It all started in 1951 as part of the Festival of Britain celebrations and staged at London's Lyceum Ballroom. The winner, Sweden's stunning Kerstin ‘Kiki' Håkansson, was chosen from 26 contestants and received a cheque for £1,000 and a necklace along with the Miss World title.

At its peak, the show claimed an audience of 27.5 million in Britain alone, a figure comparable to that of a royal wedding and now, sixty years on from the first pageant, Miss World still pulls in the crowds and can boast an annual audience of over a billion.
Despite feminist protests, Miss World achieved monumental television audiences throughout the 1960s and 1970s. In the UK, Miss World 1970 was the single most-watched show of the entire year. The contest, hosted by the legendary Bob Hope, was marred by feminist protesters. The quick-witted comedian simply shook his head in wonderment and remarked, "Anyone who would try and break up an affair as wonderful as this has got to be some kind of dope."

By 1979 the show was topping 500 million viewers world-wide. Gina Swainson won the day, as the little island of Bermuda celebrated her victory by declaring a national holiday.

The one and only time that Miss World was held in the United States was in 1991 and it was there, in Atlanta, Georgia, that Ninibeth Leal won her crown, before becoming one of Venezuela's most successful models.

The years 1992 to 1995 marked a particularly successful period for the Miss World contest as the finals moved to Sun City, South Africa and viewer figures increased from 1.2 billion to 1.8 billion. The contestants were welcomed by none other than President Nelson Mandela and over one million people turned out to see them in Johannesburg.

In 1994 Aishwarya Rai became the second Indian winner after a 28 year gap, her win marking the start of a golden age for Indian contestants who took the crown in four out of the next seven years while Aishwarya went on to become Bollywood's biggest female star.

The show's first visit to the Indian continent came in 1996 when over 40,000 people turned out to watch the show at Bangalore's cricket stadium. Irene Skliva won the title of the first-ever Greek Miss World.

In 1999, the show came to London's Olympia. A few protesters turned up to throw flour bombs, but it merely prompted the late Eric Morley to quip, "It's just like the good old days. Who would have thought it would go on for half a century?" Who indeed?

Miss World reached its half-century in the year 2000 and the contest returned to London, to the Millennium Dome, for the 50th anniversary show. A massive television audience of 2.3 billion witnessed India retain the Miss World crown and in the UK alone more than 8 million people tuned in during the two-hour broadcast on Channel 5.

Miss World 2001, Agbani Darego was the first black African winner and the following year Miss World was staged in her homeland, in Abuja, Nigeria.

The 2007 contest took place in the Crown of Beauty Theatre, Sanya, in the People's Republic of China. The 106 contestants recorded the official torch relay anthem Light the Passion, Share the Dream for the 2008 Olympics Games as a major cooperation between the Beijing Olympic Committee and Miss World Ltd. The song had its first broadcast to a global audience at the 57th Miss World final on December 1 2007, when model Zhang Zilin became Miss World. Zhang was born in 1984, more than thirty years after the start of the Miss World pageant.

Now in its 59th year, the Miss World pageant is the world’s biggest annual television event, with a global television audience of more than a billion viewers.