Police could charge Miss Clean

Police may bring charges against TV presenter Kim Woodburn after she admitted secretly burying her stillborn baby in a park 40 years ago.

Mrs Woodburn - star of Channel 4's How Clean Is Your House? - makes the revelation in her autobiography, which is about to be published.

She tells how, as a frightened and confused 23-year-old, she gave birth to the premature and stillborn boy alone in her flat, and was too embarrassed to seek medical help.

The following night, she went to a nearby park in Liverpool and buried the child, with tears streaming down her face. She then kept the episode secret.

It is a criminal offence to conceal the birth of a baby. Secretly burying or disposing of a body - whether the child was stillborn or died soon after birth - is punishable by up to two years in jail. A handful of people are prosecuted each year under the 1861 Offences Against the Person Act.

Merseyside Police said yesterday officers were examining Mrs Woodburn's account - which appeared in a serialisation in the Mail on Sunday - although no formal inquiry had been launched.

A spokesman said: 'We will decide what action is necessary in due course.'

Mrs Woodburn's autobiography, entitled Unbeaten, tells how she gave birth to the baby in February 1966 when she was only five months' pregnant.

'The poor little soul was so beautiful. In my confused state, I still felt this was my sole responsibility. I had never felt so wretched in my life,' she writes. She had recently split up with the father, who is not named in the book, after telling him she was pregnant.

Having given birth, she laid the baby in a bowl next to her bed and went to sleep. The following day, desperate for normality, she went to her job at a store.

On her return, she went to see two friends and told them what had happened. That night, she went to the park and dug a hole in a secluded spot.