Big Brother Series 2

Penny

Penny, real name Lisa Ellis, has got herself in trouble with her headmistress. Ms Cauther Tooley of the Sarah Bonnell School in East London was not at all amused when she she saw pictures of Penny's naked body when her towel slipped as she got out of the shower. Ms Cauther considers that the sight of her unclothed body as a breach of the code of conduct and said Penny might well be sacked. The pictures were broadcast on E4 and the internet.

Miss Ellis, 33, a 6ft blonde known as Penny to her fellow contestants and pupils, has a reputation for eccentricity. She has already kissed one male contestant and expressed her willingness to have sex live on television to win the �70,000 prize. Allowing her towel to slip once may have been an accident but the poetry-reading born-again Christian stripped off at 10am and again at 4.15pm on Monday.

The show�s producers placed an apology on the screen 15 minutes after the morning incident. They were not, however, apologetic about the four million viewing audience attracted on Monday night.

Cauthar Tooley, headmistress of Sarah Bonnell School, a 1,200-pupil all-girl comprehensive founded in 1769, said that Ms Ellis would be out of a job if she persisted with her behaviour. Cosseted inside the Big Brother house, Miss Ellis knows nothing of the warning. Miss Tooley said: "If she wants to behave in a lewd way she knows that she will have terminated her contract. I feared that contestants would be encouraged to behave in a sexually overt manner and I warned her about this before she entered the house. I believed that she valued her position and would not do anything like this. Perhaps it was an accident."

Miss Tooley will discuss Miss Ellis�s position with school governors and the Newham Local Education Authority when the teacher leaves the Big Brother house. The headmistress said that she had allowed Ms Ellis to take part, on unpaid leave, to advance her career. "I know she is very interested in the theatre and acting and it could give her options to get into the theatre," she said. "It may well lead to job offers which may result in her leaving the school."

Miss Tooley was seeking to recruit South African teachers to cover shortages when she allowed Miss Ellis to take up to ten weeks off. A supply teacher has been hired to cover for her at an estimated cost of up to �8,000.

Big Brother producers are delighted with Penny, described as a man-eater by a friend. She has already kissed one housemate, Paul Clarke, 25, and told friends that she was willing to have sex in front of the cameras. The second series of the show has seen the introduction of a whirlpool bath and a 'love shack' in the garden to encourage sex.

The Sarah Bonnell school was one of the first all-girl schools and was established by Sarah Bonnell, a wealthy benefactress, to give working-class girls an education. It was visited by the Prince of Wales two years ago. All the pupils, aged 11 to 16, wear school uniform. They achieved a 53 per cent pass rate of A-to-C grades at GCSE level last year.