Eva Longoria, Me and the C Word

Cock.

   

It wasn’t a word I ever thought I would hear being emitted from the perfect mouth of Hollywood actress Eva Longoria – not within the first minute, anyway, should I ever have the privilege of meeting her.  In fact, as we sat down to talk, I merely referred to a complicated, pre-interview situation in which I said, as a passing comment: “Too many cooks” (as in “spoil the broth”).

   

Not understanding my accent, she looked aghast and repeated what she thought I had said. “No, COOKS!” I corrected her. It was an ice-breaker – of sorts. Then, remembering that I had promised to pass on “a big kiss” from a well-known US TV personality, who is a friend of mine and an admirer of hers, I inadvertently said: “And X sends you a big cock.”

   

It just came out (unlike his, which, for the record, I have never seen, so can’t even comment on centimetre/inch/foot accuracy, alas) and what they call a slip of the tongue (I wish) that Eva took in great spirit.

   

Now, I must confess to having fantasised about this individual’s anatomy more than once (X, not Eva), as I started to explain by way of apology (Geez, if I’m in a hole, why don’t I stop digging?), but then I think a great deal about a lot of men’s anatomy. It was just that once the C word and this particular individual’s name were in the same sentence, my brain joined them together in a synergy that seemed totally natural, and the words “big kiss” were doomed never to air.

   

I also put the incident down to extreme stress. Having been promised an “exclusive” with Ms Longoria when I met her UK PR in Portugal, I had delayed my flight back to LA from London, and at my newspaper’s great expense travelled to Spain, where I hung around for a week, awaiting the constantly changing arrangements.

    

The much-anticipated event would take place on Friday. Then Wednesday. Then Thursday. There were interviews and photo-shoots to be done, people to see, rehearsals to take place for the Eva Longoria Foundation event, which was the reason I was there – to give publicity to her. For her charity. For the poor and under-privileged young women and children she helps the world over. Not only was she guaranteed a double page, 2000 word spread, the paper was going to make a substantial donation to the charity (which the Foundation managed to get substantially increased in return for our “exclusive”).

   

The negotiations that followed would bore a mortuary, so I will be brief. Contracts between the star’s representatives and the paper went back and for, and a time was negotiated up from 30 minutes for both the pictures and me -15 each - to 15 for him and 30 for me. I tell you, electing the House of Representatives could not take longer. When the party arrived (having kept us waiting for well over an hour while Ms Longoria did a shoot for the hotel), her people effectively set the timer and told me I had 15 minutes.

  

“I only ever do interviews of 15 minutes,” she sweetly explained, as I spluttered disbelief. Really? Fifteen minutes, for 2000 words?

  

I all but shoved her out on the balcony for the photo shoot while I tried to negotiate more time, but it was all to no avail. Nine hundred seconds was my lot. Take it or leave it.

   

There are two things to do in these circumstances: you politely make your excuses and leave, knowing that the piece will never make the paper, or you take what you’re given and hope that the star lets their guard down and reveals that they are dying of a terrible disease and/or pregnant. Or you can waste five minutes of the 15 you have been allotted on the subject of BCs – which is what I had already done.

   

I had been trying to amass as much information as I could that I was clearly not going to get from her verbally. She is undoubtedly beautiful. So, so beautiful, I began to think that I might renounce BCs of every nation for all time and become a lesbian. However, a few deep breaths and a few good memories (although, not that many, come to think of it) quickly brought me to my senses.

   

Great skin, long eyelashes (albeit false – I just knew I was wasting my money on those eight tubes of Million Dollar Lashes she advertises for L’Oreal), long dark hair, eyes of coal, teeth in which I could see my reflection, a tiny waist, exquisitely dressed, beautiful manicure . . . Oh, God, just give me a one-way ticket to the Empire State Building, so I can throw myself off. Interestingly, though, she is not what I would call sexy. Charming, funny, gorgeous, but it feels like something turned on for the camera, which, given the limitations of 15 minutes, it has to be.

   

So, here I am, sitting opposite the Desperate Housewives Hollywood actress and superstar, who is in Marbella to talk about her philanthropic work through the Eva Longoria Foundation. From the moment she opens her perfectly lip-glossed mouth, she speaks with a fervour and energy that is not only inspired but inspiring. I want to rush out of the penthouse in the five star Gran Melia Don Pepe hotel, where the interview is taking place, and live on dried beans in an African shack and teach English for the rest of my life. Well, not quite, but she makes helping others sound as exciting and gratifying as receiving an Oscar and barbecuing with the Spielbergs on Independence Day.

