JUNE 13 2021

THE GREEN
PARTY
How Carrie Johnson
and friends are
rewilding the Tories
 JUNE 13 2021

the ultimate
wfh challenge
How (on earth) single
mum Aasmah Mir
balances parenting and
home broadcasting,
page 16

8
RELATIVE VALUES cover Story:
32
ISOLATION DIARIES
43
TABLE TALK
The TV presenter Lorraine
Kelly and her daughter, Rosie, going green The photographer Kieran
Doherty documents his parents’
Marina O’Loughlin finds an
Italian feast at a restaurant
on life in the public eye life and love in lockdown she’s walked past for years
How Carrie Johnson

10 38 58
COVER ARTWORK BY TONY BELL FOR THE SUNDAY TIMES MAGAZINE. THIS PAGE: JAN FRANKL, GETTY IMAGES

and friends are rewilding

the Tories, page 20

THE INTERVIEW: KEVIN HART The Green Power List: BLOOMING TASTY A LIFE IN THE DAY
Jonathan Dean hears why the meet the movers and Easy recipes to celebrate the The UK’s only Lego certified
world’s highest-paid comedian eco-shakers trying to arrival of summer — just add professional, Kevin Hall, on
has had it with cancel culture save the planet, page 26 flowers. By Skye McAlpine his enviable life in pieces

Plus P7 Matt Rudd | P46 Will Lyons on wine | P48 Farmer Clarkson | P50 Driving: Richard Porter reviews the Toyota Supra

©Times Newspapers Ltd, 2021. Published and licensed by Times Newspapers Ltd, 1 London Bridge Street, London SE1 9GF (020 7782 5000). Printed by Prinovis UK Ltd, Liverpool. Not to be sold separately

