Lucy Masoud made a few headlines when she took part in Channel 4 reality show Shipwrecked 2, but now she's learning to write the news.

She has moved to Kemp Town, Brighton, to take a one-year journalism course at City College.

When Lucy applied to be shipwrecked on a sun-drenched South Pacific island, she envisaged more than two months away from the strains of daily life.

But as viewers of Shipwrecked 2 on Channel 4 will recall, what she got was a daily struggle for food that saw her lose more than 2st in weight.

Lucy, then a politics student, was stranded with 15 strangers and little more than a few sacks of rice and a case of corned beef.

Not the most appealing of prospects, especially for a vegetarian, even though the location was an island off Tonga.

Lucy, 24, said: "At the time I was studying at Greenwich University and the summer holidays were looming. I didn't want to get the usual student job and heard about people being recruited for Shipwrecked 2.

"I didn't know that much about it but I thought it would be an interesting experience.

"I applied because I thought it would be a free holiday and a bit of a giggle. And I knew it would be more exciting than the average student summer job."

Lucy, who beat about 100,000 other applicants to be selected for the show, starred in the programme, which was filmed between August 15 and November 1, 2000.

She had to fill in an application form and make a video about why she wanted to take part.

A typical day for Lucy would be to get up at about 7am when it was too light to sleep any longer. The group had built a shelter out of poles and bamboo leaves, which they slept under in their sleeping bags.

They would then make a fire for hot water and usually have fruit for breakfast.

Lucy said: "We would usually just mill about the island or lie on the beach. There would always be plenty of chat and gossip."

The group would cook lunch at about midday - they were given rice and some tinned provisions, such as beetroot, tomatoes or corned beef.

In the afternoon it was back to lounging on the beach before dinner.

Lucy said: "It was quite hard finding things to eat because I'm a vegetarian. We were given rice, corned beef and tinned tomatoes to eat. There was a lettuce patch but not much else."

Sometimes it all got too much for Lucy, who resorted to desperate measures to supplement her diet.

She said: "One night a few of us were so hungry we broke into the crew camp and stole some muffins. But I basically lived on rice for ten weeks."

Lucy said she found it hard to return to normal life after her Shipwrecked 2 experience.

She said: "The programme was shown in January. Sometimes I'd come home from college and my new flatmates would be sitting around and watching it on the TV. But I couldn't bear to watch. It made me cringe."