   

Longoria was one of my heroines when I first moved to LA in 2009. Given that she is just two inches taller than me, I looked to her for my inspiration to acquire the perfect Hollywood shape. I inform her of this and my belief in what I came to call The Eva Longoria Diet. “Really?” she says, eyes orbing into space and smiling like a kid on Christmas morning. “What was it?”

   

It all comes flooding back. A plate of crisps arrived at my table in the five star Beverly Wilshire and I looked at them longingly before asking: Would Eva Longoria eat them? Well, no. You don’t get to be and maintain a size zero, not to mention acquire a perfect mouth that looks as if it has just had a lipstick manicure, by ramming a plate of deep fried potatoes down your throat. So, it was farewell to the crisps. When they brought my English breakfast tea, it arrived with a long dish of Italian sweetmeats and biscuits. Would Eva Longoria eat them? Only if you chloroformed her first and force-fed them.

   

I applied the same rule to all bars and restaurants and looked longingly down their list of pastas. Spaghetti Calamari and Broccoli, Fusilliani alla Trentina, Tarte Con Argosta – all unusual dishes that I had never seen on Italian menus in the UK. And, as I went down the list, I asked over and over: Would Eva Longoria eat it? No, no, no. Just a black espresso for me, please.

   

Asking the question was a guaranteed way to lose weight, and I believed that I had inadvertently stumbled upon the perfect diet: because the answer to the question “Would Eva Longoria eat it?” was always going to be No.

   

I suspected that Eva, like every other thin woman in LA, enjoyed playing with the occasional leaf – without dressing (are you crazy?) – and I perfected the art of steering a leaf around my plate without ever consuming it, while giving the impression that I was stuffing my face. Over the radish, under the yellow pepper, slalom over the red onion – I could make a leaf’s journey around my plate last longer than a Grand Prix. And, by the end of its course, it really did look half consumed. And if the answer to Would Eva Longoria eat it? was No, the answer to Would Eva Longoria drink it? was: You must be insane. Glass of champagne? 150 calories. Dry white wine? 120. You didn’t shrink to the kind of shape that gets blown away in an LA earthquake by consuming empty calories.

   

None of this I could tell her, though, because we were already well into the 15 minutes, so I just said “Move a leaf around a plate”, which seemed to be the gist of it.

   

“Oh, no,” she said. “I eat. I eat a lot. I really love my food.”

   

Dear Lord, I swear we were now well over halfway through my allotted 15 minutes, and we were still no further on than men’s anatomy and lettuce.

  

I managed to excavate the fact that Longoria has used her high profile as an actress to draw attention to the plight of the underprivileged through the Foundation. The Global Gift Gala in Marbella was one of seven events that aim to profile the plight of young women and children around the world, and the tireless efforts not only on the part of Longoria, but of her two friends and business partners, Maria and Alina, have helped so many the world over. The Foundation has two arms – entrepreneurial and educational – and it is, as Tony Blair once said, education, education, education, that is the driving force behind Longoria’s philosophy. She believes that it is this, rather than looks, that is the key to today’s young women. Looking like she does, I am tempted to say: “It’s all very well for you to say that.”

   

She gets most excited when I break the news that Simon Cowell is about to become a father, although she adds that she would keep any daughter of hers away from The X Factor. “I got my education first and had my bachelor’s degree before I became an actor, so I would say that for anybody – woman, young woman, young man. I’m sure Simon will have a unique situation because he’s Simon, but . . . I LOVE Simon, I think he’s an amazing man. I love him.”

   

We were now pretty much at 14 and a half minutes, and there was no news of any pregnancy or break-up, and certainly no offer of a free L’Oreal mascara so that I could turn overnight into Eva Longoria.

   

In terms of non-interviews, this was about as “non” as it was possible to get, and I learned nothing that I could not have already gleaned from the internet and other interviews; unsurprisingly, the piece was never published: looking for 200 words, let alone 2000, was a real push. My paper also dropped the contribution to the charity as a result of the alleged breach of promise (I wonder how many children/women lost out as a result?). There was a bit of comfort in hearing that she liked me and told her people: “I’ve never met a woman shorter than me.” Maybe. But then I’ve never met a woman who finishes in under 15 minutes.

   

At least I got to hear Eva Longoria say “cock”, though; and, I suspect, among interviewers, that probably already puts me at the top of the league.

