From Catwalk to Dustcart: Naomi Pays Her Dues ; NEWS

Mar 20, 03:01 AM

Current Headlines: By David Usborne

You cannot take the model out of Naomi Campbell even if the catwalk is a 100-yard driveway to a smelly dustcart garage where her duties for the day included mopping floors and scrubbing lavatory bowls.

Campbell, in other words, did more than just report to the Manhattan District 3 Sanitation Garage on the Hudson River at 8 am yesterday to begin her community service, after pleading guilty in January to striking a former maid with a mobile phone. She made a splashy, sashaying and defiant entrance.

The photo sequence of Campbell alighting from her black Cadillac SUV was worthy of any fashion spread. She had sunglasses, a baker's- boy cap, tailored black coat that flared at the knee over brown trousers and, finally, a pair of stiletto, lace-up suede and leather boots by Christian Louboutin. The final and perfect touch: a pair of scuffed workman's boots slung over one shoulder. Call it "Working- Stiff Chic".

So much trouble for so short a walk. (But isn't that what models do?) Inside, Campbell was issued with protective glasses, a most unflattering yellow fluorescent vest, mop, broom and a plastic wheelie bin. Off with the stilettos, on with the boots.

But all of that was back stage, thanks to Campbell's lawyers. They had seen what happened last year to Boy George, the former Culture Club frontman, when he had come to the same garage similarly to complete five days of community service. (His crime: falsely reporting a burglary in his New York apartment and leaving cocaine lying about when the cops showed up.)

Poor George - real name George O'Dowd - was at first sent out with a street-sweeping gang only to be swept up himself in the paparazzi swarm that inevitably ensued. There will be no such humiliation for Campbell, who will be confined inside the garage, where the likes of us cannot see her. Not that she got everything she wanted. She reportedly asked that she not be obliged to do the 100-yard walk of shame and be allowed in a side door. She also asked that the yellow vest be delivered to her home so she could have it cleaned. "This is not a club," was the frosty response of the sanitation chief, Albert Durrell.

Nor will her days in the garage be easy. She has a 10-minute morning coffee break, an hour for lunch, and 15 minutes in the afternoon, along with three other offenders serving community service sentences.

All of this because of a particularly bad hair day in her apartment at 500 Park Avenue, when Campbell could not find her favourite jeans and her maid, Ana Scolavino, was the obvious culprit. Her injuries required five stitches. Campbell, 36, was also ordered to pay the maid's medical expenses - she should be able to manage the $363 ([pound]187)- and attend a two-day anger management course this weekend.

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