The Times Magazine - 9 July 2022

78 Pages·2022·28 MB·English

Magazine of the Year
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TOSCA MUSK
Why Elon’s not the only one in
the family with a big idea

Richard Branson: dyslexia and me
Giles Coren: my night at Britain’s
wildest restaurant

09.07.22
E a t!
35 30
5 Caitlin Moran What I wish I had known at 21. 7 Spinal column: Melanie Reid My life in white trainers. 8 Sir Richard Branson The
billionaire says dyslexia is his superpower. By Rachel Sylvester. 16 Cover story Tosca Musk Growing up with Elon, the world’s richest
man. 22 Tall and slim (with amazing views) The rise of the “superskinny” skyscraper. 30 The fall of R Kelly The 20-year investigation that
exposed the music superstar as a sexual predator. 35 Eat! Easiest weekend dinners (including chicken and chips). 48 The model scientist
Meet Dr Daisy Robinton, who wants to stall the ageing process in women. 54 Home special! An Edwardian house bursting with bold
colours. Plus: is your home an Insta-clone? Why booty vases and splatter jugs are all the rage, and all you need for an alfresco lunch.
66 Pout! Men’s special The beauty expert’s guide to the best serums, scents and gadgets. By Nadine Baggott. 68 Giles Coren reviews
Ynyshir Restaurant and Rooms, Powys. 74 Beta male: Robert Crampton My naked panic in the shower.
FAB FIVE: HAMMOCKS
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The Times Magazine 3

CAITLIN MORAN
21
What I wish I had known at .
Don’t panic! Say yes to everything!
S
chool is ending, college is your 25th birthday party. And if you only
ending, university is ending. want power, you will only get power – at the
It’s the season for graduations expense of hanging with the other 99.9999 per
and commencement speeches. cent of humanity.
I frequently get invited to If you want to actively get to work on
give these kind of speeches, who you are going to become, then there is
which is very flattering but only one word you need to know: input. You
also entirely inappropriate need to input as many other lives as possible
– as someone who was – because other lives hold the clues for yours.
home schooled, it feels a bit rich for me to Everything and everyone has happened
rock up right at the end of people’s academic before: the dead billions have done all the
lives, just for the fun bit. Like ducking out of research for you. Read autobiographies,
being someone’s birthing partner, but texting, watch biopics, talk to people at parties and on
“You’re naming the baby after me, right?” trains. Any halfway decent book will contain
However, just like “gradually feeling more everything the writer knew, at that time – so
sympathy for Darth Vader’s origin story” (he if you eat that book, it will be like you’ve lived
was a busy working dad with twins – that will your life and theirs. Eat a second and you have
make you cranky), “wanting to give advice three lives to choose from now.
to young people, whether they like it or not” Travel as much as you can – it doesn’t need
is an inescapable part of ageing, and so I would to be backpacking around Vietnam. Going to
like to give my commencement speech here, Leeds is mind-blowing if you’ve lived your life
if I may. in Cornwall. Taking a bus to the next town is
Young people. Young, scared, amazing, exciting if you go down random side streets
ridiculously young people – people all younger and read the carefully chosen last words on
than many of the hairs in my moustache. the gravestones. What is left from someone
I know so much of your brain and heartache from 1874, paying a shilling for each word
over the past few years – choosing which etched into the slate? “A good woman.” “We’re
subjects to study, who to kiss, what career to all just walking each other home.”
have – has been caused because you don’t You don’t need to be broadcasting yet. You
know if this is the right thing for you. Is this don’t need to fear someone suddenly saying,
the kind of thing “you” do? Who am I? Is “Tell me everything you think NOW!” Just
this me? Why do I not know who I am? ask questions. You’d be amazed how many
And I’m here to tell you this: don’t worry. times someone will later say, “She’s a brilliant
Please don’t let this not-knowing make you conversationalist,” when all you did was talk
anxious – for it is literally impossible for about them all night. The most useful motto
you to know who you are right now. No in life is “Do The Thing, at The Time”. When
one does, at this age. Because – you haven’t you’re in a playground, play. When you’re in
done 90 per cent of the things that will make love, love. The time now is to absorb and eat:
you who you are yet. You haven’t made that to fill yourself so full to the brim with ideas
mistake, gone to that place, met that person. and possibilities and maps and clues that,
You haven’t done you, yet. when you finally know what you want to do,
As someone who
Instead, what you are right now is just and where you want to go, you will realise,
a set of intentions. And these are the only with a bolt of joyful astonishment, that you
was home schooled,
things you can ever pay attention to or fret now know a thousand ways to do it. A billion.
over. What do you intend to be? What’s on And that’s what “being you” is: a set
it seems a bit rich to
your to-do list? Some intentions really are of well-chosen intentions and a bulging
better than others. For instance, if you intend scrapbook of ideas for how to start walking
rock up to a university
to be very skinny, you will spend a lot of your towards them. That’s all anyone can be, right
life being hungry and sad. If you intend to now. Don’t ever panic if you’re anything “less”.
with advice. But I’m
be “cool”, you will miss out on a lot of fun, To the sentence, “I don’t know who I am,” you
as you worry about looking foolish in photos. just need to add one word to be calm: yet.
often asked
ON If you intend to substitute “actual human And on that note, my last advice: if you’re
S
WIL conversation” with “going round owning the getting blisters on your feet, use deodorant on
RT libs with your dark humour”, you’ll be amazed them. It’s the sweat that makes you slip that
BE
RO by how few friends you have left to invite to makes you blister. n
The Times Magazine 5

