1. Dental floss
For after dinner when you need to service that great smile of yours.
2. Cotton buds
To tidy up mascara and blend creased eye-shadow.
3. A tiny bottle of your favourite perfume
Or a perfume atomizer. Don’t go mixing your scent with any freebies that might be on offer in the Ladies.
4. Oil blotters
I know none of us get sweaty – sorry, perspire. But just in case you do, these will make sure your face doesn’t resemble a big, shiny, round, sweaty thing!
5. Nail file
Just in case that pedicure doesn’t hold out.
6. Lip-gloss or Vaseline
One for the girls who, like me, don’t go for lipstick. Stops lips drying out and keeps them plump.
At the Beckhams’ party I think the main reason why people were so relaxed is because the press and TV cameras were so controlled. It just meant everyone didn’t have to worry so much about what they were or weren’t doing or saying. It’s not always that way but David and Victoria’s party was great in that respect.
One of the highlights was Graham Norton’s charity auction. There were all sorts of things to bid for, like a diamond-and-ruby encrusted Jacob watch that belonged to David, which Ashley Cole bought, and an Asprey necklace designed by Victoria. Ozzy Osbourne said he would cook dinner for ten and that was auctioned off, while other guests offered different on-the-spot lots.
I keep all the dresses I’ve worn to big events, parties and ceremonies – well, the dresses that I’ve really loved. I have big clear-outs of the rest of my clothes every now and again, and after friends and cousins have had a look at what they’d like, I take the rest to our local charity shop.
Wayne loves his rap – Jay-Z, P. Diddy, Kanye West. So you should have seen his face when P. Diddy stood up and said he would auction off either a weekend in his house in The Hamptons or the chance to spend a day with him in his New York recording studio. I saw Wayne and Rio look at each other across the table and I just knew they were going to go for it. In the end Wayne was bidding against Sharon Osbourne, and managed to win when he shouted out £150,000. One reason I expected Wayne to go that little bit further was because he’s really good when it comes to charity. The other was that I knew there was no way he was going to lose the chance to hang out with P. Diddy and go and party with him at his house. The invitation was for two, so everyone assumed he’d be taking me with him. Quite a few people dropped by the table asking if I was made up at the thought of holidaying with P. Diddy. I looked across at Wayne and Rio and said, ‘I’m not even going, it’s them two!’ I didn’t mind at all. They’re both into their rap. But Wayne was always bidding for himself and Rio, not, like the newspapers reported the next day, as a present for me! There was also a story that me and Wayne were going to fly over to New York and P. Diddy was going to close the whole of Bloomingdale’s and let me have the run of the place to shop. Now, maybe that would have been a bit more interesting!
Of all the parties I’ve been to, Victoria and David’s ‘Full Length and Fabulous’ must rank as up there with the best. Me and Wayne were almost the last to leave and didn’t get back to our hotel until the early hours. Now, that is the sign of a good party!
I keep all the dresses I’ve worn to big events, parties and ceremonies – well, the dresses that I’ve really loved. I have big clear-outs of the rest of my clothes every now and again, and after friends and cousins have had a look at what they’d like, I take the rest to our local charity shop. My mum always goes for my shoes because she’s the same size as me. It’s good to have clear-outs, but I refuse to part with any of my handbags.
Since we moved house I have my own big walk-in wardrobe, so I’m lucky enough to have the space to store all the special dresses that have made it into the news. I’ll never throw them away. They are my collection of memories, and in years to come they’ll be the best reminder a girl can have of some great times.
chapter five a very strange relationship
I’ve had to learn to live my life knowing that around every corner there could be a man, and they are mostly men, with a camera, waiting to leap out and take a photograph of me. Over time, you get used to it and the paparazzi become a part of your day-to-day life. It’s a complicated and quite strange relationship, and I would be the first to admit that, in some ways, you could say the paparazzi made me. All those pictures of me out shopping and with my mates brought me to the public’s attention. So it could be said that they allowed me to carve out a lucrative career for myself, enabling me to have contracts with the likes of Asda, Closer magazine and LG mobile phones. That’s been the up-side of the relationship and, in that respect, I’ve been lucky. But at the same time I’ve never been someone who’s courted publicity. And while I say you get used to being constantly followed by the paparazzi, that doesn’t mean you enjoy it. Sometimes I think it’s crazy. Do people really want to see another picture of me carting a load of shopping bags about town?
Each morning I wake up knowing there’ll probably be paparazzi waiting in their cars outside the house. They don’t tend to follow Wayne as much because they know all he’s going to do is leave home, drive off to training at Manchester United and then make the same journey back a few hours later. Whereas they don’t know what I’m up to, so they’ll follow me just in case I’m doing anything interesting. Most of the time I’m really not doing anything very interesting, believe me, but that doesn’t stop them. In fact, some of the photographers are under contracts to capture as many as ten pictures of me per day, so their job is to grab those photos no matter what.
There was one paparazzo who kept on following me all the time. Everywhere I went he was there, trailing me, jumping red lights to keep on my tail and generally acting like a real idiot. One day, when I was with Wayne, he followed us onto the motorway. Wayne is more likely to lose his temper at that kind of thing than I am, so he pulled the car over onto the hard shoulder. The photographer slowed and pulled up behind us. Wayne drove off and the man started following us again.
By now Wayne had had enough, so he pulled up alongside the photographer’s car, asked him what he was playing at, and the two of them started arguing. The photographer just didn’t care. All he kept repeating was that he was just doing his job! Unbelievable!
And there’s nothing you can do to stop them. On another occasion we even drove to a police station and the photographer followed us there. That didn’t make any difference. As long as there’s a camera in the car the police can’t do a thing to help you. As far as the law is concerned the camera means he’s a photographer and not a stalker. How crazy is that?
Sometimes the situation is downright ridiculous. I was in one of the card shops in Liverpool city centre, just before Valentine’s Day, and my mate and I were engrossed in looking through the rows of cards. The next minute, we turn round and the whole shop window is full of people peering in at us. There was a crowd of shoppers, three to four deep, craning their necks to see who was inside Clinton’s card shop. At the front of the pack there were three paparazzi taking pictures of us, while everyone else had just stopped to see what the fuss was all about. Me and my mate just burst out laughing, and I was thinking, ‘Oh, please, I hope I haven’t picked up any dirty cards or anything!’ People had their camera phones out and everything. It was really embarrassing! I felt ashamed to walk out of the shop. ‘You know what,’ I said to my mate, ‘I’m gonna walk out and people will be expecting someone really big to be in here, like Elton John or something, and then I’ll