By Chris Ayres

NAOMI CAMPBELL, the supermodel as famous for her short temper as her long legs, was charged with second- degree assault in New York yesterday after allegedly beating her housekeeper over the head with a mobile phone.

The 35-year-old, originally from Streatham, South London, was arrested and handcuffed at her Park Avenue penthouse — which she shares with two rottweiler dogs — and taken into police custody.

As Miss Campbell arrived at the courthouse she smiled and said: “I’m fine. The police have been really nice.”

Detectives had first learnt of the incident when they were called to Lenox Hill Hospital on the wealthy Upper East Side. It was there that Miss Campbell’s assistant, a 41-year-old woman identified as Ana Scolavino, had been taken for four stitches to the head.

“She had a laceration to her head, so she was clearly hit with some sort of object,” a police spokeswoman said.

Miss Campbell, who became an international fashion icon after being discovered by Elite modelling agency when she was aged 15, is well known for her temper.

However, her lawyer, David Breitbart, said last night that the injury to the housekeeper, whom Miss Campbell had dismissed yesterday morning, was “self-inflicted”. Mr Breitbart said: “Miss Campbell’s housekeeper was notified that she was going to be let go because of things missing from the apartments — and all hell broke loose.

“The injury is self-inflicted. Someone with the prominence of Miss Campbell and the affluence is an easy target. But I know Miss Campbell and she is as beautiful inside as she is on the outside.”

Miss Campbell was escorted out of the police station by three detectives at 4.08pm and driven in an unmarked car to court in Lower Manhattan. She was wearing a white fur poncho, jeans, sunglasses and a black baseball cap with the word Brazil on the front.

The arrest comes a year after Miss Campbell was accused of slapping and beating another personal assistant with a BlackBerry e-mail device in Brazil. At the time Miss Campbell’s spokesman said that the story was “absolutely not true”.

Last month it was claimed that the model had fallen out with another assistant on a British Airways flight from London to Los Angeles.

The first serious case against Miss Campbell ended in 2000, when she pleaded guilty in a Canadian court to assaulting another assistant, Georgina Galanis, while making a film in Toronto two years earlier. Ms Galanis, 38, had accused the model of grabbing her by the throat and hitting her on the head with a telephone. Under a settlement deal the model was given an absolute discharge, preventing her from receiving a criminal record in Canada.

This was followed by another case a year later, and another in 2004.

The 2004 case involved one of Miss Campbell’s maids, Millicent Burton, also being checked into the Lenox Hills Hospital after coming to blows with her boss over the packing of a suitcase. After booking herself into an anger-management clinic in Arizona, Miss Campbell discussed her problem with Barbara Walters, the American broadcaster.

“Anger is a manifestation of a deeper issue, and that, for me, is based on insecurity, self- esteem and loneliness,” said Miss Campbell. “I was really unhappy. I realised I was going to lose the people who really loved me if I didn’t find out what was making me do the things I did.”

Miss Campbell was the first black supermodel to be featured on the front cover of Vogue magazine.

She became the favourite of top international designers, forging an especially close relationship with Versace, for whom she modelled for 12 years before a dispute in 1999. It was alleged that she once paid a PR firm £15,000 to resolve her staff problems.

CELEBRITIES IN THE LIMELIGHT

The singer Ms Dynamite pleaded guilty in January to assaulting a police officer and disorderly conduct