Page 3 Profile: Marina Pepper, activist

Marina Pepper, activist (Rex Features)

One of those tree-hugger people?

Now now, never judge a book by its cover. Marina has had an astoundingly varied career, veering through politics, glamour modelling, journalism and acting – and now she’s an activist.

What’s got her riled?

Fracking. Wearing a T-Shirt emblazoned with “Don’t Frack My Future”, four policeman had to forcibly remove her from the path of a lorry delivering drilling equipment to the West Sussex village of Balcombe, where protesters are trying to prevent the controversial method of mining for gas and oil.

Oh Marina, what would your mother say?

She’d be proud . Brought up by hippies (her mum was a witch), Marina had a nomadic childhood, travelling around rural Norfolk, laying her head wherever the fancy took her and her family. Spending her teenage years travelling around Europe, she ended up on a tiny island off the southern tip of Ireland called Cape Clear where she worked for a time as a goat farmer.

How idyllic!

But it wasn’t to last, oh no. She met a boy – PR guru Matthew Freud – moved to London and got involved in the grubby worlds of politics and page three, for which she started modelling, aged 17, to pay her way.

Fascinating. What next?

Bigger things beckoned. She started acting, playing Priscilla Presley in a stage production about Elvis, and dated a certain Daniel Craig, before finding her way into journalism.

Oh drats, it was all going so well...

Never fear, she was soon back in politics as a Liberal Democrat councillor, while also becoming a pagan witch. She’s something of the expert on the topic, having penned a handful of guides including Spells for Teenage Witches and Spells for Cats.

Can’t she just cast a spell on these frackers?

The protests have been dubbed The Battle of Balcombe and the likes of Bianca Jagger and Natalie Rae Hynde, daughter of Chrissie Hynde and Ray Davis, have waded in. Good fracking luck to them, we say.