The BBC documentary, to be aired today, used a hidden camera to follow a 32-year-old reporter as she went undercover in Milan for six months pretending to be an aspiring model.

Hundreds of young girls come to Milan each year looking for work and end up victimised by unscrupulous agents and public relations agencies that ply them with free drugs, send them to nightclubs and encourage them to have sex with ``clients'', according to the documentary.

Details of the BBC expose were printed in British newspaper The Mail on Sunday and were picked up by the Italian press on Monday.

Milan-based fashion houses and modelling agencies either brushed off the documentary as sensationalist, or blasted it as biased.

``This is an attack on our reputation and an attack on theworld of fashion,'' Brunella Casella, director of Elite's milan office, told Reuters. ``It's obvious that if you take an undercover camera into the city's night clubs you can come back with this type of story.''

Elite and Riccardo Gay, another top agency, keep close tabs on the models that work for them and forbid under-age models from going out at night, the agencies said. Smaller modelling agencies, however, might not have the same strict standards, they said.

``There could be some corrupt people in the business, just like there could be a few corrupt auto workers or pastry-makers for all I know,'' said Beppe Modenese, the honorary chairman of industry group Camera Della Moda told daily Corriere Della Sera. ``But these accusations sound false to me.''