Dizzee Rascal once sent Jonathan Ross a text. It said “Yo bro. dis is Dizzee. Good 2 c ya again. Holla.”
So the South African President, Jacob Zuma, just got married for a fifth time, and I have to admit I was “a bit funny” about polygamy until I saw the bride and her bridesmaids. Look at them! Look at her! Seriously fierce. I remember there were girls at my school who were well into being bridesmaids - some of them were even repeat offenders - but I never really saw the thrill in going down Tammy Girl to get dressed up as one of a matching set of peaches and then holding onto the back of a grown-up’s dress while she kissed a man. Which was just as well, since my family were not the sort of people who knew the sort of people who had weddings, and I was not the sort of child you wanted hanging off the back of your meringue, so no one ever asked.
If Team Beyonce don’t hijack this look for the next video then a trick is missed. (Dear Mrs Zuma, you had the best bridesmaids of all time, of all time, etc etc)
“Everyone is so critical. All must be sacrificed to the great god of skinny. You must say no to everything. Life has to be pretty fabulous, surely, if you can afford to turn down occasions of pleasure? I think it is a fear of flesh. Maybe of vulnerability and softness. I do think that women who spend all their lives on a diet probably have a miserable sex life: if your body is the enemy, how can you relax and take pleasure? Everything is about control, rather than relaxing, about holding everything in. I associate thinness with dying. My mother had real eating issues. When she had cancer, she said, ‘this is the first time I have eaten without worrying’, and that is chilling. Something clicked, and I vowed never to say, I am not allowed that.”
Nigella Lawson
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Sophie Heawood is an award-winning freelance journalist based between London and Los Angeles. She writes about pop music, pop culture and city life, and interviews the famous for newspapers and magazines including The Times, Guardian, Independent on Sunday, New Statesman, Time Out, The Word and The NME. She also does TV and radio. Please write to sophieheawood @ gmail.com with all offers of hard, crisp cash.
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Among others, Sophie has interviewed Lily Allen, Amy Winehouse, Cheryl Cole, Lady Sovereign, Kelis, Adele, Grace Jones, Patti Smith, Snoop Dogg, Yeah Yeah Yeahs, Beth Ditto, Jared Leto, Hugh Laurie, Juliette Lewis, Lionel Richie, Bat For Lashes, Snow Patrol, The Killers, Keane, MIA, and Belinda Carlisle. She has a particular interest in the post-Lily Allen generation of young women in pop.
The Times sent Sophie to Israel to interview Palestinian protest rappers, and to fly round Brazil with Iron Maiden on their private jet to witness the cult of heavy metal in Latin America. She conducted ‘Girls Aloud - The Politics Interview’ for left-wing magazine the New Statesman and helped Amy Winehouse hide her bandmate's Ferrero Rochers underneath the sofa, though Sophie is still not sure why they discussed making a fitness video together.
Sophie grew up in Yorkshire, where it is cold, but she has also lived in Hong Kong, Los Angeles and Barcelona, where it is not. She speaks fluent Spanish, Portuguese and French, loves karaoke and politics, is a secret computer geek, and has recently begun talking about herself in the third person. Her pet hate is the phrase "pet hate".