The Sunday Times Magazine • 5

 MATT RUDD
What does freedom feel like?
First-degree sunburn
We’ve gone from drowned rats to lobster-faced party animals. Another bottle?
W
hen it comes to tables and
seats in restaurants and bars,
I am not lucky. My name is
never down, they do not know
who I am, I will be by the toilet
or the fire exit and they’re
very sorry but they’re full tonight and the kitchen just
closed. Last orders! At the theatre I get the seat in front
of the short angry person. On the plane I’m behind the
guy who reclines before the chicken or beef. Not lucky.
So imagine my sheer, joyous disbelief when, after
a mere 40 minutes on the sunniest day of the year
outside a stylish new beach bar in Hove, the waitress
who had looked dubious when I’d said I hadn’t reserved
but was there any chance of a table for six, came over,
smiled and said: “Follow me.”
And I followed her and my party followed me and we
all expected some wobbly trestle table by the bins but
behold, the nicest spot in the place — outdoor sofas
looking onto the beach, proper Ibiza VIP — all for us.
“This one?”
“Yes. I’ll be over with your menus shortly.”
“Are you sure?”
“Ssssshhh,” shushed Harriet, who is familiar with my
luck, and for the rest of the afternoon we drank and ate
and million-people-watched.
After the first glass of wine I realised what had
happened. It wasn’t my luck that had changed, it was
the entire hospitality industry. Last summer the most
sophisticated al fresco option was a hastily erected pub
marquee. This summer it’s completely different. Across
the land come excited whispers about new things in old
drinking haunts — there’s a giant bell tent in the pub
garden, the whole street’s been turned into an outdoor
restaurant, have you heard about the champagne
igloos behind the Coach & Horses? In London — not
Ibiza or Singapore — a mad architect has built a “sky
CHARLIE CLIFT FOR THE SUNDAY TIMES MAGAZINE
pool” between two apartment blocks. Ten floors up you
No, I haven’t put
sunblock on. I’m too
busy sneering at people
with no sunblock on
can swim from one sky bar to another. Ridiculous.
The horrific thought of another kink in the roadmap
has spurred them into future-proofing action. Along
this particular beachfront there are now dining pods,
brunch cabins, roof terraces, lounge terraces, so many
terraces. Someone’s even got hold of some cable-car
gondolas — eBay’s great, isn’t it? — and converted them
into private dining rooms. What’s actually happened,
I conclude after the second glass of wine, is that we’ve
become Mediterranean. How glamorous.
After the fourth glass I realise this is not true. Down
here everybody is drinking and nobody is wearing
sunblock — the exact opposite of Mediterranean. Some
of them might be sitting on swanky sofas next to potted
palms but that doesn’t mean they aren’t hammered
and hospital-red. What is wrong with these people,
I wonder as I pour another glass. Don’t they realise
they’ll spend the next three days in screaming agony?
Last month an unhelpful finance company worked
out that we each need to drink 124 pints this summer
to save the nation’s food and beverage industry. Clearly
some people have decided to do this in one weekend.
Don’t focus on the new research from Imperial
College London that found even moderate alcohol
consumption is linked to reduced brain matter volume,
increased heart ventricle mass and higher levels of fat
in the liver. Focus instead on the theory, postulated by
the philosopher Edward Slingerland in his new book,
Drunk, that by causing humans “to become, at least
temporarily, more creative, cultural, and communal…
intoxicants provided the spark that allowed us to form
truly large-scale groups”. We have booze to thank for
civilisation. Focus on that.
It’s hard, though, as a vermilion woman relieves
herself between two beach huts without spilling her
pint and the ashen remains of a stag party chase a
billowing L-plate into the waves. This is our new
civilisation, I think, snootily. Going for the
Mediterranean passeggiata and falling short, literally.
“Your neck’s very red,” Harriet says as I empty the
bottle. “Haven’t you put any sunblock on?” No, I’ve
been too busy sneering at people who haven’t put
any sunblock on. And as I write this several days
later, the pain level is now down to somewhere
between Singing Detective and English Patient.
And it was worth it n
@mattrudd
The Sunday Times Magazine • 7
RELATIVE VALUES
Lorraine Kelly &
Rosie Kelly Smith
The TV presenter and her daughter on Mum being a pin-up and joining Celebrity Gogglebox
Lorraine
Rosie was always a very easy child. People talk about
their babies not sleeping and it’s a nightmare, and then
the terrible twos, and we were waiting for it. And then
we were waiting for the problems at primary school, the
teenage rebellions; and it just never came, none of it.
Don’t get me wrong, we have had a few clashes, but
I can’t remember us ever having a proper fight.
Rosie’s an only child. I had her when I was a little bit
older, 34 I think, so I’d established myself before she
came along. It would have been great if we’d had more
children — I had a miscarriage when Rosie was six —
but we never went down the road of IVF or adoption;
we just felt awfully lucky to have one really happy kid.
We lived in Berkshire until she was 11, and then
