What is the price of fame? Apparently it is £189. SAMANTHA PARKER interviews one mother who avoided being scammed when she took her two children to a casting day last weekend

SOBBING into his mother’s coat seven-year-old Charlie believes he is ugly.

He wants to know why the ladies with the cameras don’t want to take his picture anymore.

At the same time as trying to console her son, Rachel Johnston breathes a sigh of relief. She narrowly escaped being scammed.

After seeing an advertisement from a casting agency, Models Management UK, Rachel had decided to take her two young children down to the Ramada hotel in Christleton Road, Chester, on Saturday to see if they had the X-factor.

What she didn’t know was that Models Management would take everyone who turned up across the two days on to their books if they agreed to pay an up-front fee of £189.

Rachel said: “I decided to take my 15 month-old daughter Paige and my seven-year-old son Charlie to the casting session.

“I thought it would be great if they got through to make some extra money and get them noticed.

“When the girls said they wanted to take both of them on to the books I was delighted. I was a bit shocked when they asked me for £189 per child but assumed that was how it was done.

“I rang my mother-in-law who agreed to pay the money. I told the women from the agency that I would have to wait for her to arrive with the money. They seemed to get agitated so I decided to wait outside.”

That was when she met freelance photographer Andy Smith and his partner Nikki who explained to Rachel that it was a scam and showed her websites linked to the agency who operate under various names.

Andy, who works in North Wales, saw the advert and realised they were the same people who had taken £189 from his partner who never heard from the company again.

So he went with his partner to the Ramada in Chester, armed with the website warnings and the work of actor Clive Hurst, a former Blacon resident, who has been campaigning tirelessly at a national level against events such as the one which took place on Saturday.

Rachel, who then tried to convince other mothers to back out, added: “They apparently take your money on the promise of work and then never actively look for work for you and they can get away with it.

“When I confronted the agency they denied everything and, because I was making a scene, tried to get me to leave. That’s when Charlie started crying because he thought they didn’t think he was good enough, that he was ugly.”

The company and its many aliases have been the subject of many national newspaper investigations.

The Chronicle tried several times to ring Models Management UK on the number printed on their advert but no one answered. The company does not appear to have a website.