The Times Magazine - 3 September 2022

62 Pages·2022·22 MB·English

MAGAZINE OF THE YEAR
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Eat!

JAMIE OLIVER’S
easy one-pan
recipes
‘I BECAME THE
POSTER GIRL
FOR EVERYTHING
GOOD AND BAD
ABOUT THE BBC’
Emily Maitlis CHARLIE WATTS
THE COOL
reveals all
ROLLING STONE
by Mick, Keith and

his family
MY NAKED SUMMER
Jane Mulkerrins
strips off
AT HOME WITH
VANESSA FELTZ

03.09.22
38
5 Caitlin Moran I have some unlikely obsessions. Don’t judge me. 7 Spinal column An evening out stirs up memories of a life changed
for ever. 8 ‘They whip out their Tupperware – and their testicles’ Jane Mulkerrins strips off for summer to find out why naturism
is booming. 14 Cover story Emily Maitlis The former Newsnight host tells Alice Thomson why she left the BBC – and what happened
in the aftermath of her sensational Prince Andrew interview. 22 The Charlie Watts we knew Bandmates and family members talk to
Paul Sexton a year on from the death of the Rolling Stones’ legendary drummer. 27 Eat! Jamie Oliver Delicious, easy one-pan recipes
from his new cookbook. 38 Queen of talk Vanessa Feltz tells Andrew Billen about getting over heartbreak, her fears about money
– and her new job. 44 Paul Oakenfold The world’s first superstar DJ talks to Simon Mills. 51 Pout! Lesley Thomas’s beauty product
of the month. 52 Giles Coren reviews Maddox Tavern, London. 58 Beta male: Ben Machell I’m really into sport… oh, who am I fooling?
FIVE BUONISSIMO PASTA SAUCES
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COVER: DAN KENNEDY. DRESS, MIU MIU, BOOTGIANVITO ROSSI. THIS PAGE: TOM JACKSON pAepCEgD(pAeIhTedCOaRr DI r.pNE OvPMeICU ecOETyioYLx nArAP RiiJwEcnTE hAiDPotLIoR hE DaEl ,ECsnp PT.£UOcdiRcTo 9Y Jib m OE.plD 9aP)aILT5cEOskRNt aT L ODEUPISUETr AYFoi RCc SrAHRoI NMEpotCFt iOEmSag UAK ’aBsR(-ET tnEc eDDD hnIIsRT eauEOPCReutAT CkaOcHNR.me RCTC IawSHoE RrRipTImItSL hT EwHoY AIgT irPC,tuIe ChH£laTC lUsneO5RaC.Ec.c lK6iEtoa DAe5ImSlTdeSO OR), C AIANSTNEctA irEr DBu IAiTsnOStRSty oEJA TA GbTlNRir AEDnTe ERMgPaIUUuCLdTLIiHYK nC( EPOseR,IoC RKTo£uIUNErRsS3 Ec sAA .EhpS9DNSreI9ITSeDfOT.aR cA N dLoUT . CuoEYDvkI TDe)OArRL ETOYp NCYOaP NTrTeUmRRrIBNfeAUeBTsBNUcIaNLLtDGnL A wE F DC(ETiIlATOtKuTOhURMc R TkEBsASpRRy TIEaDvUDOGigIFTtE,hOaTF R em£ HLMtA1EtOiRin8 N R a .IIQcSnUOoEdNm R EI)DVIATOLLRAIANLD A SCASHII SEcTFAl SFSaN(UTdEsAB Gse-NREEilcDONiDIc RTESIOaGNRiLIrNc A,EiAi oMl S£Ri.AacO N5oAnBD.Em AN8Rr LTDe0)ISNc Fi OpOeT CHOSEN BY MONIQUE RIVALL
The Times Magazine 3

