The dog girl? Ashleigh's all woman now! A year after their big win,

Red carpet treatment: Ashleigh has become a sensation in her own right

Nearly a year on from Ashleigh and Pudsey’s Britain’s Got Talent victory and there have been enough ‘pinch me’ moments to turn a girl black and blue.
Flying to LA with Simon Cowell on his private jet... being stopped by Gary Barlow for a photograph... chatting to Morgan Freeman on the Jay Leno show... appearing on the Royal Variety Show. And they are presently in rehearsals for their first feature film. Those ‘pinch me’ moments just go on and on.
Ashleigh Butler’s life has turned on a sixpence. And Pudsey’s has, too. Fast becoming one of the most famous dogs on the planet, he can no longer go for his usual walks in public so he now has a dog treadmill at home or exercises in a private field. There’s also a bodyguard and an expensive insurance policy. 
Ashleigh, mindful of Pudsey’s safety, won’t reveal how much he’s worth but let’s just say the £16-a-month payments she made before winning Britain’s Got Talent have rocketed.
And as Britain’s Got Talent 2013 kicks off tomorrow it seems like a good time to rewind.
This time, 12 months ago, Ashleigh was a 16-year-old schoolgirl who didn’t have a clue what she was going to do with her life.
She was, by her own admission, pretty useless at her academic work and had just been let go by the high street store Argos after failing to impress during a Christmas holiday job.
‘My grades weren’t the best. I was never really the academic type and didn’t know what I wanted to do after I left school so Britain’s Got Talent was a real life-saver for me,’ she says.
She hasn’t stopped working and has already doubled her £500,000 winnings. She’s a presenter of the CBBC show Who Let The Dogs Out And About? and is training Pudsey for their first feature film, due out at Christmas. Pudsey, meanwhile, made his film debut with Hugh Bonneville in the TV version of David Walliams’ book Mr Stink At Christmas.

This time, 12 months ago, Ashleigh was a 16-year-old schoolgirl who didn¿t have a clue what she was going to do with her life

‘Since winning Britain’s Got Talent everything’s happened so quickly,’ she says. ‘I went from being one out of 70,000 or so contestants to having my own management and being asked to go over to the U.S.
‘I couldn’t take it all in.
‘The first week after BGT we were doing chat shows. I was in the ITV studios walking along the corridor and Gary Barlow stopped me and said, “Can I have a picture?” I thought, “Oh my God, Gary Barlow asked me for a picture.”
‘Doing the Jay Leno show in the U.S. was a pinch me moment because I was sitting next to Morgan Freeman and in the ad break he turned to me and started talking.
‘I was thinking: “Oh my God! Morgan Freeman is talking to me”.’

Ashleigh could not believe that she had won the show, and struggled to speak after the announcement

Ashleigh says ‘Oh my God’ a lot and who can blame her?
She’s now on first-name terms with celebrities she’d only read about a year ago: Simon (Cowell), David (Walliams) and Amanda (Holden). Oh, and Hugh (Bonneville).
Mr Stink was Pudsey’s first job alone — though his offspring, four-year-old son Dillon and a daughter Crumpet, doubled for their dad.
‘It was very different to everything else because it was only Pudsey. He had to go off with Hugh and sit with him. He couldn’t look at me or be with me. Hugh had bits of ham and cheese stuffed down his gloves to get Pudsey to stay with him, so he associated Hugh with food.
‘On the last day of filming I was just behind the camera when they said, “Cut”. I called Pudsey and he was walking towards me when Hugh began walking in the opposite direction. Pudsey turned and went with him. That was, Oh my God, a heart-breaking moment.’ I’m sure.

