Andrea Roche steps out of a dressing room, flicks her hair and gestures towards the crowd. It's a scene she has replicated on hundreds of catwalks, red carpets, launches and photo calls, but there are no flashbulbs awaiting her this time. She runs across the gravel of the Rockwell Rovers GAA club grounds towards the pitch alongside the football team she is leading in RTE's Celebrity Bainisteoir reality TV series, pumping her fist in the air in encouragement as the supporters cheer, a bottle of Lucozade Sport in hand. It's a Saturday afternoon, and the sun is shining down as comedian Kathryn Lynch's team face off against Roche's.

Roche is nervous, a common characteristic of hers. She walks up and down the sidelines throughout the match, putting her hand to her mouth when her team concede a point, jumping and clapping when they score one, placing her hand to her chest in a gesture of excitement and nervousness when the semi-final match goes down to the wire.

Before the era of Glenda Gilson, Katy French and Pippa O'Connor, you have Andrea Roche as Ireland's top model, in the Irish sense of the word – constantly in the papers, doing a lot of commercial work, being photographed as much for gossip as for promoting something. A top 10 finalist in Miss Universe over a decade ago, Roche has also earned her modelling stripes (if that's a fashion term one uses, which I'm sure it isn't) working across Europe, sharing catwalks with the top international models of that era.

Now? She's the beauty editor of VIP magazine, the director of the Miss Universe Ireland contest, a stylist, a contributor to Ireland AM, the face of Newbridge jewellery, wife of CityWest heir PJ Mansfield, the person who came up with the concept for the current RTE show The Model Agent and still a frequent face in the Irish tabloids and celebrity magazines that draw from a very small pool of talked-about-people.

Earlier in the week, she sits at the table of a Dublin city hotel looking a little apprehensive, tapping her shoes throughout the interview, a sign of nerves perhaps, or discomfort. She's seems exceedingly self-conscious and self-deprecating almost to the point of vulnerable. Sometimes it is endearing, sometimes her lack of confidence in herself is a little alarming. Above all, she's quite sweet, and funnier than she gives herself credit for.

I wonder what she thinks people make of her – the model constantly in the papers; the best friend to fellow model Katy French who collapsed a week after her 24th birthday party and died a few days later, allegedly from a drug overdose although the coroner's report has yet to see the light of day; the spouse of the millionaire husband?

"Sure you'd know that!" she says, when asked what her public perception is. "I don't know... I'd say a lot of people don't really think too much about it. I try not to care about that. What's the point? If you were thinking people didn't like you, it's no good going around think­ing about that. I try not to think about it at all."

It's tough interviewing someone who is used to having their quotes manipulated, and someone who is scared of saying the wrong thing. 'Embarrassed' is a word that comes up a lot. She was embarrassed at the start of Celebrity Bainisteoir because she "hadn't a clue. Hadn't. A. Clue" about Gaelic football. She was embarrassed shouting at the lads on the pitch ("shouting 'go on lads!' every few minutes, you run out of things to shout to keep them going! But then when I see someone like my mentor doing it, they say the same things over and over, but I just feel like a bit of an eejit.") She was embarrassed watching the programme back, "Me listening to my voice on TV? I'm nearly fit to watch it with the volume down. I didn't realise I had such a country accent, especially when I laugh and stuff, and when I get excited. That's embarrassing. I'm probably better with pictures and no sound – now people can put a sound to the picture," she sighs.

But you've achieved quite a lot, right? "What?!" she puts her head down, "I don't think I have, will you shut up!" she says, embarrassed.

You've had a successful career, no? "I've done alright, I think."

Is there any particular goal or project in the back of your mind you'd like to achieve or have a go of? "Emmm, let me see. See, I'm not very good at many things. I'm not particularly brilliant at any one thing, so I like to do bits of things. That's all I know, really, I've worked in the fashion industry since I was 19. That's what I love doing. I don't think I'd be very good at anything out of the fashion industry."

You're quite hard on yourself, aren't you? "No. That's just me being honest."

