The Sunday Times Magazine - 29 May 2022

62 Pages·2022·17 MB·English

May 29 2022
KIRSTY
YOUNG:
BACK
WITH A
BANG
Four years ago
a chronic illness
derailed her BBC
career. Now she’s
on screen again
for the jubilee

42
29.05.2022
5 Matt Rudd
Yes to four days off, no to DIY
6 Relative Values
The comedian Joel Dommett
and his model wife, Hannah
8 COVER: Kirsty Young
The broadcaster tells Audrey
Ward about her severe illness
16 Tina Brown’s royal flush
The publishing legend on
the future of the monarchy.
Interview by John Arlidge
24 The homeless hotel
Christina Lamb meets the
hoteliers who housed the
destitute over the pandemic
32 Mae day is pay day
How the Influencer Molly-
GE: REX Mae Hague made millions
HIS PA 40 The Dogfather
V. T Graeme Hall on dog holidays
U
N
O
CTI 42 Food
OTE Candice Brown’s jubilee
A PR cakes. Plus, Will Lyons raises
GE L a glass and Marina O’Loughlin
A
M
UBLI reviews 8 in Birmingham
S
ANEL 49 Books to Live By
H
D C Mariella Frostrup on living
N
D STYLE A your best life post 60
N 50 Driving
N GRA Jeremy Clarkson reviews 49
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The Sunday Times Magazine • 3

M A T T R U D D
How to be king of the jubilee weekend:
step one — write a to-do list
F
our-day weekend, kids. Four days! I’m not going 1 Buy flowers for Harriet to apologise for the
to waste them. I refuse. I might treat myself to completely unnecessary shushing.
a cucumber sandwich or a slice of cake. Or both. 2 Sort out all the boxes under the stairs although
But I’m going to use the remaining 95.5 hours the charger for the drill might be in the garage,
of the jubilee extravaganza wisely. I’m going to which has got completely out of control, so let’s
get stuff done. I will be clinical, efficient and sort the garage out first.
organised. Happiness is ticking things off a
to-do list. Misery is writing a to-do list and then 1 No, remember, the reason the garage has got
spending four days on a sofa watching horses completely out of control is because the garage light
march up and down the Mall. I choose needs a new bulb. You can’t sort a garage out in the
happiness. I just need the perfect to-do list. dark, can you? Except you tried to get a new bulb
before but the bulb has no code on it so you need to
1 Build the cupboard under the stairs. This is the big take the bulb to an actual bulb shop except there isn’t
one. It’s been seven years — one tenth of the second an actual bulb shop near where you live any more. So…
Elizabethan age — since I got a carpenter in to quote.
“Eight hundred pounds,” he said with, somehow, 1 Drive miles and miles to a bulb shop and get a bulb
a straight face. “Thank you and goodbye,” I said. specialist to identify the mystery bulb. Then — no,
“But we need an under-stair cupboard,” Harriet said. wait. The car tax is going to run out on Thursday. You’re
“Don’t worry,” I replied heroically, “I’ll do it myself. going to forget to renew it and then get arrested on the
How hard can it be?” way to the bulb shop and then not have time to build
I have already ordered some old doors off eBay. the cupboard under the stairs. There was a car tax form.
They were too small at one end and too big at the Where has it gone? Is it in that pile of random
other, which was expected, and they had woodworm, correspondence in the kitchen?
which wasn’t. “Send them back,” said Harriet. “Why is there a pile of random correspondence in
“I’ll just order some woodworm treatment and the kitchen,” Harriet says. “Why are you interrupting
a mitre saw,” I said. “When I’ve got more time.” me when I’m trying to write this to-do list,” I reply.
So the cupboard got shelved, the years rolled by
and now I’ve got four days. Four! Let’s start again. 1 Find the form and pay the car tax.