SPINAL COLUMN
MELANIE REID
After the accident
my feet swelled to
10
size . My life in
white trainers?
It’s been eventful
T
here is no better item from school sport through to punk rock. Go-to Lightweight and as close to feminine as possible.
of footwear than white tall-girl uniform. Long before everyone else, But suited to personal bests, not nights out.
plimsolls. On this, I am I proved white plimsolls went with everything. 9. Shoe Armageddon. After a spinal injury,
an expert. They sharpen 4. Stan Smith trainers, in white leather, with your feet swell at least two sizes. Vanity
any outfit. They are by turn Velcro fastenings. A very Eighties statement disintegrates. In hospital the only thing
witty, comfy and classic. shoe. They were expensive and I treasured them I could wear, every day, was a pair of men’s
They allow tall girls – I barely took them off for a decade. I even size 10 trainers, as big as small boats. I insisted
to flatter small men. bought special leather whitener. They were on white, but the joke was on me. My feet
They embody energy, still in use for dog walking at the millennium. weren’t fun or sporty any more, just tragic.
empowerment and freedom. And I have spent 5. Dunlop Green Flash, as reprised for the 10. Converse All Star. Copying my mentor
my life in them. Nineties. The brand relaunched with a green Annie, I perked myself up with colour. Pink
stripe around the toe, a green panel at the heel ones, gold ones, lime green ones. They are
1. Dunlop Red Flash. I could not believe my and green laces. The coloured laces seemed a fun, peeking from a wheelchair footplate at
luck. They were without question my most bit loud. But I forgave them because they had a black-tie reception, but their heels aren’t
treasured teenage possession. It was 1971 and magic nostalgic properties: putting them on, padded and I spring blisters if I wear them
my mother, very unusually, had succumbed to I shed 20 years. And they were so comfy. more than occasionally.
my begging. They had red soles, a red stripe 6. White canvas pumps, thin-soled, low-cut 11. My Meghan Markles. “Do you want your
round the toe, white laces and a red D at the and always worn without laces, arrived as Meghans on today?” my carer asks. They’re
side of the heel. Day one of a boating holiday a fashion item. I already had multiple pairs. white Veja plimsolls, recycled and sustainable,
with my cousins in Northern Ireland, I was Unlike the Woolies ones, these had no ugly popularised by Meghan in 2018. My pair has
ostentatiously changing into them on deck bumper toes. I got married in them, which the V in red, in tribute to where this lifetime
– hoping someone would be impressed – when people found amusing. The only time I didn’t love affair started, and when I wear them, all
one slipped off the stern. The dreadful vision wear them was in the office, because that summer, I sense the ghost of old me. Time’s
of it sinking, slowly, irrevocably, into the deep particular frontier hadn’t yet fallen. cruel to paralysed shoes, though: the soles
brown water of the marina remains with me. 7. The Noughties was my running decade. are unworn, the canvas uncreased, but the
2. Woolworths’ best. The ones with the horrid I began noncommittally, jogging in a final rubber is yellowed and they look grubby.
vertical ridges round the toe. I could only pair of Dunlop Green Flash. Had I kept them Shoe whitener hasn’t worked; next stop is
conceal the Red Flash disaster from my box-fresh, dammit, they’d be worth a fortune money-saving white emulsion. Remember this,
mother for so long, and Woolies was my on the retro trainers market, because after fashionistas: when it comes to white plimsolls,
punishment for such carelessness. selling 25 million pairs, Dunlop discontinued I’m always ahead of the curve. n
D
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O at the heel. White laces. I had two consecutive 8. Nerdy running trainers. I got serious with Melanie Reid is tetraplegic after breaking her
D
URpairs and wore them to ribbons; they took me the 10ks and bought (white, always white) Asics. neck and back in a riding accident in April 2010
M
The Times Magazine 7
Richard Branson, 71,
photographed by Erik Tanner
‘DYSLEXIA IS MY SUPERPOWER’
Richard Branson felt a failure at school. Misunderstood by his teachers, he dropped
15
out at . Now the billionaire is convinced that his dyslexia was the reason he
took risks – despite not knowing the difference between net and gross until he
50
was . He tells Rachel Sylvester that businesses must embrace neurodiversity