CAITLIN MORAN
I confess I do have some weird obsessions.
But don’t judge me. I can’t resist
A
s a columnist, you write To which they will reply, already hysterical,
things that are essentially “IS IT, BY ANY CHANCE, A SLEEVED
critical of others’ STRIPY TOP THAT YOU CAN TUCK INTO
behaviour. “Oh, you YOUR TROUSERS?”
government, you… rascals, The first three times they guessed, I was
you!” Or: “Here’s a single amazed at their psychic prowess. By the fourth
thing I have learnt about time, I realised maybe I do have a problem.
raising children. Note me In my defence, some of the sleeved stripy tops
carefully not mentioning of a sensible length are black and white, some
the 785,757,575 wrong things.” Actually, to be navy and white, one is red and white, and it’s
fair to me, I love discussing all the things I’ve amazing how many fabric thicknesses or collar
got wrong, as those are the most useful and variances the jaunty long-sleeved stripy top
amusing stories. A story about how together can conjure. One of them – telling of a
and great you are will never end with the superbold day – is sleeveless. But, yes. I just
punchline, “And that was when the police counted them and I have 11. My fashion
officer said, ‘Are you… Caitlin Moran? From default is clearly, “Going onion-seller.”
The Times? I think I follow you on Twitter.” * 2. Vacuum cleaners. I have nine. I accept my
But, still. What I’m trying to say is that immediate Privilege Cancellation. But we
today I am going to confess my three biggest don’t have a cleaner – and so what would have
weaknesses/failures as a consumer – which, been spent on wages has now been “sensibly”
in the dying days of an expansionist market invested in 1) a classic Miele Cat & Dog
economy, is our primary and most important vacuum; 2) a Dyson handheld for the stairs;
identity: above that of “voter” or “human 3) a much smaller Hoover handheld for
being”. Here, then, are the three Butterfly inside kitchen cupboards and sundry crevices;
Effects my credit-card activities are feeding 4-7) three robot vacuums – one for each storey
into algorithms all over the world, which will of the house – which come on at bedtime and
eventually be used by superior AI to decide allow me to wake each morning to pleasing,
whether to let human beings continue to exist hotel-standard cleanliness; 8) a Vax Wet’n’Dry
– or whether to just wipe us all out by first carpet cleaner; and 9) a Karcher steam
denying our wi-fi passwords, then making cleaner, for once-a-month deep rinsing.
our driverless cars crash into a hedge. I’m sure, now I’ve listed them, you’ve gone
from gasping, “Nine Hoovers! Even Mrs Hinch
1. Stripy tops. “I want to spend some quality only has three!” to, “Yes – I see. Indeed, I
time with you. Let’s go clothes shopping, observe that actually I too need nine Hoovers.
Mum!” This means, for those who have not That is a perfectly sensible number.” I hope
yet cracked this particular teenage code, “I you have. I will need you to argue with the
want your Apple Pay facility and grudgingly Superior AI God in years to come that owning
accept I need your actual physical presence nine computer-chipped vacuum cleaners didn’t
for the face recognition bit.” make me in effect an AI plantation owner.
Personally, I dislike shopping for clothes 3. Crocs. Five pairs. I once wrote a whole
very, very much – I bought five pairs of jeans column decrying Crocs as “fugly foot-ruiners
Do I really need
and some dungarees in 2015, and I think for people not Dutch enough to wear real
they’re still good until 2026, minimum. wooden clogs”. Then I got a dog – and realised
nine Hoovers, five
However, it’s a hardhearted mother who can that, as a Croc owner, if your dog gets thirsty
demure from a “hang request” from a child on a walk, it makes the perfect dog water bowl.
pairs of Crocs and
– and so to & Other Stories, and the Adorable I admit my mistake! I admit all my mistakes!
Tiny Shorts section, faking opinions to the eleven stripy tops? I hope our AI overlords find that adorable. n
ludicrous question, “Which of these seemingly
identical and bum-sharing items do you, * They came round to see if my Ring doorbell
47-year-old woman, love the most?” had any footage of an escaping gunman from
What both of my daughters seem to find Wood Green. I answered the door in just bra
ON endlessly hilarious, however, is the rare and pants – it was very hot – panicked, and
S
WIL occasion I find something I like. “Got explained that the huge quantities of visceral
RT something for myself!” I will say, proudly hardcore porn I’d recently been streaming
BE
O holding up a carrier bag as I leave the shop. really was research for “some feminism”.
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The Times Magazine 5