Let’s do this right. 2 Move the pile of correspondence from the kitchen
to the spare bedroom. Stop. Think. You started doing
1 Order some woodworm treatment. And a mitre that in March 2020, didn’t you? It was fine then. An
saw. And some safety spectacles. Can’t be too careful. emergency measure. No one filed in lockdown. But
2 Build the cupboard under the stairs. No, wait. I’ll that was more than two years ago and the spare
need the cordless drill. bedroom now looks like someone lobbed a hand
grenade into a post office. What if we ever decide
1 Find the charger for the cordless drill. It’s probably to have house guests again? They won’t be able to
in one of those boxes under the cupboardless stairs. find the bed. What if there are other things we’re
“Why do you never put things back in the right place supposed to have renewed?
when you’ve used them,” Harriet starts to say but
I shush her because I’m writing this to-do list. See, 1 Sort out the paperwork mountain, renew everything
this is what I’m talking about. Organisation. Planning. that should already have been renewed for goodness’
NE Efficiency. I’m like one of those self-help gurus who sake, illuminate the garage and tidy it and the boxes
GAZI flog their unique/identical systems of time-saving. under the stairs.
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The Sunday Times Magazine • 5
R E L A T I V E V A L U E S
Joel Dommett and Hannah Cooper-Dommett
The comedian and Masked Singer host and his model wife on being up for a laugh
Joel
saying it feels like the standard route isn’t really working
I met Hannah on Instagram after I came out of I’m a for me. Maybe we should start saying yes to some of the
Celebrity [Joel was runner-up in the 2016 series]. She reality TV offers. I’ve been working solidly since.
hadn’t watched the show but saw me doing an interview I feel lucky I got the Masked Singer presenting job.
on This Morning and sent me a message. It was the cat For one of the first times in my career I’m a round peg
with heart-eyes emoji. It’s mad coming out of the jungle. in a round hole. It’s so silly, it fits my comic persona.
I went from 11,000 followers to 350,000. I remember I don’t know who is under the mask either. Morten
going through the direct messages, not knowing if I was Harket, the lead singer of A-ha, was on once. I knew
meant to read them all. She always jokes that she was there was a lead singer of A-ha but I didn’t know his
just at the top of the pile. I clicked on hers. We started name. The producers told me but I couldn’t for the life
chatting and I was blown away by how funny she was. of me remember. All I could think when I was
We had our first date a few days later. She didn’t stop interviewing him was it’s not Morgan Freeman.
talking. She’d go off on weird tangents for ages and I After a year of us being together I proposed.
would sit there silent. I remember thinking, “My God, I wanted to ask Hannah to marry me and I needed an
this is incredible.” I was so jet-lagged. I kept yawning ending to the book I was writing, so made that the final
into my mouth. I had a coffee at 11pm. I thought I’ve got page. Luckily she said yes. We got married in Greece in
to stay awake because this date is amazing. I desperately September 2019 with my friend Iain Stirling officiating.
wanted to ask her to go somewhere else, but a big part It felt like we were on Love Island. We had 29 people, no
of me was saying, “Joel, go home, you keep yawning.” plus-ones. Since then we’ve had the pandemic and
We did end the night with a kiss, though. Hannah’s mum has been ill with a brain tumour.
Our second date involved her waiting for me while Looking back it feels like a real bookmark in life where
I was on [the panel show]The Last Leg and basically she all the people there were happy and healthy. It was
had to spend more of the evening talking to Lionel Blair genuinely the happiest day of our lives.
in the green room than with me. But it showed what a Working with Hannah on the podcast has
good fit we are; she understands me having to pop off completely changed our relationship for the better.
to do something for work. And her career is the same.
I genuinely don’t know where I got the comedy gene
“`n our first date he said he was
from. Even in school I wasn’t the usual comedian cliché
of class clown. I grew up on the border of Bristol and
6ft 2in [they are both 5ft 11in]. He
Gloucestershire. The postcode changes in the middle
of our garden. I’m no man’s land. I belong to nobody. counts his fringe in his height”
I moved to London at 19 and thought I was going to be
an actor, but I’d learn the lines, get good in my bedroom
and as soon as I auditioned I’d fall apart. I ended up
trying comedy at 21 to overcome my nerves. I had a
friend who did open mikes. He gave me a list of gigs to
do and said don’t wait for people to give you them, just
turn up. It’s still the advice I give to people now.
I first performed stand-up on television on Russell
Howard’s Good News in 2011. I thought I’m going to
make it, I’m going to be a star. You have no idea you’ve
still got so many years ahead of you before anyone
cares. I had all this energy to get rid of so I got on my
bicycle, rode around London with my headphones in
listening to Les Misérables and singing it really loud.
