective career, modelling on the Big Breakfast and This Morning, acting on Dream Team and Mile High and appearing on The Weakest Link, Drop the Celebrity, Faking It and Celebrity Wrestlingand Celebrity Fear Factor. She has also enjoyed a season in pantomime as Tiger Lilly in Peter Pan.

She has travelled to Bosnia, Kosovo. Iraq and Cyprus on morale-boosting trips for British troops abroad.

Personal life

She dated defender Anwar Uddin in 2002. She has been engaged twice, both times to football players. Her first fiancé was former Wimbledon and Northern Ireland defender Mark Williams, who broke off their relationship in 2004 to date, and eventually marry, the pornographic actress Linsey Dawn McKenzie. Dowding later became engaged to the then Arsenal footballer Jérémie Aliadière, although the couple ended their relationship in October 2006.