SPINAL COLUMN
MELANIE REID
‘Why can’t I enjoy
a night out?
Why, after all this
time, am I still
weeping for the
woman I was?’
T
here I was, deep in I’d also love to say we’d glammed up for slipped. The bar where we went for a drink
Edinburgh, and all around the streets like Sex and the City, except I don’t before the show was in the room where I sat
me was a tumult of sound, think Sarah and I were ever remotely Sex and the civil service entrance exams after
smells, foreign speech, the City. I can’t believe she wore short skirts university, casting around for a career.
pressing bodies, strange and high heels any more than I did, which was And then we went to the show, hilarious
sights. It is possible to feel never. No, we were two old ladies, one of us and feminist. We laughed hard and went for
simultaneously very small in a chair, the other like an anxious collie, a lovely meal afterwards with her husband.
and insignificant yet very shepherding me along the bumps. She flaunted And it was only later, when the silence rushed
in the way, because there a fleece and trainers and justifiably labelled me in and I was on my own in the van driving
was hardly any space on the pavements and moth-eaten because I hadn’t noticed the moth home, that I was unable to suppress the
people towered over me. Eyes like saucers, holes in my sleeve and I’d run out of time to undertow of sadness that beneath the fun
I was in sensory overload. put on mascara. had been with me all evening. And I sobbed
“I feel like an explorer in a foreign land,” But we were there, hovering gingerly at quietly down my moth-eaten front.
I said to Sarah. kerbs and junctions, very much in the moment Why can’t I go out and be genuinely
“The Delhi slums?” she said. Because of the but pointing out the past as determinedly as 100 per cent cheerful? Why, beneath the
bin strike, the giant wheelie bins along the kerb visitors to a National Trust property. carapace of coping, do my emotions remain
were piled high, overflowing so much it was “Down there,” I said, “that’s where my first so raw? Why is my ghost always around when
like negotiating our way through a smelly, husband and I bought our first flat together. I venture into social environments, busy places
dystopian jungle. But they were part of the fun, That pub there, that’s one we used to drink in.” where I might have been before on foot? Why
an exciting adventure, a night out in the city “Me too,” she said. this inability to get over my reality, to stop
with a friend, catching a show, going for a meal And it’s still got the same name. mourning? Why, after this passage of time, do
afterwards – the kind of simple thing that “That music shop has been there for I always bloody well end up weeping privately
people do all the time. But not me. 40 years. That place there, that is where I had for the woman I was?
I’d love to say we set off in my van like my first and last KFC half a century ago.” I would love to do more. I cannot escape
Thelma and Louise, but I won’t because the “I have never indulged,” Sarah said the hurt it brings. Recently, it occurred to me
film’s 31 years old and it’s only sad old women waspishly. I might have some form of PTSD, but then I
who cite it in the mistaken belief it’s still cool “And up there,” I laughed, “there was a growl at the self-indulgence, because PTSD is
and funny. And anyone who’s young doesn’t kebab shop where I had my first and last for far greater trauma, for indescribable things.
have a clue what they’re on about. Besides, doner kebab.” So I plaster a smile back on and plan another
Thelma and Louise didn’t spend their journey “It’s still there,” she said. “Want another adventure. It’s all I can do. n
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ACLEO wa onrorsyei-ning apbaorkuitn tgr asfpfaicc ea.n Od uwrh leurcek thheelyd’ d– frionudt e, oneI?t ”was like time travel, the same landscape, @Mel_ReidTimes
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O parking, restaurant access – and we were a new filter run across it, the ghosts still Melanie Reid is tetraplegic after breaking her
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UR glowing when we hit the city night air. lurking on corners. Time warped. Time neck and back in a riding accident in April 2010
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The Times Magazine 7
NAKED RAMBLING
MY NAKED SUMMER
Jane Mulkerrins at
Diogenes Sun Club,
Chalfont St Peter,
Buckinghamshire
PHOTOGRAPHS
Robert Wilson
NAKED CAMPING
It all started with a skinny-dip in the sea during the heatwave.
Then a nude ramble in the countyside. So what happened when
Jane Mulkerrins stripped off – and got into naturism?
I
t’s a blazing July afternoon from noticing the enviable all-over
NAKED TENNIS
– hot, but with a robust tans, I strictly adhere to the first rule
breeze – and I’m seven miles of naturism: look everyone in the eye,
into a 12-mile hike along the and try not to let your gaze wander
South Downs Way, with views below the neck.
across the scorched hills beyond I am advised to carry something
Bognor Regis to the Isle of – a sarong, or similar – to wrap around
Wight. I’m also naked but for myself when we need to cross roads or
a backpack, tennis visor and in case we pass any “textiles” (naturist
trainers. And I’m in good code for The Clothed) who seem like
– if entirely male – company; today’s they might be offended. I realise that
naked hike is made up of me and I don’t know what the rules on naked
20 late (to very late) middle-aged men. hiking even are.
These are the first men who have Nigel, an architect and longtime
seen me naked in months (like the naturist, explains that his hobby is and
country, I have been experiencing always has been legal, so long as there
