Picture Special: Cannock X Factor star Faye Bray - I was sacked for being too sexy

Nov 13 2011 Exclusive by Mike Lockley, Sunday Mercury

BLONDE bombshell Faye Bray, who lost her prison job after appearing on X Factor in saucy lingerie, last night admitted: “That pink basque cost me my job – a job I loved.”

But the former jail teacher – battered, bruised and defeated following a courtroom tussle with her employers over alleged unfair dismissal and sexual discrimination – has vowed to bounce back.

“I’d love to get into local politics,” said Faye, speaking at her Calf Heath home, near Wolverhampton. “I might even wear the basque when canvassing – it’s been a vote-winner before.”

The 30-year-old had taken Manchester College – which provides staff to the Prison Service – to an industrial tribunal after being sacked from her teaching role at Brinsford Young Offenders Institute.

The case spawned a raft of unwelcome headlines.

The Birmingham hearing was told of tattoos, websites featuring a whip-wielding Faye, see-through white trousers and her admiration for Katie Price. Throw in her sexy website and email address – barbieshagwell – and you had the stuff of tabloid newspaper dreams.

Faye, in black suit and spectacles, sat impassively while the dirt was dished in a crowded courtroom.

Her case was eventually thrown out on Friday.

“I’m raw,” she admitted to the Sunday Mercury, the flutter gone from her famed long-lashes.

“I knew all the crap was coming, but it still gets to you.

‘‘I’ve got three young daughters. It’s been vile.

“What hurt was, for me, it took three days before the stuff that really mattered came out – what I was like as a teacher.

“I loved that job and had a 100 per cent pass rate in my subjects – life skills, politics and literacy. That seems to have been buried beneath all the other stuff.

“The boys in prison showed me nothing but respect, more respect than I’ve received from pupils at some state schools I’ve worked at.

“I’d like to think I made them better people.”

The former Butlin’s Redcoat scanned the lurid headlines scattered on a coffee table and sighed.

“You know what? It doesn’t matter because I know I’m a good mother, I know I’ve got the support of my husband (millionaire Richard Bray), who has been fantastic and I know my family’s proud of me.”

It had been a rough ride in the courtroom, she admitted, but Faye gave as good as she got on the stand.

She rounded on claims one inmate spotted a tattoo on her thigh through see-through trousers.

She told the hearing: “I never wore see-through trousers. I think all the ladies in the room will agree we like to wear white trousers in the summer.

“He must have been staring pretty hard to see my tattoo – besides the tattoo is on my bum, not my thigh.”

Faye took the first teetering steps to her career downfall when appearing on X Factor in 2009.

The real-life Barbie – the doll’s name is tattooed on her wrist, one of seven pieces of skin art adorning the six foot blonde’s body – became an overnight internet sensation.