A fortnight ago, I did a TV commercial for one of the biggest online poker operators in the UK. Reading up about it now, I've realised what a big fish it is, that superlative filling me with a grim feeling - like I’ve woken up hung-over. I have partaken in the endorsement of a favourite gambling casino. Foo yuk.

I signed something called a ‘Talent Release Form’: an explicit enough name somehow sugarcoated at first glance. To my inexperienced eye, it was flattering. Talent. The term now occurs to me as rather unspecific and thus all encompassing; after all, my whole body and my whole being were involved. In this industry one’s appearance and one’s ability are inextricably linked, but would I feel different signing the same form if it was just my hands, just my legs? Just what bit of my talent are we talking about in particular? I am momentarily reminded of how at school there was a phase where that word got annoyingly overused as slang for 'attractive': 'She is talented' [smirk]. What talent was I going to release?

The banter on set and the jokey content of the shoot (I had to switch from a nice, composed girl ready for a night out to a laddish, burger-devouring monster in seven seconds flat), distracted from the moral dubiousness of the activity, but, of course, the commercial reality that my artistic skill was being used to dubious ends was inescapable. That this whole exercise was about selling – manipulating image for the sole effect of persuading people to buy into gambling, of all things, was hard to swallow. My inordinately large pay cheque both eases and aggravates.

I rationalise to myself (for comfort) that in our respective fields we all have to navigate murky territory and court commercialism. Having done that job, I don’t feel proud, I don’t even feel very responsible. And unlike the director, the cameraman, the make up artists and the runners whose work on that ad is anonymous, I stand to lose face, quite literally (I’m the one who’ll appear on telly). So taking on this (less than ethical) job was not a private matter for me. Maybe that’s why I’ve been so vocal about it to all my friends and family. Am I looking for absolution? Oh Flora, what melodrama! Regardless questions about credibility have preoccupied me since doing it: What if I teach one day and my pupils recognise me from that? Or my old teachers recognise me? Yes, I really have pondered how disapproving or disappointed they might be. The immortal words of Jane Austen loom: ‘my good opinion once lost is lost forever’.

My precious self-image aside, the issue of those I will be exploiting as a result of my skill and my body – anyone on the receiving end of second or even third-rate TV channels – is irksome.

The term ‘buy-out’ featured in the wording of the form literally referred to the fee I will receive for their usage of my performance for the next six months. I signed it and, in so doing, pretty much sealed a ‘sell-out’. Or did I? Should this kind of work be dismissed as such out of hand? History, geography, English, mathematics – everyone who topples out of education with a bent towards one subject or another has to find their way of earning or ‘paying their rent to society’, as my old housemate puts it. If it’s by applying their specialist knowledge and what they enjoy, then so much the better. Everyone who works works for somebody else, even those people who boast they work for themselves. It strikes me the luckiest are those who are able to make a living from doing work closest to what they really want to do.

For now, without a canny little sideline money-spinner of nobler ethical orientation (massage teaching nursing?), time – my time – would be the price of taking the moral high ground, not taking the part, not passing the buck. Having dabbled in this world, I am now fully aware of the allure of a work situation where one does very little for a lot of money. What do you need to be able to do that little for a lot? Time short, cash long. My dad pointed out that this is what people say about prostitution. It does make me wonder at the correlation between the moral reprehensibility of a job and its a-little-for-a-lot-ness. Nevertheless, it is not out of the question that I will square up to a longer term contract with myself whereby I am prepared to shake my arse on MTV (if anyone asks), in order that I may pursue artistic endeavours as fervently as possible.