moved back up to Scotland, where Steve [Smith, her
husband] and I are from, and settled in Dundee. I spent
most of my time travelling back and forth to London for
work, and so Steve was the one who watched over Rosie
most, made her dinner every night, made sure she did
her homework. I was the parent coming back with
presents and magazines and talking about silly things.
When she went to university to study journalism, it
wasn’t too far away, in Edinburgh, but I still remember
dropping her off in her tiny room in her halls and crying
all the way home. And then, after university, she went to
live in Singapore for three years. That was hard, but of
course you have to let your kids go, don’t you?
I’ve been on TV all her life [Kelly began her TV career
as a reporter for TV-am in 1984], so it was never a big
deal for Rosie. When she was wee she couldn’t
understand why her mum was in a box in the corner
of the living room. But nobody cared who I was back
home. Who was that Olympic rower? Steve Redgrave,
that’s it. His kids were at the same school, and that was
much more interesting to them than Rosie’s mum.
I’ve been lucky. People are almost always nice to me,
but when you’re in the public eye you have to accept
that people are interested in what you do and what
happens to you. When we took the decision to take
“Her fame has never been awkward
for me. She’s not gone on reality TV,
never made an arse out of herself ”
8 • The Sunday Times Magazine
HMRC to court, it was a horrible, draining experience.
[In 2019 Kelly received a £1.2 million tax bill as an “ITV
employee”. She disputed the figure and argued that she
was a freelancer. The judge ruled in her favour, calling
her a “self-employed star”.] But they’d made a mistake.
They hadn’t taken into account all the taxes we had
actually paid. We had a strong case and we won, and
what’s been amazing since is that it’s given a lot of hope
to people going through a similar experience — not
people on TV, not rich people, but people who work
for themselves. Rosie was very supportive to me
throughout all of that.
We’re working together now too, me and Rosie,
doing our podcast and Celebrity Gogglebox, sitting on
our bums watching telly. Happy days! I love doing our
podcast. Much of my job on TV is to talk to people for,
like, seven or eight minutes, so to talk to someone for
longer is a joy. Rosie is the one who asks the interesting
questions that make people think. She asked Tim Peake
[the astronaut] about being bored up there.
We’re very close but I’m still Rosie’s mum, right? I’d
love to think she tells me everything, but of course she
doesn’t. You never told your mum everything, did you?
I certainly didn’t. But we’re in her corner. If she’s ever in
trouble, if she ever needs anything, she just has to call
us. She knows that.
GOT YOUR BACK
Top: Rosie, 26, and
Lorraine, 61, outside
Television Centre
in west London.
Right: Rosie as a
toddler with dad
Steve and Lorraine
 Rosie
I remember being in central London with my mum
once. I was still wee, maybe six or seven. Mamma Mia!
had just come out and we were at the premiere, and all
these people wanted Mum’s autograph. At that age it
was all a bit overwhelming, but then Mum being on TV
is all I’ve ever known. Fortunately, her fame has never
been awkward for me. She’s not gone on reality TV,
never made an arse out of herself. Of course, some guys
at my school did fancy her, and they were very clear
about it, but I just took it as a compliment.
I’m not always a great judge of character, but my
schoolfriends were, and sometimes they’d tell me that
people only wanted to be friends with me because of
ANNA BATCHELOR FOR THE SUNDAY TIMES MAGAZINE. COURTESY OF ROSIE KELLY SMITH
who Mum was. I remember once someone owed me
20 quid, and when I asked for it back they said: “Oh, but
you can afford it.” That’s not how you treat people, is it?
After Mum miscarried, we never spoke about it. I do
remember it happening, though. She was sitting on the
stairs and just fainted, and then suddenly we were in
the ambulance and I had no idea what was going on. It
was only when I was 15 and Mum’s memoir [Lorraine:
Between You and Me, published in 2008] came out that
I read all about it for the first time. Even then we didn’t
discuss it, but in some ways I don’t think we needed to.
So it was always just the three of us — and our
dog, Rocky. We were close, but not best friends or
anything. Your mum is your mum; it’s a completely
different relationship. Because she travelled so much
for work, my dad was the one I was with most, the
one I’d occasionally fall out with — and quickly make
up with — rather than her. They’re both very down-to-
earth and humble. If I ever behaved badly, it would have
been immediately knocked out of me, but I don’t think
I ever really did. They took my phone off me only once,
I think — a Motorola pink flippy one — but I can’t even
STRANGE HABITS remember why.
I don’t think I’ve gone a day without speaking to
Lorraine on Rosie Mum. We spoke all the time while I was in Singapore,
As a child, she loved and they came to visit, and now that I’m back in
strong tastes. She’d England, regularly, especially now that me and Mum
eat lemons. I’ve are working together. On our podcast, I basically just sit
got a picture of her back and watch her, taking notes. She’s so good at what
