In the bar of the Ship, in Solva, all talk is of the Six Nations. A few doors
down at the Harbour Inn, rugby tops the conversational agenda, too, but
across the road at the Farmer’s Arms, a different subject concerns the
soignées members of the Haverfordwest Ladies Circle, newly arrived for one
of their regular fundraising dinners in aid of Withybush Cancer Ward.
Exactly why is Cerys Matthews, former hell-raising rocker and reality TV
star, lurking nervously behind the pillar in the bar? It is not that she is
a stranger to this stretch of the Pembrokeshire coast – her parents have
lived near here for 20 years – but never before has she turned up at one of
these get-togethers.
What the members don’t know is that the chairwoman, Lindsey Richards, whose
child attends the same pre-school as Matthews’ daughter, has roped her in as
tonight’s guest speaker (something of a coup considering the last one was a
vicar). Back when Matthews was a younger, angrier woman, singing songs like Road
Rage and You’ve Got a lot to Answer For with her band,
Catatonia, you could imagine her scaring the living daylights out of this
audience. Now the boot is on the other foot. On our journey down from London
she has reminded herself repeatedly of her opening remarks (how flattered
she is to have been invited, how much she applauds the circle’s efforts for
so worthy a cause). “I used to think I was fiery and full-on but just look
at me now,” she has said of her pre-performance nerves.
So how will Cerys Matthews, 38-year-old single mother-of-two, musician, I’m
a Celebrity… Get Me Out of Here! contestant and reluctant public
speaker, be received? The night is young, a curtain has been pulled across
to guarantee the ladies’ privacy as they dine and we will simply have to
wait to find out. But by rewinding back to a coffee on the 9.45 from
Paddington to Swansea we can at least examine the route that has led her to
top the bill at this uncharacteristic gig.
It is, unhappily, one travelled frequently by those in the public eye. Of
course, there’s nothing new about people finding fame and fortune and then
losing them, but in the updated version of the morality tale that is The
Celebrity’s Progress, rapacious media feed our voyeuristic
tendency by detailing the victim’s every step along this treacherous road.
The Matthews version of this familiar story? It goes something like this…
Act One: Talented newcomer finds Britpop fame with her band and becomes a
tabloid favourite thanks to her gobby, laddish behaviour and heavy partying.
Act Two: The partying takes its toll, star veers off the rails with drink
and drugs, band implodes and rehab beckons. Act Three: The star, now older,
wiser and clean, finds belated happiness in marriage and motherhood and
pursues a quirkier, quieter solo career. Act Four: Divorce leads to
single-motherhood and quirkier direction leads to career doldrums… but hey
presto, reality TV gets things moving again. Act Five: It has yet to be
written and the heroine of this particular drama has everything to play for.
Matthews pinpoints the most important date in her past year as October 3,
2007. It was then that she flew back to Britain with her children, Glenys
Pearl Y-Felin, 4, and Johnny Tupelo Jones, 2, ending a five-year experiment
in living in the US. “I went there initially to get out of the doldrums,”
she says. “I needed time to get over myself, to put all the bad stuff behind
me and to be with people who knew nothing about Catatonia, my rehab or any
of the other rubbish that had been going on [she uses her right hand to
suggest a troubled swirling inside her head].” And so she took a road trip.
“Around the South, sometimes on my own, at other times with friends,
listening to music as I drove by tuning in to local radio stations. That’s
when the idea to actually live there came to me.”
Returning from that trip, Matthews had the idea of making an album of
traditional folk songs, but one that didn’t sound twee. She remembered
hearing that the veteran steel guitarist Bucky Baxter had helped Ryan Adams
when he was in similar need and contacted him. He invited her out to
Tennessee and she was there within days. “So you see, Nashville was an
accident, a whim and an instinct, like everything else I do. It could just
as easily have been Memphis or Atlanta or any place else.” The environment
proved a sympathetic one given her fragile state. “It felt right from the
very start. I was out in the countryside in pretty basic accommodation and,
being without a car initially, would cycle all around the place. The life
was simple but good and Bucky was enthusiastic, introducing me to other
musicians. I quickly made friends and felt at home.”
She also met her husband-to-be, Seth Riddle, a musician and producer on the
local scene. Their romance (they married near Solva in 2003, she riding to
chapel on a tractor-drawn trailer) seemed to be the stuff of
happy-ever-afters. Interviewers meeting him later that year, when she was
releasing her first solo album, Cockahoop, wrote of a quiet, likeable
man who was clearly besotted with his new wife and, by all accounts, central
to her recovery. “Just a lovely guy. Totally sweet,” I’m told by a friend
who got to know him a little. Who knows why things go wrong in a marriage,
other than the two people directly involved, but go wrong they did.
“It had been over for a long time before my divorce came through,” Matthews
says. “Nobody settles down with someone thinking it’s going to end. We’re
all of us in love with the idea of being in love and I don’t ever want to
lose that optimism or, if you’d rather, naivety, that belief in the dream.
You pay for impulsiveness, though. And the thing that was paramount in my
mind was that it got to the point where it was no longer a functional
relationship or a decent place for the children. That ultimately was the
deciding factor. I didn’t break it apart at that point but it was just very
clear to me that a change had to be made.”
When Matthews decides to do something, those who know her tell me, there’s no
stopping her. Looking through the train window as we pull into and out of
Cardiff, she talks of having missed Wales and the sea beyond it in the
months leading up to her return to Britain. “The coastal paths around home
are amazing. You breathe in the salt air and watch the water, the sky. I
walk them a lot and it’s a great way of calming yourself. That’s something I
did miss in Nashville, which of course is landlocked. Instead, I’d just have
to drive around on the interstate. Round and around.”
Did she seek advice from anyone at this point? Her initial response is a tight
smile. “The trouble with someone like me is I just don’t take advice,” she
says almost proudly. “And if someone gives it, I’m liable to go the other
way.” Instead, she looks to friends in similar circumstances. “It’s tough,
it’s really tough, so if I see people managing and managing well, it’s an
inspiration.” That said, the circumstances in which she returned were very
different to those in which she left. Six years ago, though clearly
struggling to overcome addictions and great personal unhappiness, she still
retained the status of pop queen, but late last year, her music, Cockahoop
and its 2006 successor, Never Said Goodbye, though bold and
accomplished, made little impact in Britain. The retro Sixties sound was in
ascendancy and Amy Winehouse (a singer with her own demons) was the name on
everyone’s lips. With no record deal and no source of income beyond any she
might make through touring, things looked bleak for Matthews. Then she met
David Samuel, a past adviser to such acts as Blazin’ Squad, So Solid Crew
and the permatanned Peter Andre.
Andre, of course, had been a participant in the 2004 series of I’m a
Celebrity…, during which he had flirted constantly with the former
glamour model Jordan (Katie Price). Both their fortunes soared on exiting
the show, with their subsequent marriage and every lesser event of their
life together proving to be a licence to print money. Suddenly, Matthews’
name was in the frame as a possible contestant, and sure enough, 34 days
after she touched down in Britain to start a new life, she was taking off
again for Australia’s Gold Coast and reality TV.
It is a beautiful story of survival and proof of the fact that a person with sufficient will and imagination can shape its future or destiny.
Simon , Santiago, Chile