By the time I did I’m a Celebrity I was doing lots of
stand-up and slowly moving up the ranks. But I wasn’t Main: Hannah, 31,
getting on the shows a lot of my friends were on, like and Joel, 36, at
Mock the Week and 8 Out of 10 Cats. I went to Melbourne home in Surrey.
Comedy Festival and saw a comedian called Joel Creasey. Inset: at their
He’d won the Australian version of I’m a Celebrity and wedding in Greece,
hosted the extra show. I sent an email to my agent September 2019
6 • The Sunday Times Magazine
P O R T R A I T B Y P A U L S T U A R T
I know a lot of people can’t live and work together but S T R A N G E Joel just wants to get home and work out in his garage
genuinely I love it. She is naturally very good at things gym. He’s a creature of comfort. He likes being at
H A B I T S
and I have to try really hard just to be average at things. home. He’s in my phone as Sausage Joel because he
Like putting the bins out. But she embraces my loves sausage rolls. We pick on each other a lot but in a
weirdness and we’re both very open. We are very Joel on Hannah jokey way. That’s the through-line of our relationship.
similar. Maybe it’s the West Country part of me that She hates it He’s also very funny. On our first date he said he was
likes the incestuous nature of trying to get with myself. when I fall asleep 6ft 2in [they are both 5ft 11in]. He counts his fringe in
before her so his height. I say I won’t get a particular shoe as I’ll look
Hannah
makes me watch ridiculous next to him but he says he loves it.
I’ve learnt to speak up for myself over the years really boring I go to as many of his gigs as I can. I know his tour off
modelling. Having a personality is the only thing that YouTube clips by heart, so if he was ever sick I could step in. He knows
differentiates you. Being with Joel I wasn’t Hannah, on my phone. I will tell him if it wasn’t his best gig and he’ll say if he
I became Joel Dommett’s girlfriend. It’s frustrating She nods off and doesn’t necessarily like a photo from a shoot. It’s not an
because I’m my own person. Joel’s always been very I’m left learning insult. I know that his agent isn’t going to say that, or
good, introducing me, deflecting attention from him about the his mum. It hasn’t got us into too much trouble yet.
We maintained long-distance relationship for the Egyptians for We know how the other’s brain works, which is
first three months when I was working in Australia. He 25 minutes advantageous. Some people have come forward since
wanted to pick me up from the airport and take me for we started doing a podcast together and said I’m funny.
breakfast when I got back. At Dubai airport I was putting Hannah on Joel He says, “Yes, but I set the jokes up for you.” I can’t lie.
on every free sample in duty-free. I thought, “Who’s He eats porridge He’s taught me about humour and timing. But I’d argue
nuts enough to pick someone up from a 24-hour in bed every he has a much better wardrobe now thanks to me n
flight?” It felt like the decider of whether we’d carry on single night
seeing each other. We decided to go for it. Interviews by Kate Leahy.
He’s the least rock’n’roll person I could have chosen. Episodes of Joel and Hannah’s podcast, Never Have
Other comedians wind down after a show with a beer. I Ever, are out every Monday
The Sunday Times Magazine • 7
“It
was
like
someone
had
drugged
me”
As she returns to the
BBC after four years to
anchor its Platinum Jubilee
coverage, Kirsty Young
opens up for the first time
about the illness that
nearly finished her career.
Audrey Ward
Interview by
PORTRAIT BY
SOPHIA SPRING
8 • The Sunday Times Magazine
The Sunday Times Magazine • 9
been gone for almost four years but next diagnosis. She went down “lots of blind
week she returns to the BBC to anchor alleys” and was prescribed medication
the Queen’s Platinum Jubilee. including steroids. “The rheumatoid
When we meet on a sunny day in north arthritis is more straightforward but my
London, it is almost surreal to hear her fibromyalgia was muddying the waters.
distinctive voice up close and personal. I had the wrong medics and the wrong
She looks fresh-faced and bright-eyed — medication and they were treating things
you would never guess the battle she has that weren’t there.” Meanwhile her
been waging. For the past few years Young day-to-day life became ever more curtailed.
has been dealing with “severe, relentless “Driving starts to become difficult,
and sometimes debilitating pain. I’ve got cooking at home, all those things you do.”
rheumatoid arthritis with secondary This is the first time Young has talked
fibromyalgia,” she says quietly, before about any of this publicly. The turning
taking me back to that summer in 2017 point came in August 2018, when she met
when her life started to unspool. “I had “an absolutely brilliant physician”. He
extreme joint pain,” she says. “I’d wake up carried out numerous tests and gave her
and I’d feel like I’d got glass in my joints.” the diagnosis that had eluded all the others.