sucking a lime she does, and you can’t compete with that.
Since university I’ve written for magazines and done
Rosie on Lorraine a bit of broadcast work, but I’m still not entirely sure
Every night she what I want to do. Mum has encouraged me to decide
packs a bag for the on my career path maybe once a week for ten years now,
next morning for but there’s no real pressure there. As long as I’m happy.
work, with all the There’s no pressure for me to settle down, either. That
things she needs. said, Mum did an interview with a women’s magazine a
It always happens few years ago — I must have been in my early twenties,
after dinner, and before I was with my boyfriend, James — and she said
she announces that in it, “I can’t wait to be a grandmother!” I just thought,
she is “away to do “Well, we could have had a chat about that ourselves
my ceremony” before she went and told somebody else, no?” n
Interviews by Nick Duerden
Photograph by Anna Batchelor
Celebrity Gogglebox is on Fridays at 9pm on Channel 4
and All 4. To download What If ? With Lorraine & Rosie,
visit pod.link/lorraineandrosie
The Sunday Times Magazine • 9
 “ I say this humbly,
but I’m as talented
as f***. I’m really
good at what I do”
Kevin Hart
The world’s highest-earning comedian
THE
K
evin Hart is the highest-earning stand-up
MAGAZINE
in the world right now, and the next
highest — Jerry Seinfeld — isn’t even
INTERVIEW close. Over 16 months from September
JONATHAN 2017, Hart’s Irresponsible tour filled 119
DEAN
arenas around the world , including six in the UK.
Meanwhile, as an actor, his prolific output of comedy
blockbusters such as Ride Along and Night School have
made more than $4 billion at the box office. “I’m
extremely attracted to business,” he tells me, adding
later that he thinks he could be a billionaire by the
time he’s 45. He turns 42 next month and is worth
$200 million, so he has some work to do. But work is
his thing and he lacks neither confidence in his
abilities nor motivation.
Born in Philadelphia in 1979, Hart was raised by his
single mother, Nancy, while Henry, his drug-addicted
father, was in and out of jail. His older brother, Robert,
was kicked out of the house and legally emancipated
from Nancy after committing a series of crimes
including drug dealing and theft. Desperate, perhaps,
to avoid the same happening to him, Hart studied
hard and graduated from high school. While he was
working as a shoe salesman a friend suggested he try
an open-mike night and he realised he could be funny
for money. His freewheeling style is like Richard Pryor
after a focus group — they share an energy, but Hart
feels less unhinged, more practised, with skits ranging
from family-friendly jokes to full-on X-rated rants.
He is an elaborate, physical performer and that is his
appeal to his global audience — he is raw, he is rude
and he is very funny.
His next film, Fatherhood, is a departure from all of
this. He plays a man left to raise his daughter alone
when his wife dies after giving birth and it will surprise
many to see this brash loudmouth conveying the
PHOTOGRAPH numbness of grief very convincingly. “I say this humbly
JAN FRANKL — but I’m as talented as f***,” he says, which is not him
10 • The Sunday Times Magazine
being arrogant, more what he considers to be an honest
reflection of his skills. “I’m really good at what I do.”
Hart is speaking from a hotel room in Budapest,
where he is making a film in which he plays a “military-
trained specialist”. To show that he can do the work
better than anyone else — which is what he always
wants to do — he overprepared for the role, training
with US Navy Seals. It shows — he fills a tight white
T-shirt and looks more athlete than comedian. He is
also the most professional celebrity I’ve met over
Zoom, with big headphones and a studio microphone
set up. Most of his peers turn up with a bad connection
and hope for the best, but Hart does not leave things
to chance. Off screen he types away on his phone,
messaging whoever, yet somehow he never seems to
drop his attention from our interview. It is almost as if,
rather than one big brain, he has four smaller ones, so
he can split focus between his multihyphenate career
and his family back in California.
Financially, then, he is doing well. But his commercial
success in film has so far failed to translate into any sort
of critical acclaim — something he claims not to care
about. It was all smiles and laughter when Jimmy Fallon,
The Tonight Show host, joked: “You’ve made so many
films in the last few years, have you ever thought of just
slowing down and making one good one?” But then
there’s the story of the critic who wrote a scathing
review of one of his films and received, from Hart,
a cardboard cut-out of the comedian plus an $8,000
bottle of wine. I’m tempted to write, “Kevin Hart
drowns cats!” to see what turns up in the post, but he
claims that gift was just a one-off.
“I’ve only had two good movie reviews,” shrugs the
star of more than 60 films. “It doesn’t bother me. I’m
no stranger to negative feedback.” So why send the
expensive wine? What point was he trying to make?
“It was a nudge,” he says. “This guy always wrote
something bad and he has to realise these movies
 JAN FRANKL FOR THE SUNDAY TIMES MAGAZINE. WITH SPECIAL THANKS TO THE FOUR SEASONS HOTEL GRESHAM PALACE BUDAPEST, KEVIN DUTTON STUDIO