Friends in high places! Queen Elizabeth II greets Ashleigh and her performing dog Pudsey after the Royal Variety Performance

Ashleigh and Pudsey have been inseparable since she was given him on her 11th birthday. She’s never had a proper boyfriend and has little time for the stuff of an average teenager’s life, taken up, as she is, with her dog. At school, she says, she was never in the popular gang.
‘I used to hear them saying: “Oh, there’s dog girl, all she ever does is hang around with her dogs”,’ says Ashleigh. ‘But when I got home if I was down or anything like that, Pudsey knew and he’d come up and sit next to me. And I know when he doesn’t want to do something or he’s not himself or feeling right. The hardest thing I’ve found is protecting him from other people.
‘Everywhere we go everybody wants a trick. When we landed in Los Angeles with Simon the immigration officer said: “I think we need to see something from Pudsey to make sure it’s him.” Simon said, “Yeah, do the walking on his back legs thing.” So I was in this room with Simon Cowell and all his people doing the walking on his back legs thing with Pudsey.’
She lights up at the memory.
‘What does upset me a little bit though is that no one asks to stroke him — they just do it. He’s not confident around people and I don’t want him to be in a situation he doesn’t feel comfortable in.
‘So when we do a book signing [Pudsey has released his ‘autobi-dog-raphy’] I do ask people not to stroke him. I think people think because they voted for us and they’ve seen us on the telly they have a right to stroke him.’
Or perhaps because he’s so, well, cute. Ashleigh, you see, tells me this after I’ve been introduced to Pudsey and yup, stroked him.

Ashleigh and Pudsey have been inseparable since she was given him on her 11th birthday

Oops. ‘No, it’s fine,’ she says.
But it’s not just Pudsey people are interested in. Ashleigh had to come out of her shell when she performed as Dick Whittington’s girlfriend Alice Fitzwarren in an eight-week panto last Christmas.
‘I hide behind Pudsey,’ says Ashleigh. ‘So this was a big step for me. I was singing and dancing —something I’d never been confident about. I think it’s the most nervous I’d been because I was out there more than Pudsey.’
In the opening titles sequence of the new Britain’s Got Talent series, Ashleigh and Pudsey make a surprise appearance in a BGT flashmob which stuns shoppers in London’s Covent Garden, (See box below). It’s clear that she has turned into a beautiful young woman.
But she remains painfully shy. ‘I feel safe with Pudsey,’ she explains. ‘Dogs don’t talk back.’
Born and growing up in Wellingborough, Northamptonshire, dogs have always been part of her life. Her mother, Penny, shows dogs and, by the age of five, Ashleigh was training dogs too.
 ‘As soon as we started training Pudsey, my mum said, “You know he’s quite special. If you put in the effort he could be an amazing dog”.’ Ashleigh did, and soon they represented Britain in agility classes.

Despite all her success, she remains painfully shy. 'I feel safe with Pudsey,' she explains. 'Dogs don't talk back.'

‘My confidence with dogs began to grow,’ she says. ‘At school I’d always think everybody was better than me at everything. I liked drama but I’d watch other people and think: “Oh, they’re better than me”. And I was always at the bottom of the class, particularly in maths and science. I used to dread exam results day.
‘Even if I thought I’d done well in an exam, I’d get the result and I’d think “Oh, maybe not.”
‘But I knew nobody else could do what I could do with my dogs because I’d been doing it my whole life. I’d watch people with their dogs in agility classes and think: “I want to be like that. I want to be the top.
‘I want people to look at me and say, “Oh my God, that’s amazing. Look what she’s done with her dogs.” So I set a goal. I wanted to get up to champion level. It took a while, but I got there.’
Ashleigh would be up at 5am every day to work with Pudsey. There was little time for parties or friends.
‘I suppose I was weird because I spent my weekends with dogs — in my muddy clothes with my hair scraped back,’ says Ashleigh.
‘It was never ever glamorous. I didn’t really care about that side. It was always about me and Pudsey.
‘When we reached the top in agility we went into canine freestyle then we reached the top of that. I’m one of those people who once I set my mind to something I have to do it.

Ashleigh (with Pudsey) never expected to win the show that has propelled her to fame and fortune