  

    

Take a Hike? No, Thanks - My Canyon Adventure, Part 2

Reader, I managed him.

  

Yes, two and half hours after planning to take my first LA hike up Runyon Canyon, I have returned home and am enjoying a well-deserved cold beer.

  

Thanks to Google Maps, I was led up some very dangerous, bendy roads with no pavements – all uphill. I may even have been in Canada for all the time it took me to reach the summit.

  

I stopped to ask two women – the only people I saw en route – if I was anywhere close, and they shook their heads with sorrow, informing me that I had at least another hour to go. Or was it a day? Or a week?

  

Anyway, on I trundled and knew I was heading in the right direction when a sign warned me to beware of oncoming reindeer. I knew I had arrived when another told me to beware of rattlesnakes.

  

I saw none, but then I saw no celebrities, either, which had been the point of my going in the first place. No Gerard Butler, no Colin Farrell; not even any celebrity lookalikes.

  

The place was like an overheated Fraggle Rock. Fat people, mad people, loud people, hideous people . . . all humankind was there. And every dogkind, too.

  

It was the dogs I felt most sorry for. All of them were dragging their bodies along, panting, and looking, for all the world, a wag away from rigor mortis. One woman was insistent that she and her companion stop to give their dog some water. “She doesn’t need water!” he yelled. “She’s just being lazy.”

  

All the fears I expressed in my earlier blog were realised. I have two barbecued arms. My bladder nearly burst with the strain of carrying this morning’s tea over seven miles. Yet I am dehydrated.

  

Don’t get me wrong. I love exercise and I can walk up to 15 miles a day, and regularly do. But not in the sun and along a dirt track with no refreshment truck and no public conveniences.

It’s not often that I look longingly towards Downtown LA in the smog, but each time it materialised into view on my trail, I sobbed with relief.

  

Having done five miles uphill, the last two were all down, and when I hit Hollywood Boulevard and spotted the sign for the 217 bus that takes me almost to my door, I wept with relief.

  

I like the buses here. They are not overheated. They don’t give you pains in your back and legs. And you are never more than a couple of stops away from a toilet. Or a beer.

Thanks a bunch to those people who told me to take a hike; after today, I’m telling you to do one, too. Because yes, my hiking days are over, before they have barely begun.

  

And now it’s lunchtime, I am going to settle down in front of the telly with a bowl of home-made spaghetti Bolognese and a glass of Rioja.

I’ve already burnt the calories off, after all.

Maybe I’ll have seconds.

  

   

To Hike or Not to Hike - That is the Question

Okay, today is the day. It really is.

After four years of living in LA, I am finally going to do a hike.

  

There are many people who, I am sure, wish I had done a hike in a very different context; some have even told me that to my face.

But ever since I got here, people have been begging me to walk to Runyon Canyon Park where, I am assured, the views over LA are spectacular.

  

Now, to be honest, I am dubious, as they have very strange ideas about what constitutes a great view here. I come from Wales, where the sea and mountains provide breathtaking views that could easily compete with the best in the world, But here, your friends can drive you two hours to see something they have told you is amazing and then, when you arrive, it’s an average sized rock sitting in a puddle.

  

“Isn’t it amazing!” they cry, staring at the thing barely bigger than a carbuncle. I go on to tell them about Snowdon, Pembrokeshire, the waves crashing onto Aberystwyth sea front on a windy day – but no, they are very happy with their rock, thank you very much, and why would they leave America anyway to travel to a place where the national sport is dragon-slaying.

  

So, I am not holding my breath for any great revelation at the top of the canyon, especially as most reports inform me that whatever view there is will be hidden under the familiar LA smog.

  

But I have been promised something else, something far more important than any view.

Celebrities.

  

Runyon Canyon is the place, especially on Saturdays, where celebrities apparently flock in their smart leisurewear to work their butts off – literally. They don designer gear, full make- up (and not just the women) and Gucci sunglasses to take to one of the three trails – relatively easy, medium, or hard.

  

Already I am stressed, wondering which trail I should take in order to see the most celebs, but think I had better start off with easy, as this will be my first time.

  

I am also worried about what I should wear, as I don’t have much casual gear, and I am not sure that anything in my Issey Miyake Pleats Please collection will survive the sweat that will no doubt be issuing from my every pore.

  

I’m also worried about toilets. I have a very small bladder and once had to empty it at the side of the Brontes’ house in the middle of the Yorkshire Moors, owing to the lack of rest room facilities.

