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Tanja was still a young student (infant school teacher) when she became Miss Belgium in 1998. Her life would never be the same again...

Once the obligatory assignments were completed in 1999 Tanja left for Milan to work as a model. During the next two years in Milan she worked for a model agency, which had also represented models such as Naomi Campbell. She performed in a video clip, co-presented a number of TV shows and posed naked for a calendar. Her interest in extreme sports also began during this period. Just a short time later she became a regular guest at race circuits and took part in base-jumping and skydiving.

At the end of 2001 she made the TV news after making a base-jump from the Eiffel Tower. She even made this daredevil jump a second time and rounded off with a jump from the Notre Dame in Paris.

After spending two years in Milan Tanja wanted to return to Belgium. Having only just returned home, she was immediately offered an assignment as a presenter on national television (“De Rode Loper”), a daily programme featuring media news. This came to an end in mid-2001 but she continued to make guest appearances on almost every TV programme imaginable. After a short break she ended up taking part in the commercial TV programme, “MEDIAMADAMMEN”, a light-hearted showbiz programme.

In the same period (2001) Tanja brought out two CD-singles (scoring respectively in the top 20 and top 50) and put herself forward as a candidate for the pre-selection of the Eurovision Song Contest.

It could be said that the third single, although it was a cover, had been written just for her: Born To Be Wild! Together with Free Record Shop, an enormous promotion campaign was started up to present the single
accompanied by a video clip. In the clip Tanja could be seen making base-jumps from a rock in Norway 1.100 meters high.

At the end of 2003 Tanja presented herself in a completely different way yet again: she sang a totally new repertoire during two Christmas concerts. Although the intention for this was to be just a try-out, the media followed it with express interest and once again Tanja had reached the entire Flemish media with this unexpected move.

After a number of successful TV years with “Mediamadammen”, it was decided to take a break from the programme. In no time at all the offers began to pour in again and four months later Tanja had her own TV-programme, “Wannahaves”, a programme about wannahaves for men.

In the Autumn of 2004 Tanja was again making guest appearances on a number of TV-shows (appearing several times in “Swingpaleis”), brought out a single CD (The Way I Am) and performed several Christmas concerts. The rock-influenced repertoire was scrapped and replaced with a disco beat. At the beginning of 2005 she surprised everyone with
her outstanding performance during “De Nacht Van Exclusief”
(Casino Knokke).

On the 1st April “De Rode Loper” announced that Tanja was going to appear in the new James Bond film and, although this was accepted as being perfectly credible, it was just an April Fools joke. She was however invited as a representative of Belgium to the opening of Space Mountain 2 in Euro Disney. She is the face of “Autotone”, model for “Marie-Jo” and much more. The summer of 2005 was mostly filled by performing live gigs (together with cover group “Made in Belgium”), performing at park concerts such as the ones in Aalst, Genk and Blanken