IN a semi-regular feature Sleb Safari likes to call Celebrities: They’re Just Like Us the celebrities fall into two camps - Relatable and Unrelatable. Relatable equals Seal eating a loaf of bread in one sitting, slice by glorious slice. Unrelatable equals Mark Wahlberg getting up at 2.30am every day to work out.
Now Keira Knightley has gone and thrown a spanner in the works with her stories of Chanel and lockdown trampolining as told to Harper’s Bazaar.
Keira is one of the faces of Chanel and at age 17 Sleb Safari was turned down for a job in Exhibit so already that’s a tick in the Relatable category.
Keira has a great story about the first time she met Karl Lagerfeld, having been flown from LA to Paris by Chanel. That’s one huge tick in the Unrelatable category already and we’re nowhere near the punchline.
"I was staying at the Ritz, and when I opened the wardrobe, I found all these Chanel clothes in there. I just thought the room hadn’t been cleaned, so I phoned down to reception to say someone had left their clothes behind, and they said they were for my stay, but not to keep. It’s always a Cinderella moment."
Since then Keira has built up her own wardrobe of Chanel (Unrelatable) and put it to good use during the first lockdown.
“We have a trampoline in our garden, and we decided we were only allowed to wear dresses on it,” she explained to Harper’s Bazaar. Relatable. And cute.
“I put on red lipstick every day, and every bit of Chanel that I have in my cupboard, and my daughter Edie had Chanel ribbons plaited into her hair and fairy wings.” Most definitely Unrelatable.
Keira allowed her husband to join in, providing he wore one of his "array of peacock-coloured Gucci suits". Peacock-coloured tick under Unrelatable.
“I thought ‘What is the point of these lovely things sitting in the wardrobe, when it feels quite apocalyptic and scary outside?’ It felt so important to be really happy for the kids.” Relatable.
Then she moved on to the supermarket shop.
“And so you’d do it, and you’d forget – and then the shopping would arrive and you’d have to wipe it all down before you put it away, do you remember? It got to an extreme when I found these weird, brown apples and my husband said he’d boiled them, because people might have touched them. I said, 'Right, but now we can’t eat them! That was a really weird time, us dressed in really bright clothes, boiling apples!" Relatable.
Her husband also had thoughts on sourcing their veg from regenerative farms during the second lockdown. Keira had her own thoughts.
“...I am not a big root-veg fan, and in these regenerative boxes we were getting – this is so middle-class, I can’t bear it – there were four celeriac. And I hate celeriac. I didn’t realise I could feel so strongly about a vegetable," Keira explained.
One evening her husband suggested they forego a planned takeaway in favour of a celeriac dish. Keira hurled the offending veg at the kitchen floor. 100 per cent relatable.
So, on a scale of Relatable to Chanel ribbons Keira falls somewhere in the middle. Yes, there was a family wearing tens of thousands of pounds of clothing to bounce on a trampoline but at the end of the day she was a parent and a spouse, doing her best, in what is her reality, to keep spirits up during lockdown. Isn’t that what all of us were doing, in our own way?
Bonnie Tyler is done with eclipses
SPARE a thought for Bonnie Tyler whose Twitter notifications exploded last Thursday morning while the rest of us were standing outside trying to spot the partial eclipse.
To those who managed to see a crescent sun with around one third blocked by the moon, Sleb Safari salutes you. All Sleb Safari could see were clouds.
Poor Bonnie Tyler tweeted: “Notifications are blowing up. *checks news* Ah. There’s an eclipse”.
There were very many great replies but the winning entry was Specsavers who responded “Turn your notifications off, bright eyes”.
Howard from Take That might join Strictly, if he can be bothered
SLEB Safari very much appreciated Howard from Take That’s honesty about his singing and work ethic after a stint on The Masked Dancer.
Howard was asked by the PA news agency if he would consider taking part in Strictly Come Dancing and, despite being famous for a 30-year music career Howard said he liked the idea of dancing as “singing isn’t my thing”.
“I’d obviously want to do dancing, because the dancing is the thing and that is my thing and singing isn’t my thing. I can sing, of course, but dancing is my thing.”
Howard says he’s been asked repeatedly to join Strictly “and I’ve always turned it down, because I’ve always said I’m not really sure if I’ve got the work ethic in me to actually be rehearsing”.
So, to recap, singing isn’t Howard’s strong point and he can’t really be bothered with rehearsals and yet he’s a millionaire boyband member.
Sleb Safari is equal parts admiring and baffled.