  

And where will I rest along the way? There are apparently no bars and restaurants en route, just a table with a few snacks and water. Won’t I even get a beer for my efforts?

  

Then there’s the issue of the number of dogs who inhabit the place. I am a huge fan of dogs, but large dogs frighten me and I have a pathological hatred of stepping into doggy-do, of which I understand there is a great deal along every trail.

Even the thought of bumping into Gerard Butler is not incentive enough for me to do anything that involves my having to excavate poop from the bottom of my trainers for the next three days.

  

And what if the sun comes out? I have very fair skin, and even wearing Factor 50, I burn easily.

  

Will I be able to get reception on my iPhone up there? I recently went to a celebrity wedding where, because it was being filmed for TV and photographed for a magazine, they took our cell phones from us at the gate. I had such a panic attack, I had to leave the reception at 9pm.

  

Anyway, so far (and it’s only 8.15am, at the present), I am showing willing. I have dyed my hair, which was cut yesterday, and am currently in the process of bleaching my teeth. Very soon, I will be putting on my make-up and choosing my costume.

  

Or I may just keep writing this and decide, after several hours, that I just won’t go.

  

Too tired, too hot, too much to do, too stressed, too much on the telly. Too can’t be arsed.

I’ll let you know.  

  

   

Catching up with the Angel Gabriel - in a Suit

And so, I am finally up to speed with Suits.

My broken heart at having had to delay my trip back to LA was finally mended yesterday when I sat down to watch the four episodes of Suits I had missed when in the UK.

  

There is nothing quite like the excuse of jet-lag to enable you to don a dressing gown and lounge on the sofa with a glass of wine in one hand and the remote in another.

  

The fabulous Patrick J. Adams, who plays Mike Ross, appears to have grown a foot, and now spends more time kissing than talking, which is a good thing for viewers, although less good for the firm, I suspect.

  

Gabriel Macht is even more beautiful than I remember him. The hair and the suits of his character, Harvey Specter, are perfect, every follicle and stitch a tribute to the make-up and costume departments who make this faultless specimen of manhood possible.

  

Then there’s Harvey’s hunger for power – never more impressive and sexy than when his back is against the wall (which brings me to another fantasy, but enough dribbling for one day. But gosh, he is beautiful).

 

It is, quite simply, fabulous TV, and now I will be living for Tuesdays for the foreseeable future. So don’t call, don’t drop in, just leave me to my angel.

  

I’ve also been catching up on Mistresses, which is as laughable as Suits is brilliant. And yet it is strangely addictive. Quite why Joss (Jes Macallan) has chosen to be a lesbian with the clingy Alex (Shannyn Sossamon), when she had a bloke who could get her bra off in one flick of a light switch movement, is anybody’s guess, but she’s still my favourite.

  

Savi (Alyssa Milano) has good taste in necklaces, but why do her eyelashes permanently look as if they are trying to do a runner from her face? Give them a visa and they’ll be off, I’m telling you.

  

April (Rochelle Aytes) is prettiest of the bunch, but it’s a bit of a bummer that her dead husband turned out not to be dead, after all. Still, she should have been grateful for the extra customer in the shop. Has she sold ANYTHING since the series began?

  

And then there’s Karen (Yunjin Kim), who stares into the middle distance while speaking in a voice that is so tiny, it could send a tiger into hibernation. Will they ever manage to excavate a personality? Will she ever get her fringe cut? Will she ever manage to get another patient, now that the only one she ever had is dead?

  

There is not a man in Mistresses to compete with Gabriel Macht, alas, and Dominic (Jason George) is the best of a very mediocre bunch.

  

But he and Savi work in a very odd law firm that is not a patch on Harvey’s Pearson/Whatever-that-English-bloke’s-name-is-in-the-second-half-of-the-title.

  

They never have any clients, never do any work, and have all their mates and spouses popping in at all hours for casual chats.

  

Apart from Savi and Dom’s quickie, there’s no office sex there, either, whereas in Pearson Thingummy, you can’t even go into the photocopying room without ending up with someone else’s sticky DNA on your hands.

  

British actor Max Beesley has now joined the cast as “fixer” Stephen Huntley for a few weeks and he is ALWAYS in the photocopying room. Let’s just say he never emerges with anything in his hands. Not papers, anyway.

  

And here’s the really confusing thing – Gary Cole, who plays Harvey’s nemesis, Cameron Dennis, in Suits, is also ballistics expert Kurt McVeigh and on-off lover of Diane in that other great legal drama, The Good Wife.

