Naomi Campbell was frustrated at the way her private life was scrutinised at the start of her modelling career.

The 50-year-old supermodel's career exploded in the late 80s and 90s making her one of the most in-demand catwalk stars in the world.

Naomi accepted that interest in her would grow as she became more and more famous but she was unhappy at the prying into her life away from the fashion world.

In an extract from her upcoming book 'Naomi', she said: ''I'm not private about my work. I am private about my personal life, however, and it was hard when our private lives became the subject of such scrutiny. Who were we dating? Who were we meeting? Most of the time, the stories were a web of lies. I was dating someone very famous at the time and I started to understand why he'd become so protective of his privacy.''

Naomi along with her fashion megastar peers Linda Evangelista, Claudia Schiffer, Kate Moss, Cindy Crawford and Christy Turlington were dubbed 'The Big Six' due to their huge success.

The British icon admits she was unhappy to be dubbed a supermodel along with the other five as it only increased their celebrity status and interest in them across the globe.

She said: ''People had already started to use the word 'supermodel'. Everything we wore and every restaurant we went to was written about in the papers. It seemed weird to us that people should care. We couldn't walk down the street without people chasing us,'' she recalled. ''I remember we once went shopping in Rome and we couldn't get out of the store because there were so many fans. The police had to come and rescue us.

''We had no idea why that was happening.''