Gillian's £2,500 beauty bill

The latest series of Footballers' Wives has required Gillian Taylforth to get her kit off a number of times.

Keen to ensure that she looks her best for the show's six million viewers, the 48-year- old actress spends an astonishing £2,500 a year on her beauty treatments - not including her daily routine.

The former EastEnders star exercises three times a week and follows a rigorous diet.

She happily admits to being a 'total treatment junkie'.

While she denies having had Botox, she is happy to list the treatments that make her look good and feel good, including Reiki (where healing energy supposedly passes through the hands of the practitioner), nonsurgical facelifts and facials.

'I wear heavy make-up from 7am until 7pm when I'm filming, so by the end of the week my skin feels so clogged up it's good to have a thorough facial,' she said.

'I also have a special yearly laser treatment called N-Light. It's great for plumping up your skin. I

have regular Caci treatments, which are like mini, non-surgical facelifts. You need an intensive course of six and then one a month after that. Afterwards, my skin looks really firm.

'I also go for micro-peels - which aren't as scary as they sound. It's a process where tiny crystals are used to buff the skin and take off the dead bits that can leave you looking dull and tired.'

Mother- of- two Miss Taylforth also revealed in

Closer magazine how hard she worked to maintain her

8st 10lb figure. She eats only fruit or yoghurt f o r breakfast, shuns all desserts and avoids carbohydrates after 6pm.

'I do have to work hard to maintain my figure,' she said.

'So at least three times a week I put on a workout video or do some power walking on my running machine. I also use free weights to tone my arms.' Miss Taylforth joined Footballers' Wives as Jackie Pascoe two years ago. Her storylines have included having an affair with the married captain of her son's football team, which resulted in a hermaphrodite baby which her daughter-in-law passed off as her own. And in the most recent series an affair with the football team's new manager.

In real life her history has been almost as dramatic. She was forced to pay a newspaper £500,000 over a libel case after it claimed she had been caught performing a sex act on her boyfriend Geoff Knights on a slip road.

Her run- ins with Knights became infamous and at one point he was banned from going near her. But despite numerous break-ups, they are still together.

Talking of when she first started on Footballers' Wives, she recalled: 'I went home to Geoff and said, "I feel like the oldest, fattest person there. Just give me grapes and fruit and I won't eat anything else, ever". Geoff just told me to stop being so stupid.'