  

Anyway, Suits is back, and that’s all I care about.

My Angel Gabriel is flying high once more.

Remembering Blake Snyder - Four Years On

Another Summer of Discontent

Summer is the season of loneliness.

Now, in my mid-Fifties, it’s not often I feel the loneliness that blighted the greater part of my life.

In my 20s, 30s and early (although less so, later) 40s, I used to look at friends with partners and children and fantasise about their perfect lives, while I sat in trains, planes and bars alone, thinking that I had missed out.
  
That all stopped when I hit 50. On the last day of my 40s, I decided to treat myself to a trip to Los Angeles, a city I had visited and loved 30 years previous. I continue to spend most of my time there, loving the work ethic and relishing the TV and film industry that pervades every corner.
  
But, every summer, my heart sinks. Summer is me at 13, when my grandfather died in Wales. I remember the sun and smell of freshly cut grass outside and welcoming its freshness after leaving the dark wood and shadows of his bedroom, sticky Lucozade rings on the bedside table like the patterns my Spirograph made at home.
  
Summer is 1989, the last one I spent with my dad, who died in January 1990: him trying to force Mum to put the spare butter pats from their Plowman’s lunches into her handbag and her refusing because they would melt.
  
Summer is the memory of my childhood holidays in Cornwall as a family: jars of pebbled sweets, whose smooth grey and white surfaces made each one a jewel.

Summer is hacking into the cliffs at Southerndown, near where we lived, and alighting upon a tiny insect, stored for centuries, its legs spread-eagled forever in time.

Summer is late night hot doughnuts and milk at Butlin’s Pwllheli, the joy of watching the wet batter emerge solid and sugary like a life transformed.

Summer is that terrible day in Los Angeles four years ago on August 4th, when I heard that my dear friend and mentor, Blake Snyder, had died.
  
What is it about summer that brings memories to the fore? What is it about those memories that, last night, had me consumed with a loneliness I have not felt for some years, as I sat by myself watching other holiday-makers locked into their own August world?
  
Everyone is away with somebody else. Friends, partners, husbands and wives, children – I feel like the cripple in the Pied Piper of Hamelin, left behind because the Piper has led everyone into the secret holiday mountain -  except me.

Away on work, I sat in the Marbella Club listening to the Hammond style organ playing “I Just Called to Say I Love You.” It had that incessant beat beat beat that these instruments bring to all songs, and, as usual, accompanied by a very mediocre singer who delivers every note at exactly the same pitch.

On the dance floor, a lone couple smooched, separating only when the organ and singer launched into Abba.

Were they in love? Were they high on Sangria? How long had they been together? Had they only just met?

I wanted to know their story, but whatever it was, it made me feel infinitely sad. Suddenly, I wanted to be in a cheap summer dress with bleached blonde hair, being held by a man from whom I would, in all likelihood in daytime, run away from.
  
I tried to think of the disastrous men I have been involved with during summers past (all the names have been changed). Tony, with whom I sat on a table outside a Primrose Hill café and he told me he was falling for me in a big way – and phoned the next day to say he had come out in a facial rash and it was all over.

David, who told me on a hot summer’s day in Paris that I was the brightest, funniest, most wonderful woman he had ever met – but he just didn’t fancy me.

Alan, who enjoyed the five star hotel I paid for one summer in the south of France – and then ran off with Bonnie the nurse from Boston.
  
When I moved to Paris in 2001, I recall sitting on a café terrace in St Michel, alongside the Seine, reading a book, drinking a glass of Rose but feeling sorry for myself, when I rang a friend and she told me who they had round for lunch.
  
In my mind’s eye, I saw a huge ballroom, couples dancing, happy children running round in gingham, dinner plates piled high with every luxury – and then, in the background, I heard: “Look, if you don’t shut up, we’re going home right now!” followed by loud screams.

“I would give ANYTHING to be sitting by the Seine with a book and a glass of wine,” said my friend.
  
I have never been someone who thinks the grass is greener on the other side; I love the side I am on.

In fact, most of the time, I don’t know how anyone can bear not to be me.
  
But there is just something about summer that brings out that little bit of wasteland in me when I recall summers past.

And then, I remember Shakespeare’s Sonnet 18 and these words: “Summer’s lease hath all too short a date”.

For me, it can never be too short.

I comfort myself in the knowledge that it will soon be autumn and, as Keats said: “Season of mists and mellow fruitfulness.”

Oh, yes.