To anyone who loved Catatonia or her solo work, this seemed to represent a
total change in values. Matthews disagrees. "People who really know me
weren’t surprised at all,” she counters of her decision to take part, for a
fee reported to be in the region of £90,000. “I like to surprise myself.
Instead of trundling along a straight road, I like to kick off in different
directions. If you do the same things all the time, you’re not going to
learn anything new about yourself or about the world. The important thing
was that I knew I wouldn’t have to think about anything for as long as I was
there – not even about clothes, as all you have is two identical outfits. So
no phone, computer or guitar, no pen or paper, no responsibility or control.
You’re like characters in a novel, moved around at will. It was exactly what
I needed at the time.”
What she may have needed less was to fall for a fellow contestant. On the show
Matthews came across as appealing, funny and straightforward, a little
bonkers perhaps (though not on the scale of some of her competitors) but
strong and kind. Yet in the presence of the actor Marc Bannerman (best known
for having played Gianni in EastEnders) she seemed vulnerability
itself. When he looked at her, you could sense her melting. When he looked
at the other female contestants, it was as if he had stabbed her in the
heart. That his partner of two years, Sarah Matravers, was also in Australia
to watch on screen the unfolding romantic tension between the two upped the
tabloid tension and prompted a slew of “Love Rat!” headlines (he was the
first to be voted out, by which time Matravers had already flown home in
disgust).
The drama that played out briefly between Matthews and Bannerman before an
audience of millions proved a money-spinner. Industry observers estimate
that to date each will have earned between £500,000 and £750,000 from post-I’m
A Celebrity... media appearances, including a saucy photoshoot Matthews
did for News of the World, something that her hardcore fans seem
willing to forgive. Matthews continues to manage herself but Samuel’s
intervention and advice have proved both timely and lucrative. In addition
to winning some financial stability, she has reclaimed her place in the
celebrity sun, so creating the ideal platform from which to relaunch her
musical career.
But dancing with the red-tops and gossip magazines can be a dangerous game.
Matravers responded by selling her story to the Sunday Mirror, and
hit out at Matthews. It was an unedifying spectacle, all in all, and a
strange one in which to find a credible musician. The uneasy banter between
Matthews and Bannerman in the inevitable OK! Magazine interview that
followed only served to underline that fact. “They have their own
vocabulary,” she says of the title. “It’s like a modern Mills &
Boon, so as long as the people who buy it, myself included, don’t believe
they’re reading the gospel truth… It’s not really that important, is it?”
That may be a question better asked the following morning, when a tabloid
journalist turns up at Matthews’ home with a spray of garage-forecourt
flowers and a tip-off that she is eight weeks pregnant with Bannerman’s
child (she isn’t).
However unlikely a match they might make on paper, anyone who watched the
highlights of their 12 days together in the jungle would have to agree there
was electricity between them. So, was OK! right to claim it was love at
first sight? “Tragic, isn’t it?” she says uneasily. And is there a future
for whatever relationship it is they now have? “Early days,” she replies,
all but squirming. “I don’t really want to go into it.” From which I’d
deduce that a fairy-tale ending is not on the cards, nor Bannerman truly her
prince.
By now we’ve alighted at Port Talbot and have gone in search of Matthews’ car,
left here only yesterday before a business trip to the capital. We find it
with a parking ticket stuck to its windscreen (don’t get her started on the
subject of broken meters or customer service helplines that fail to help)
and take off on the 90-minute drive to her family’s corner of West Wales.
Fittingly for one whose approach to life is that of capability undercut by
recklessness, she is a demon at the wheel. One brother is a rapid-response
driver for the Met, she reveals, and the other is on the payroll of Bernie
Ecclestone. Clearly, it’s in the genes. “Scared?” she asks, catching me
surrogate-braking as we accelerate towards the back of a dallying car on the
outskirts of Haverfordwest. “Just fine!” I attempt, but she isn’t fooled. As
a distraction I ask who her childhood heroine was. “Pippi Longstocking,
because she wore big boots and socks with holes and was independent and
irreverent of the social rules. I was always drawn to misfits.”
The green, green grass of Wales is where she wants her children to grow up
(they will spend school holidays with their father in the US), but is it
feasible for a functioning musician to live this distance from London? “I’m
still trying to discover that for myself. I want my kids to grow up in
Pembrokeshire but I don’t want to spend most of my time away from them,
travelling with work – and I do want and need to work. So let’s see. I hope
that it’s do-able but if it proves impossible then I may be forced to
rethink.”
Her father, a retired surgeon, is anxious for all the hoopla caused by her
Faustian pact with reality TV and the scandal sheets to subside. “He said to
me the other day, ‘Why don’t you just stop singing?’ Well, I know it’s been
crazy, with people [she means paparazzi] hanging round outside the house and
all – yes, here, so far from everywhere – but I just don’t want to. And in
order to keep things going it helps to have a little bit of a profile, just
as long as it doesn’t swing too far into being a celeb-type thing.” This
month she is touring again, fulfilling dates postponed by her entrance into
the jungle. A new album is in preparation, too. “A bit more sophisticated
than anything I’ve done before,” she says of its direction. “Not easy
listening but bordering on it. Sensual. A slow burner. I like it a lot.”
Right now though, there’s the question of her appearance before the
Haverfordwest Ladies Circle, for it is time to emerge from behind that
pillar. Will she prove a nervous speaker? Certainly, but an appealing and
funny one, too; from the other side of the curtain and in the bar of the
Farmer’s Arms, I hear ripple after ripple of sympathetic laughter greet her
every utterance. They love her, but then audiences always have and will.
Cerys Matthews is touring until March 1. Tickets can be bought on her
website, www.cerysmatthews.co.uk
