"The Sport I can't Live Without"

Q "Hello, Dolly!"
May 2002

"Great 'ere innit?" Dispelling her ice Barbie persona, Sophie Ellis Bextor gyrates and bodypops her way through 16 hours in "grey Paree" with geriatric audiences, funsized dancers and Kerry Potter for company.

Words: Kerry Potter
Photos: Steve Read
Article printed May 2002 issue of 'Q' magazine

Proffering a manicured hand and a businesslike smile, Sophie Ellis Bextor greets Q looking more like a teacher from an Enid Blyton novel than a platinum-selling pop starlet with only a couple of years on Britney Spears. Ellis Bextor is in Paris - today more grey than gay - to promote her UK Number 2 single, Murder On The Dancefloor, and her debut album, Read My Lips. She is immaculately groomed in spectacles, a tailored camel-coloured coat and matching court shoes, but all is not well down below...

9.30am Hotel Terrass, Montmartre
"I didn't sleep well last night, I had terrible stomach pains," she declares as we pile into a car to take her to the first of today's appearances, a national radio show. Nerves perhaps? "No, I just ate too much yesterday," she says with an unladylike chuckle. "I had steak tartare for lunch, then salmon tartare for dinner. I don't think I could digest it properly."
Despite being only 22, Ellis Bextor has been making music professionally for some five years. As a Britpop-loving, West London private school girl, aged 15, she hooked up with Billy Reeves, a thirtysomething club DJ, and formed vaguely successful rock band theaudience. Reeves wrote the songs, Ellis Bextor undertook singing and indie pin-up duties, and just as she completed her A-levels, the band were signed. However, two Top 30 hits and a self-titled debut album later, a somewhat depressed Reeves bailed out, and the band dissolved.
Then, in the summer of 2000, Ellis Bextor re-emerged in the unlikely guide of Ibiza house diva, fronting Italian DJ Spiller's giat hit Groovejet (If This Ain't Love). One fame-enhancing chart spat with Victoria Beckham later and she was at Number 1. Her subsequent solo album, Read My Lips, has since shifted 400,000 copies in the UK. "It's all been really lovely," she says. Even the run-in with Mrs Beckham? "That was great fun, very camp," she laughs. "But she did seem to take it a bit too seriously."

10.15am Radio France Inter
Ellis Bextor is here to sing Murder On The Dancefloor during a show called Le Fou Du Roi (translation: The Court Jester). We're led into what looks like a school gym changing room with no windows, but lots of wooden benches and coat hooks. "How glamorous," she smiles, drily.
Her haughty sideways glances to camera and cut-glass cheekbones mean that many have Sophie Ellis Bextor down as an ice maiden.
"I've actively encouraged that," she says. "The longer I can draw out the getting-to-know-me bit the more exciting the dynamic is. I'm not going to show all my tricks just yet."
In person, however, her features are softer, her manner less remote. She laughs easily and chatters incessantly. Her job this morning involves singing along to a backing tape before an auditorium of bemused old people and a gaggle of middle-aged male presenters, who tap fingers approvingly on their pale denim strides.
Afterwards, enquiries are made about the age of the audience. "Oh, they're local people with no jobs," declares the producer, cheerily. "They're old and they smell. In fact, they're nearly dead."

11.45am Car back to the hotel
As the car winds through the angry Parisian traffic down a boulevard of boutiques, the talk turns to fashion. After theaudience split, Ellis Bextor paid the bills by modelling. She hated it. Once, when summoned to her agent's office, she was made to perch on a footstool at the feet of her employer. Unsurprisingly, she lasted just 12 weeks.
Refreshingly for a woman of her age, Ellis Bextor is self-assured about her looks. "I'm a fairly resolved individual," she declares. Good job, too, given the amount of teasing she attracts: Robbie Williams described her visage as "a satellite dish", Frank Skinner enquired "Why the wide face?" at this year's Brit Awards, and "rhombus face" has been bandied around, too.
"Well, I have got a distinctive face shape. And for everybody who thinks I'm the next Audrey Hepburn, there's someone who thinks I'm an alien rhomboid," she says. "You've got to take all of it with a pinch of salt. Frank Skinner apologised afterwards, but I still thought he was a prick."

12.30pm Lunch
Wolfing down a lunchtime cold meat salad, Ellis Bextor ponders whether spending so much time travelling with her East End entourage - tour manager JP and make-up artist Lisa - is turning her "into a Cockney", albeit one who says "ghastly".
"Nah," says Lisa, "it's working the other way round - I'm speaking better. I used to say 'pacifically', now I say 'specifically'. Ellis Bextor still winces at singing "ain't" in Groovejet (If This Ain't Love). "Bad grammar, innit?" she smirks.