She goes silent and looks at the Dictaphone. "That thing is so intimidating. Good luck to you having to listen back to this whole interview!"

Roche is apprehensive about the interview. She doesn't really do these kinds of things, bar love-ins with the Sunday Independent or throwing lines to tabloid reporters. You'd imagine someone with a well-known face and a name to go with it wouldn't bat an eyelid at doing some press for a TV show, but Roche isn't like that.

She's not particularly chatty, waiting patiently for the next question, sometimes struggling with words or how to express herself, she doesn't seem very confident, which I remark upon. "I'm confident in ways. Say like this interview, I don't know you, you don't know me, so I wouldn't be fully myself or completely relaxed. Meeting people out and about, that's no problem, or chatting to people, no problem. But when there's a camera there and then you're talking about something you haven't a clue about, that's intimidating," she says, referring to Celebrity Bainisteoir. "It's just embarrassing, up and down the field. I'm still not fully comfortable with that."

She's also going through quite a tough time at the moment as her mother is being treated for cancer, something which has brought her down to earth, as these things tend to do, "My family is the most important thing in my life. That's the most important thing in anyone's life. My mum is sick, she's going through radiotherapy at the moment. Her getting cancer so young just made me reassess everything. You never expect it. For anyone, when you're sailing through life, I mean you hear so much about it, and I was always involved in different charities and stuff like that, but I never expected it because there was no cancer in the family at all," she trails off.

"So the thoughts I had when my mother was going through the chemo and everything else, the thoughts of not having her in my life again, it, it just makes you appreciate the important things in your life."

How is she doing? "She's wrecked now because chemo knocks the stuffing out of you. She thought the radiotherapy would be much easier on her, but she's so tired now all the time. She has four weeks of it left not. That's another reason I enjoy being down home so much now, not that I needed an excuse."

Her seriousness is a remarkable contrast to the flighty nature with which she's often described, darting in and out of clubs, travelling to the south of France and London as much as she can. I feel really silly thinking that I just want to hug her, this shy, uncomplicated, plain-speaking 32-year-old who is scared of losing her mother.

In between all this, she cooks, well she is "trying to learn to cook at the moment. All my friends can cook." What's she rustling up in the kitchen? "Basic food. Very basic. I've learned how to make lasagne – don't laugh at these now, because I knew nothing about cooking. Lasagne, shepherd's pie, salads, I know that's only mixing a few things together, but I actually didn't even know how to make a nice salad. What else? Oh, soup! Lisa Fitzpatrick taught me how to make a gorgeous pea soup."

I kind of get a ridiculous pleasure out of picturing the stylist Fitzpatrick and Roche causing mayhem in the kitchen, like that episode of Father Ted where Ted and Dougal are left to make a cup of tea and end up wrecking the gaff. That's kind of mean. Funny though. "It's really nice," oh right, yeah, the soup, "pasta, I could manage before, you know, bits and pieces."

Hmm, apart from pea soup and travelling, what else does Ms Roche do in her down time? "I read a lot as well." Oh, really? "Don't ask me what books I read!" Hmm. What books do you read? "Anything! Books that friends recommend, mostly." What are you reading at the moment? "I have a couple of books on the go. I'm not telling you because it's easier not to say, isn't it?"

Well, I suppose, although it kind of makes my job a bit... "when you say something, you know what I mean."

Ah, this is a woman clearly used to having her quotes taken out of context. "I'm reading, anyway, put it that way. A mix of books."

What was the last movie you saw? I ask as we get into a quick fire round of sorts. "Marley and Me" she answers straight away. Any good? "It's alright, not great." Are you a big dog person, then? "Yeah, I've two dogs, two Maltese dogs, they're cute." What are their names? She mock gasps at the invasion of privacy. "Snowy and Daisy – now will you shut up!"

I'm just asking! I exclaim, "Aha!" she says jokingly, as I look at my notebook, "you're running out of things to say now!" After the match a few days later, I send her a text message to which she replies, "thanks, I'm glad you got a sense of the passion I was talking about". Bless.