Honey on a high as poll ranking soars

A West Clare woman has found herself close to the top of an international poll run by British lads’ magazine FHM.

Nearly 12,000 people have viewed the online profile of Kilkee’s Jacqui McInerney on the FHM website and on Wednesday, she was rated number six out of a total of 12,763 in its annual High Street Honeys competition. The winner of the competition gets their own FHM photoshoot and a cash prize.
The Clarecastle resident entered the competition about a month ago and has since found her popularity on the site skyrocketing.
“Once I signed up, I had to upload pictures. At first, you don’t have a ranking and the editor looks at your photographs and gives you one. That meant I started ranked at 166, which wasn’t too bad. After that, it is up to the general public and I must have jumped about 20 or 30 each day. This week, I got into the final 10,” she told The Clare Champion.
“I got involved because an acquaintance of mine had entered and I saw how well she was doing so I decided to just go for it. Now I’m number six. The final hundred get printed in FHM magazine but the top 10 get professional photoshoots and get the opportunity to work with FHM throughout the year,” she explained.
Jacqui counts modelling among her hobbies and would love the opportunity to raise her profile through the FHM competition.
“When I entered the competition at first, it was for fun but now I really want to win. I have a fan page on Facebook, just search for Jacqui McInerney for High Street Honey 2010, and all the details are there for people to vote. It improves my rankings more if people go through my pictures and give them the thumbs up. The competition goes on until the summer. It is actually quite hard to keep the interest going but I’m doing my best,” Jacqui said.
Last year, Jacqui made it into the Top 10 of the Miss Sunday World competition and took part in a photoshoot for that.
“This sort of thing has been great for my self-esteem. It is unreal the number of people who are putting up the link on their Facebook pages, people that I don’t know very well, and it is brilliant and pretty cool really. I have been a bit surprised by the support really, especially for this kind of competition. There has been no negative feedback on it. Even my mother and grandmother are cool with it and I was dreading telling them,” she revealed.
“Before this, I thought there would be a stigma about taking your clothes off in photos and because it is FHM and there are certain models that go topless in it, I thought there would be a certain perception out there but I have always said lingerie is as low as I will go,” Jacqui affirmed.
The mother of one was surprised by some of the messages she has received so far on her Facebook page.
“A guy I don’t even know added me as a friend and then asked me to a wedding in Belgium with him. Three men have asked me to go to weddings with them so far. I have about 500 more Facebook friends than I had before and over 600 people joined the fan page so that has to be good,” she said, adding that she politely declined the wedding invites.