The writer Quentin Crisp spent the war years as an artist’s model at Derby School of Art. He described the job as “like being a civil servant, except that you are naked”.

Cherie Blair sat for the painter Euan Uglow while she was a trainee barrister. When she and her husband moved into public life, Uglow judiciously decided to avoid exhibiting Striding Nude, Blue Dress. It reappeared in 2006, six years after his death. Her profile is distinguishable but the painting remains unfinished.

Kate Moss was depicted reclining naked on a bed in Lucien Freud’s Naked Portrait 2002 while she was pregnant. The sitting was arranged after the model revealed in an interview that posing for Freud was one of her few remaining ambitions.

A retired art teacher was shocked in 2003 when she found a sketch she had made decades earlier and realised it was Sean Connery, aged 22 and in a loincloth. “When he modelled there were always lots of girls in the classes,” she said.

Source: Times database (ed

Not many people know that Charlton Heston, the actor, was also a nude model in his youth.

It's probably physically demanding to be still for so long, especially if the pose is awkward.

<Well, I ain't taking my clothes off!>

Thanks, mick!

''Come forth unabashed
Come out unbuttoned
Bury belligerence
Resurrect frolic
Only through body can
you clasp the divine
Only through body can
you dance with the god
In every man’s hand
the gift of compassion
In every man’s hand
the beloved connection
Trust one another
or drown.''
James Broughton