a prolonged dry spell). is no intent to cause alarm, distress
Yet, improbably, as I’m ambling or harassment, and there is no sexual
along it has almost slipped my mind offence being committed. Cyclists and
that we’re all completely starkers. dog-walkers all pass us cheerfully,
Until, that is, we come across a cyclist, and not a single hiker reaches for his
runner or dog-walker, and I feel shorts. The only time we cover up
myself blush beneath my visor. is in crossing the thundering A29.
Chances are, they’ve seen it all We stop for lunch at Great Bottom
before, since a rapidly increasing (of course we do), where my hiking
number of Britons are shedding their mates whip out their Tupperware
inhibitions along with their trousers. and sprawl, legs apart and testicles
An estimated 1.3 million now regularly untrammelled, under the huge oak
get their kit off in public, with tree. I clamp my legs together and
numbers rising measurably in the past sit primly with my knees up, never
few years, thanks in part to hotter, more aware of my womanhood as
longer summers and the lockdowns, which I tear into my falafel wrap.
WE STOP FOR LUNCH. MY
uncoupled workers from their wardrobes, I ask, for about the 15th time, why there
reunited them with the joys of the great NEW MATES WHIP OUT THEIR are no other women here. Women do come
SE outdoors and forced a greater focus on mental sometimes, they insist. They’d like it to be a
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O and physical wellbeing – which naturism’s TUPPERWARE AND SPRAWL, more mixed group, but then they say things
H
WARE proponents claim to be its biggest benefits. TESTICLES UNTRAMMELLED like, “Don’t try to understand women,” and
N More than 15,000 people attended I think: maybe that’s part of the reason. But
NTAI organised naturist events across the UK last they really couldn’t be a less threatening or
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MO year, while in the first lockdown in 2020, the testosterone-charged lot.
CK, association British Naturism saw the fastest I sign up for a walk with Nat Ram – a Greg, a retired Anglican priest and former
KPA growth in new members since its inception in naturist group who walk every week, May to hospital chaplain, chuckles about what his old
C
BA 1964. Businesses are now cottoning on to the September – that starts at a pub near the congregations would make of his new hobby
RTE. power of the so-called “buff pound” too – lidos village of Amberley, a couple of trains and (spoiler: they wouldn’t have taken it well). Bill
A
A C are offering naked swims, holiday resorts and a short cycle away. joined the group during lockdown after losing
A L travel companies are marketing clothing- John, the club secretary, who has let me his partner to Covid; he’s also a member of the
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METIC onpaktieodn adli ntrinipgs ,n ainghdt rse. sTthauerrea nhtas sa erev ernu nbneeinng a tsawge aatloilny go tfof dmayy , bgirkeee. t“sY moue masi gIh ctl alomseb ear few Cinh hriisst ilaante Nfoarttuieriss,t h Faesl lboewesnh tipry. iDnga vviadr, iao ubsa nker
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O
C rash (sorry) of naked festivals across the UK pounds this afternoon,” he chirps. He is naturist activities for a few years, since he
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SIN this summer. referring to the high temperatures, but it’s developed the autoimmune disease vitiligo.
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S I don’t hate my body so much that I have not really the thing any woman wants to hear “I’m inviting you to have a look,” he tells me,
ST
RTI to have sex with the lights off, but a natural- when she’s about to take her clothes off. cheerily, and I warily glance left to see he is
A
N born naturist I am not. However, since Clumsy comments aside though, they seem motioning for me to examine his penis, which
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GT I do fancy a proper, all-over, teak tan, and like a good bunch, sipping on real ale outside indeed has patchy pigmentation. “Oh,”
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RLI as Britain is sizzling like southern Spain, what the country boozer, comparing which A-roads I say. “Right. Yes. That is vitiligo.” Going naked
A
AT better, hotter time to test out the reported they took to get here. was, he says, about refusing to hide away or
ORE glories of stripping off for the summer? We set off down country lanes. I have no give into shame. “Once you’ve got over the
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M idea when the disrobing will happen. As we self-consciousness, you think: ‘What was all
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ON Naked hiking approach a field, Frank, whom I’ve already the fuss about?’ ” he says.
P: FI My naked summer has handily coincided clocked as a bit of a free spirit, whips off his He’s right. I’m really not worrying about
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KE- with a stint housesitting for my best friend clothes, including his shoes, leaving just his what my body looks like to anyone here. And
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M in Brighton – and the south coast, I happily Crocodile Dundee hat. The rest of the party it does feel good, this sunny walk without
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AN discover, is a hotbed of public nakedness demurely wait until we’re beyond the gate to sweaty T-shirts or chafing shorts. It feels
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AI right now. get into what they call “our uniform”. Aside free – in more ways than just the obvious.
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10 The Times Magazine