In Australia it was a case of one newspaper out reporting another on fashion news.

On Wednesday the Sydney Morning Herald published a piece questioning why Gemma Ward was not in Milan for fashion week. They reasoned that it was “fuelling speculation about just what might have kept her away from the estimated five-figure per show earnings.”

The backstage gossip at Burberry was that she had been dropped because she had put on weight. A Burberry spokeswoman declined to comment but Ward’s friend, the British model, Lily Donaldson, said Ward was absent because “she has things to do”. Other reports had Ward acting in a horror film called Strangers.

Seriously, does everything have to be focused on how much a model weighs and if she eats these days?

As it turns out, according to the Australian newspaper, that Ward was in America to work alongside Liv Tyler for her film debut with The Strangers.

The world No. 2 catwalk model has also been linked to an upcoming Australian movie, The Black Balloon, which is due to star Toni Collette.

Burberry creative director Christopher Bailey, who chose Ward to front the label during Kate Moss’s spell in the sin-bin last summer, said he had begged her to lead his Milan parade. “I couldn’t have gotten on my knees more,” Mr Bailey said yesterday. “She had something very important going on in LA. I was devastated.”

It was probably a good thing that Ward missed the Milan shows, as there have been more than a handful of PETA protesters protesting at the Burberry Prorsum and Roberto Cavalli.