The Sunday Times Magazine • 11


Right: with his wife,
Eniko, and children
Heaven, Hendrix
and Kenzo, 2019.
Below: with his new
baby, Kaori, in
February; on his
Irresponsible tour,
2017; with Ice Cube
in Ride Along, 2014
make hundreds of millions; there may be a following
attached to stuff I do. But the bigger that you get the
more people poke at you. I don’t know why. The road to
success is amazing. Then you get there and opinions
about you grow.”
Opinions grow and personal histories are raked
through. In 2018 Hart was announced as the host of the
Oscars ceremony; a huge accolade for an entertainer.
But there was an immediate backlash as homophobic
tweets he had sent nearly ten years previously — plus
some dubious old stand-up material — resurfaced.
The tweets contained offensive references to Aids,
while a routine from 2010 featured the quip, “Being a
heterosexual male, if I can prevent my son from being
gay, I will,” which was followed by a joke about knocking
his son to the ground. The Oscars organisers asked him
to apologise. He refused and said that he had addressed
it in an interview in 2015, when he said he would no
longer tell that joke, and that he had also apologised
— even if said apology proved difficult to unearth.
Faced with a rising tide of anger, he stepped down
from the ceremony and issued a statement: “I sincerely
apologise to the LGBTQ community for my insensitive
words from my past.” It was an extremely fraught and
tricky time. Gay people associated with his company
HartBeat Productions felt that they had to justify
working for him. A few weeks later he apologised again
and said that was that.
Today he tells me: “If people want to pull up stuff,
go back to the same tweets of old, go ahead. There is
nothing I can do. You’re looking at a younger version
of myself. A comedian trying to be funny and, at that
attempt, failing. Apologies were made. I understand
now how it comes off. I look back and cringe. So it’s
growth. It’s about growth.”
His latest stand-up show, the aptly named Zero F***s
Given, was released on Netflix in November and has
already been viewed more than 21 million times.
“I mean, I personally don’t give a shit about it,” he says
of cancel culture. His raised eyebrows suggest he really
BACKGRID, GETTY IMAGES, SHUTTERSTOCK
“
There’s nothing I can
do about old tweets.
Apologies were made.
I look back and cringe”
means that too. “If somebody has done something truly
damaging then, absolutely, a consequence should be
attached. But when you just talk about … nonsense?”
He flicks his hand dismissively. “When you’re talking,
‘Someone said! They need to be taken [down]!’ Shut the
f*** up! What are you talking about?” On stage he is full
of movement, and he is now chopping at the air wildly. It
feels like the start of a routine. Except he’s deadly serious.
“When did we get to a point where life was supposed
to be perfect? Where people were supposed to operate
perfectly all the time? I don’t understand. I don’t expect
perfection from my kids. I don’t expect it from my wife,
friends, employees. Because, last I checked, the only
way you grow up is from f***ing up. I don’t know a kid
who hasn’t f***ed up or done some dumb shit.”
He seems genuinely fed up. “I’ve been cancelled,
what, three or four times? Never bothered. If you allow
it to have an effect on you, it will. Personally? That’s not
how I operate. I understand people are human. Everyone
can change. It’s like jail. People get locked up so they can
be taught a lesson. When they get out, they are supposed
to be better. But if they come out and people go, ‘I’m not
giving you a job because you were in jail’ — then what
the f*** did I go to jail for? That was my punishment
— how do you not give those people a shot? They’re
saying that all life should be over because of a mistake?
Your life should end and there should be no opportunity
to change? What are you talking about?” He points
forcibly at me. “And who are you to make that decision?”
Though he claims not to be bothered by cancel
culture, he does admit that comedy has changed
because of it. He started in stand-up in the late 1990s
with the stage name Lil Kev the Bastard, before his first
big comedy special, I’m a Grown Little Man, took him
to new heights in 2009, with cathartic jokes about his
stature: he is 5ft 2in. Back then the circuit was
unfiltered, he says, but now comics feel censored and
have lost the freedom once attached to their craft.
“You’re thinking that things you say will come back
and bite you on the ass. I can’t be the comic today that
I was when I got into this.”
But if he is not, as he says, affected by the persistent
threat of cancellation, why change the comedy he does?
“It’s not necessarily about cancel culture,” he elaborates.
“It’s backlash. It’s about the intent behind what you say
— there’s an assumption it’s always bad and, somehow,
