Kelly Brook could not be any more sorry. Earlier today she neglected to turn up for our planned breakfast at Hollywood's A-list hotel The Chateau Marmont and she appears genuinely mortified. Words are spilling into each other about late flights, jet lag and film schedules as she charges through the details at breakneck speed.

It would all be very LA but for one solid reason: she actually IS sorry. This isn't some spoiled mansion-dwelling, publicist-berating, assistant-sacking nightmare; this is Our Kelly. Big Breakfast-hosting, Loaded-posing, MTV-fronting Rochester girl-turned-hot-export Kelly, and when she says she';s sorry, she actually appears to be just that.

"I'm sooooooo sorry," she says once again just in case I didn't quite get it. "Did you wait long? Let me get the drinks... really, let me."

I was prepared to be frosty and cool about my wasted morning, but frankly she's far too nice to even think about it. She may have gone to LA, but she's not gone LA, despite her recently purchased Spanish-style home in the Hollywood Hills, her penchant for organic food, her love of Pilates or her movie star boyfriend Jason Statham.

For starters, she can barely navigate the LA-style serving of hot chocolate that's been brought to the table in a chic but mystifying handle-free cup. Kelly gamely tries drinking it with a spoon.

"This is the difference in LA - you get hot chocolate in a bowl! It's like soup!" she laughs.

Kelly Brook laughs a lot and it's easy to see why. Rewind just a handful of years and she was written off as the nation's favourite morning show's least-favourite host. Now she's got homes in London and LA and a filming and travel schedule so hectic she forgets her appointments.

She's filmed the sci-fi thriller Absolon; four episodes of the WB's Smallville, a telepic for ABC and Disney called Romy and Michelle: Behind The Velvet Rope; a cameo in the Italian Job; and a lead in the independent movie School For Seduction, currently filming in Tyneside. Two things she won't be appearing in, however, are Sex and the City and Mission Impossible 3, despite rumours to the contrary.

"I was never doing those shows," she says. "It's really annoying that they write that as it's so far beyond what I can even reach right now. I'm just happy doing my little TV shows."

Those "little TV shows", meanwhile, are enough to send Kelly spinning all over the globe.

"My work takes me everywhere," she explains. "I can spend four months in Canada, then a couple of months in London, then go to Paris to see Jason for a month or so. London and LA are our bases but we don't spend much time in either of them, to be honest."

When Kelly and Jason first moved to Los Angeles they stayed with Vinnie Jones, and like many Brit ex-pats quickly created a little piece of London in the sun.

"He had a great big mansion in Beverly Hills and I think there were about 15 of us staying there at one point, mainly English. It was like a half-way house and we got to meet so many interesting characters and we just kept in contact with them. It was so normal: we'd be sitting round the pool and it was 100 degrees and his mum would come out and go 'do you want a cup of tea?'.

"But it's just so gorgeous here, isn't it? I love the weather and the food; just so many little things. Though I miss the sense of humour of English people. Here you make a joke and Americans go 'really, my God?'. They don't get sarcasm, and I miss the TV and music - I love cheesy pop. Mainly, though, I miss my family and my friends; I ring my granny and mum all the time."

Though rumours of Jason and Kelly's newer high-profile celeb chums - everyone from Madonna to Charlize Theron and Liz Hurley - have been constant tabloid fodder.

"It's not really true to be honest," she says. "Jason works with these people and I befriend them because I go visit him on set and they invite us round to their houses for dinner. Then a couple of months after the film's wrapped you never hear from them again. They're like your best friends for five minutes. And they're all normal people at the end of the day."

Even Madonna?

"Everyone is. We all shower and go to the toilet: it's just people's perceptions of you that change. Though I'd love to meet some of the older movie stars, like Sophia Loren, and if Marilyn Monroe was still alive. There was an element of mystery about them. Now we see our stars out shopping in the supermarket in magazines with their knickers hanging out of the trousers. Back then they were never allowed to be seen like that.

"Now everyone's a celebrity and it's really tacky; there's nothing classy about being famous any more, it's just gross."

Kelly herself has been a regular fixture of the gossip weeklies, but tries her best to look her best when she knows the photographers will be out.

"I have to avoid anything strappy; basically anything I can't wear a bra with. It's important for a woman to have good structure - it's like the foundations of a house. Get the structure right and you can just build on top. I'm quite curvaceous so I have to wear stuff that emphasises my waist otherwise with the size of my hips and my boobs everything makes me look really big."

Any fashion regrets?

"Oh yeah; I think the Snatch premiere was quite a questionable one. (Where Kelly wore an extremely revealing Julian Macdonald dress). If I'm uncomfortable I know it must look good as it's going to be sucking me in somewhere or showing something that's never been shown before. The reality hit me the next day. That's when I thought 'fuck, why did I do that?' Generally I'm happiest in a jeans skirt and T-shirt. And Jason, like any man, just doesn't care what I'm wearing."

Talking of Jason, it's been five years now - any wedding plans?

"Oh no - if I married him he'd stop buying me presents and trying hard!" she laughs again. "And he'd get really fat because he'd think he's got me now. I need to keep him on his toes - he's getting at that age (35) where he could tip over.

"I find marriage really old fashioned anyway; I don't subscribe to systems I don't believe in. I don't go to church and he doesn't have to love me till he dies. I'd much prefer it if he loves me for as long as he wants to love me."

Which frankly could be a rather long time.