Model Kate Moss says it hard growing up in Croydon

Speaking to Reader's Digest, Kate said she doesn't long for her home in south London where she spent most of her childhood.

The model, 47, said she and her friends would hang around Surrey Street Market looking for style inspiration, before she was famously discovered at the age of 14.

Kate said she "never had a plan" for the first days of her fashion career and soon had to learn to be "fussier" with her modelling jobs, after struggling to manage her hectic schedule.

Croydon High Street. Picture: Google street view

She said: "As far as growing up in Croydon went, it wasn't a time I look back on longingly, certainly not so much as the place itself.

"I was keen to get away.

"There is definitely a part of me that misses the innocence of it all, but not the place." 

Kate, who went to Riddlesdown High School, added that she didn't plan most parts of her early career and initially said yes to all the work she was offered, after dreaming of travelling the world as a child.

Kate Moss grew up in Croydon

Kate lived in Croydon with her mother Linda and father Peter, until they divorced when she was 13, before being famously scouted and recruited by Sarah Doukas, founder of Storm Management, in New York in 1988.

She had previously credited her Croydon upbringing with helping her to manage her vast fame.

In a 2015 interview for ShowStudio.com, she was asked if she found it hard being such a huge star in the fashion industry.

She said: "No, because I'm from Croydon and if you get above your station, somebody will f**king knock you back down."

Kate Moss was famously scouted when she was just 14 and living in Croydon with her family

The model went on to say: "You can't go around with airs and graces, at all and I would never want to.

"When I see people do that I think they look like c***s. I don't get it."

In an interview with the Telegraph, Kate admitted she'd probably still be living in Croydon working in a bar if she'd never been spotted by a model scout.

"I was, like, a child when I started. I was 14. If it hadn't happened, I don't know what would have happened to me. I would be in Croydon, working in a bar, probably," she said.