4pm TV interview
1-2-3 Saturday, a French version of CD:UK, arrive to interview Ellis Bextor. A fierce light is shone into her face and an argument ensues after the cameraman says she needs more powder on her nose.
"No, your light's too bright - I feel like I'm being interrogated. And I'm not shiny!" she pouts.
Apparently, the song title Murder On The Dancefloor only translates in a very literal way in French. Ellis Bextor struggles to explain that it's not about killing people in nightclubs. "Murder means that it's hard work dancing," she says, demonstrating with a weary-limbed jig. The presenter smiles confusedly, and moves on. "I am told you are very cultivated?"
"You mean cultured," she counters.
"Non, cultivated," he insists. Ellis Bextor rolls her eyes.

5.15pm Soundcheck
Ellis Bextor leads Q into the rehearsal for tonight's showcase performance at the extraordinarily decorated VIP Room on the Champs-Elysées. She will perform seven songs to an invited audience of French music industry types. On arrival, she stares bemusedly at the leopard print walls, hundreds of gnome-sized red velvet armchairs and the pole dancing podiums ("They're for later," she declares enthusiastically).
Some local jobbing musicians are on hand to mime on drums, keyboards, guitar and bass to the backing track. The keyboardist attacks his silent ivories with gusto. The four male dancers - over all of whom Ellis Bextor towers - run through their routine while she jigs awkwardly centre stage.
"I can't take myself seriously doing choreographed routines, I find it really camp," she confides. "And I find dancing to your own music isn't the coolest thing in the world." She is, however, in fine voice, her languid delivery far stronger live than on record.
The set consists of four album tracks plus two versions of Murder On The Dancefloor and one of Groovejet (If This Ain't Love).
"It's all pop music to me," says Ellis Bextor. "From theaudience to Groovejet to my album - they are different styles of music but it's plausible because they're all pop, and pop is brilliant." She pauses. "But then maybe I call things pop when they're not. Maybe pop to me is just things I like first time round and keep liking afterwards."

6pm Shopping
Crowbarring a swift shopping trip into her itinery, Ellis Bextor heads into a shoe shop to try on a pair of vertiginous stilettos.
"I only have one pair of trainers," she says. "And only one pair of trousers. For hanging around the house I usually throw on a dress." Ellis Bextor shares her North London home with 34-year-old boyfriend of five years, lyricist Andy Bond.
"We might help each other finish off songs at home. It's like, I can't think of anything right now, but I'll make us some toast and Marmite and we'll see if we can come up with something."

7pm Back to the hotel for dinner
In the car back to the hotel, Ellis Bextor finds several text messages from her mother, '80s-era Blue Peter presenter Janet Ellis. Mothering Sunday is imminent, and this, says Ellis Bextor, is a hint. Unlike most 22-year-olds, Ellis Bextor is a member of London's exclusive Groucho Club. She's also a member of a similarly exclusive book club, with her mother and friends, which involves regular discussions of a chosen text. All in all, she seems old beyond her years.
"You mean square?" she smiles. "Oh no, I can still be daft. But I like being settled. Maybe my priorities are different to most other 22-year-olds. Maybe I'll get to 30 and start wearing miniskirts and chasing young men..."

10pm VIP Room, Champs-Elysées
"I love Paris, it's sooo glamorous," coos Ellis Bextor diplomatically, as she greets her audience. Her dancers, now attired in suits with "Fabulous Bextor Boys" emblazoned on the back, prance onstage in the wrong place. "They are sooo eager! Chain them back up until the next song," ad-libs their employer. Later they fail to life her up at the right moment. She makes them do it again at the end.
Still, the French men in suits in the audience don't mind. They've been frugging furiously and shouting, "I love you, Sophie!" One declares that Ellis Bextor "will be very famous in France. She is the new Kylie! But not just for gay people!"

2am Dancing
Having completed the required meet-and-greet, Ellis Bextor switches from vin blanc to a bottle of lager and slumps back on a sofa.
"As soon as I'm onstage all nerves evaporate and I become like a school ma'am," she says. "I check that everyone is listening. If I see someone talking I sing at them until they stop."
Several beers later she's in the mood for dancing, despite the DJ committing his own kind of murder on the dancefloor, splicing utterly incongruous records together. To the sounds of We Will Rock You chucked over Kelis's Caught Out There, Ellis Bextor hoists herself up onto a pole-dancing podium and begins gyrating. Lots of French men take photos. One even whips out a camcorder.
Soon a circle has opened up on the dancefloor as a baggy-trewed Parisian fellow starts breakdancing. Ellis Bextor waits her turn before walking into the middle of the expectant onlookers. Chickening out of a headspin, she places one finger on the floor, crouches down and teeters round it on her heels.
"Wahey, I'm 22 again!" she whoops, treating Q to a bodypopping masterclass (seated) during the car journey home. She pauses, recalling her rudimentary French. "Chouette! Super-cool!"

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