PRETTY blonde Holly Bennett is Europe's only female explosives engineer and about to be the star of a television programme about her great love ... reducing things to rubble.

The 24-year-old has been blasting buildings for five years and is now about to make it on the small screen charting her career success alongside her male counterparts.

Holly began as an office junior with a summer job with the Controlled Demolition Group but has now risen through the ranks to be an explosives engineer.

"I never realised that me being a girl would cause so much hype, because we all do the same job."

But curvy Holly knew she had what it takes to make her mark in this male-dominated world.

She said: "I get a bit of stick but nothing I can't handle. Most of the men think it's great what I do."

When she was a child, girly Holly played with dolls' houses, dolls and prams like any other little girl.

As she grew up, she passed nine GCSEs, all with grades A to C.

She then started A-levels and applied for an office junior's job with a company in Cleckheaton.

Holly had to file reports, do the photocopying, answer the phone and make the tea. But she was bitten by the bug for blowing things up after following engineers at work sites.

Holly volunteered to help evacuate people from their homes around the blast site.

She said: "The first time I saw them blow something up it was amazing. There is nothing like it. Words can't describe the buzz."

Holly then pestered engineers to let her train and carry out the work herself. "I'd basically just bug the life out of my boss when I took his coffee. Eventually he gave in," she says.

After she helped out on a few more blasts, Holly's bosses thought it best to harness her skills properly. She was 18 when she got her shot-firing licence, enabling her to obtain explosives and, more importantly press the blast button.

They made her Britain's youngest and first female explosives engineer.

She started by putting up protective sheeting and fences around the blast zones, progressing to reading seismographs monitoring the explosions' impact before becoming a fully fledged member of the explosives team.

She thinks nothing of packing 90kgs of explosives and running 3,000 non-electric detonating charges through buildings, reducing them to rubble in less than seven seconds.

"I love every minute of it," she says. "You have to work out how to bring the building down. We take out structural elements of the building before we bring it down. Putting the explosives in is the biggest responsibility.

"None of us work alone because when you have 1,000 to 1,500 charges in a building and have to check all the wires are going where they should be, it would be easy for one of us to miss something."

After eight years with the firm she is one of the country's elite of 12 explosives engineers. And one of the group to feature in the National Geographic TV programme Demolition Squad.

The six-part series follows blow-ups, or "blow downs", as they are called in the business, each with their own set of problems, in different parts of the UK.

Holly's cv features a list of explosions - and not all unwanted buildings. The company also works on special effects for films.

Holly went to Casablanca a couple of years ago where Spy Game was being filmed with Brad Pitt and Robert Redford. In the film, a suicide bomber drives a truck of explosives into a building - which is where Holly and co did their bit.

Another time they helped Jeremy Clarkson try to blow up a Toyota pick-up truck on the Top Gear programme. They put it on top of a 25-storey tower block in Hackney and demolished the building - only to find the Toyota's engine was still running at the end of it.

She said: "It's not something I'd planned, it's just something that happened.

"The adrenaline rush you get from doing the job is like nothing else. The responsibility and power you have is incredible. Nothing beats it for me.

"You do get nervous on the run up to it, especially when you are responsible for things, but it's absolutely amazing and you get a real buzz."

She admits it has been tough coping with the job and trying to cut it in a male dominated career.

"Some of the comments I get you wouldn't believe. It isn't so bad now because they know me. but when I started at 17 and was having to tell men what to do on site they didn't like it. But I couldn't care less.

"The only way to get a demolition man's respect is to know what you're talking about.

"It's hard work, really hard work, but it's great. It's obviously not a girly job getting covered in muck and dust but it's part and parcel of the job."

Charles Moran, managing director of Controlled Demolition Group, said: "We have been at the forefront of major advances in the demolition industry for 20 years.

"I'm delighted that we've made another important step forward with the training of the UK's first female explosives engineer.

"Of course the most important thing to us is that Holly is good at her job."