Piper, whose success mirrors that of former Sylvia Young graduates Denise Van Outen, Emma Bunton and Nicole and Natalie Appleton, writes of the other students: "They had perfect fringes and perfect brows and talked about iambic pentameters with their perfect vowels."

She adds: "My nonchalance for my own appearance soon changed. I noticed after about a week of being there that the girls just didn’t eat.

But Young told Heat magazine: "I am very worried about Billie. I really wonder if there’s something wrong, because to me, my staff and even Billie’s former classmates, this sounds nothing like the girl we knew, nor the experiences we know she had here."

She adds: "She made references to being a poor girl among lots of ’stinking rich’ kids, but 80% of the pupils in her class were given assistance from us to attend."

Billie still has therapy - Dec 20 2006
Singer-turned-actress Billie Piper has admitted she still has therapy when she’s "wobbling a bit".

The former Doctor Who babe, who has spoken openly about her battle with anorexia, told The Sun: "I did therapy for a while and occasionally I still do it if I feel I’m wobbling a bit."

When asked to explain "wobbling", the curvy 24-year-old said: "I’ll do it if I feel I’m losing control and want to start starving myself.

"Anorexia, like any addiction, never goes away - it’s always lurking in the shadows. One weak moment and you’ll be straight back."

Billie also sits down with a good book in a bid to beat her demons.

"I real a lot of self-help books, which sounds a bit odd but they are helpful," said the brunette, who once admitted she ate tissues when her eating disorder was at its worst.

"You don’t have to take it all on board, you just take what you want from it.

"I’ve been all right for about two years now. I feel like I’m slowly getting over it, but it takes ages."

Billie Piper ate tissues - Oct 2, 2020
Billie Piper ate tissues while in the grip of anorexia, she has revealed.

The Doctor Who star, 24, was a young pop star when she fell victim to the dangerous eating disorder.

"I’d cut everything out and see how long I could go before I had to eat," she is reported as saying in the Daily Mirror.

"At one point, I managed five days."

And rather than let food pass her lips, she attempted to stop her hunger pangs another way.

She said: "I read about a girl who ate tissues to fill herself up, so once I tried to force Kleenex down my throat.

"But not only was I still hungry, I nearly choked on a ball of tissue."

Billie came to fame at just 15 as the face of the magazine Smash Hits, before going on to have seven hits in the top five.

She has since reinvented herself as an in-demand actress and releases Growing Pains, her autobiography, later this month.

Actress Billie contemplated suicide - Sept 24, 2020
Actress Billie Piper has revealed that she once contemplated suicide.

The 24-year-old former Doctor Who star tells how she came close to taking an overdose when she was alone in a hotel room in Chicago in 1999. But at the last minute she sought her parents’ help instead, phoning them.

In her autobiography Growing Pains, Billie also reveals she was anorexic for two years, between the ages of 16, when she was a year into her brief pop career, and 18, when she married TV presenter Chris Evans.