The pain got so bad it disrupted her sleep. Rheumatoid arthritis is an autoimmune
he first person to be interviewed by the “In the morning, I felt like somebody had disorder where the immune system
broadcaster Kirsty Young for Desert Island come in with a baseball bat and given me a attacks the lining of the joints. About 1 per
Discs, back in 2006, was the illustrator ‘doing’, as we say in Glasgow, in the night.” cent of the UK population has it. “The pain
Quentin Blake and the last, in 2018, was the She was also experiencing extreme centre in your brain is right next to the
neurosurgeon Henry Marsh. Sandwiched physical tiredness. “I couldn’t walk up the sleep centre,” she says, “and when your
between those two men were hundreds stairs without stopping in the middle. It’s sleep centre is thrown off [as it was by
of illustrious castaways and for many of not like tiredness if you’ve had a big walk or rheumatoid arthritis], your pain centre
them it was as if they were stepping into done some gardening. It’s like somebody can go into a spiral.”
the confessional box rather than a studio. had drugged me, like you’d taken a sleeping This kicked off her secondary condition,
Instantly recognisable for her sultry tablet at the wrong time in the day and you fibromyalgia, a disorder that causes the pain
Scottish brogue, Young became adept at were completely losing it.” threshold to malfunction. It is thought that
coaxing revelations out of her guests. Her husband, Nick Jones, the 58-year-old one in 20 people in the UK are affected by it
Morrissey told her he believed suicide to be founder of Soho House private members’ to some degree. “With fibromyalgia, if you
honourable; Yoko Ono disclosed that she clubs, knew the full extent of her pain but do that” — she lightly touches the side of
and John Lennon had considered aborting she tried to hide it from her two step- the sofa with her forearm — “it would bring
their son Sean; and David Walliams talked children, Natasha, 29, and Oliver, 27, and tears to your eyes, you feel pain in a way that
about why it would be easier if he were gay. her two daughters with Jones, Freya, 21, is just so heightened. Your whole physical
Today it is Young, 53, who is opening up and Iona, 16. She didn’t want to worry them sense is distorted — your world starts to
for the first time about the debilitating because “they were busy with their lives”. move in front of you in odd ways. They talk
illness that forced her off the airwaves in “I just thought, soldier on. You don’t about ‘fibro fog’ … a woolliness between
2018. That summer she revealed that she want to admit defeat, do you? I was you and reality, and I think that is because
was suffering from a form of fibromyalgia, shovelling down the painkillers.” A holiday you’re dealing with pain all the time.”
a chronic condition that causes widespread in the Maldives in February 2018 forced On the day of her diagnosis, Young’s
pain, and would be taking a break from the her to act. “I remember I picked up a bottle physician said: “There’s light at the end of
programme. In July 2019, after an 11-month of water and it was too heavy for me,” she the tunnel, but it’s a long tunnel. I can’t cure
absence, she said she was stepping down says. “I dropped it and it smashed to the you, but I can treat you. It’s a managed
permanently. At the time she said she was ground. The kids laughed but I could feel condition.” But there was a catch. “Are you
“well on the way to feeling much better” tears in my eyes. I felt pathetic that I able to scale your work back for a while,
and that the enforced absence had “altered couldn’t even lift a bottle of water. I just work part-time?” he asked. “I said, ‘I’m not.
my perspective on what I should do next felt totally physically incapable.” With my job you’re either in or you’re out.’”
and so I’ve decided it’s time to pursue new Over the following months she He told her: “I can treat you with all the
challenges”. Then she disappeared. She has embarked on a frustrating search for a medications but if you don’t have deep rest
From left: with Desert Island Discs castaways David Beckham, 2017, Nicola Sturgeon, 2015, and George Michael, 2007
10 • The Sunday Times Magazine