Just before meeting the main man a small group of Ralph Lauren's staff asked Marshall to introduce himself and tell them something interesting about his life.

The conversation went like this:

Rory: "Hello, my name's Rory Marshall, I live in a small Yorkshire town called Ilkley where I live in a little house which was actually once owned by Enid Blyton."

Staff: "Wow! Gee! That's amazing!! Enid Blyton."

Rory: "Do you know who Enid Blyton is?"

Staff: "Er, no."

Fortunately they did know a potential icon when they saw one and Marshall, 29, landed himself just about the top gig a model can get – the new face of Polo.

Alongside fronting campaigns for Calvin Klein or Georgio Armani it doesn't get much bigger than that.

And so with his chiselled good looks, last year he found himself filming in the middle of a desert.

To top it off he was being snapped by world-famous fashion photographer Bruce Weber – the man who helped launch the careers of Isobella Rossellini, Mark Wahlberg and Kate Moss.

As a result Marshall's image can now be seen on billboards, magazines, theatre and TV screens around the globe. Not bad for a lad from Ilkley whose modelling career was launched by our very own Richard and Judy.

"I'd honestly never thought of myself as anything special, at school I wasn't one of those guys who always got loads of girls or anything like that. Just run of the mill really," he said. "Then my mum sent my picture into This Morning when they launched their model search competition.

Catwalk

"I'd have rather died than send it in myself and I'd never really considered modelling before then, I didn't even think it was something you could actually make a living out of.

"I was 21 and just finishing university and next thing you know I've won this competition and I'm flying out to Milan to do a catwalk show."

Marshall's prize was a contract with the elite agency Select who supply models to the biggest and best in the business.

He's landed contracts with everything from French Connection to Lacoste and Calvin Klein and jetted around the globe with his work.

So is it as great a lifestyle as we'd all imagine it to be?

"There are great parts but it can actually be quite a lonely job in a way," he said. "When you were a kid you used to get excited about going to an airport and going abroad.

"But when you have to do it for your work it means getting up at ridiculous o'clock dragging yourself on a plane and even if you're in a beautiful place you rarely get much time to enjoy it.

"And people think it's this wild lifestyle of parties and women and actually more often than not it just ends up with you and some of the other lads just sitting up drinking like anyone else would."

Which goes some way towards explaining why Marshall, who has lived in Ilkley from the age of five and went to the local grammar school, still prefers to live in the Yorkshire town.

"It's familiarity and security," he said.