we forgot comedians are going for the laugh. You’re not
saying something to make people angry. That’s not why
I’m on stage. I’m trying to make you laugh and if I did
not make you laugh I failed. That’s my consequence.”
I mention how, after the Oscars mess, he said he
would only get on that stage when he figured out how
to win an actual award. He nods. Is Fatherhood the type
of project he meant? “Life has a funny way of working
itself out, right?” he says. “A lot came from that
moment. Lessons were learnt. Insight. So much came
my way that I take it as a good thing that happened in
my life. If I do get to that stage? Great.” He shrugs.
“If I don’t? Great. Will it be in a hosting manner? No.”
There is a scene in Fatherhood in which Hart’s
character, Matt, goes into his daughter’s school because
she has been told she cannot wear trousers. The teacher
asks: “What if a boy wanted to come to school dressed
in a skirt?” “Well, that’s that boy’s business,” Matt
replies. “It’s the 21st century!” Which is exactly the kind
of acceptance the actor has been criticised for lacking.
“Yes, yes,” says Hart, pre-empting my question.
“But the crazy thing is that was in the script. It’s
The Sunday Times Magazine • 13
 a well-written line, because our job is to help [a child]
truly feel like they can be themselves. It’s not our job to
prohibit them.” He knows how people might take the
scene — a not-so-subtle attempt to prove he isn’t the
bigot he has been accused of being. “But it’s a message
the world needs,” he sighs. “The importance of support.”
A
Right: with Melody s a child Hart shared a one-bedroom flat
Hurd in the new film with his mother that had tape on the floor
Fatherhood. Below: to catch cockroaches. Part of the reason
as a boy with his late that he works so hard must be because of
mother, Nancy; in where he comes from. Though now
recovery from back reconciled, the relationship with his dad was tough —
surgery after a car “I love him, there’s no grudge. I don’t have the time to
crash in 2019 find anger” — while his beloved mum died when she
was 56. He says people born with money take it for
granted. Hart takes nothing for granted. His focus now
is on creating generational wealth for his family: wife
Eniko and four children — teens Heaven and Hendrix
from a first marriage, who split their time between
parents, toddler Kenzo and baby Kaori from the second.
In 2014 emails from Sony Pictures were leaked as part
of a cyberattack on the company. In the deluge of leaked
correspondence it emerged that Clint Culpepper,
a production executive, had called Hart a “whore” in a
message to the boss, Amy Pascal. Hart was negotiating
more money to promote a film on his social media
channels, in an era before that was built into contracts.
“I don’t consider that being a whore,” Hart shrugs,
as he so often does. “I just consider that understanding
your brand. The assumption of ‘money whore’ is that
needing money is a bad thing. It comes with the
assumption everybody is OK because you are OK.
There’s a high level of ignorance attached to that.”
Hart never has to work again, but he continues to
travel the world, touring his routines and shooting
films. Yet he talks about the importance of close-knit
family and how, like wealth, that was something he did
not have growing up. He was in a serious car crash in
2019 in which the vehicle veered off the road and down
an embankment. As a passenger he sustained serious
back injuries and that only increased his sense that
“it can all go away”. Now he wants to prioritise the
important things. Not money, he says, but family —
being with them on a day-to-day basis. Does he, then,
see the disconnect between having the home life he
so cherishes and being away so much for his work?
“Well, I do it in a way that makes sense,” he says,
a little put out. “So if I do a movie for a couple of
months, if I’m in the States, I fly home every weekend.
Or the family come out. If I’m touring I might just
PHILIPPE BOSSE / NETFLIX, CAPITAL PICTURES, INSTAGRAM / KEVINHART4REAL / RUCKAS
do Friday, Saturday and Sunday, so I’m at home all
week. Maybe I’ll take two months off and then be
home with the family.”
In 2017 Hart publicly admitted to cheating on his
wife, Eniko, after a friend used a sex tape to blackmail
him. Hart did not pay, but came clean to Eniko, who
stuck by him. “Yeah, we’re close,” he insists. But can’t
Heaven and Hendrix find out all the details, sordid and
He once sent an $8,000
bottle of wine to a critic
who wrote a scathing
review of one of his films
otherwise, of their father’s life by going online? “Yeah,
but we’re fine,” he reiterates with added buoyancy.
“There are no secrets. You can’t be that way today.
There’s too much floating around and a high
percentage is bullshit, because that is what the internet
does. It creates, spreads so fast that you’re playing a
game of what’s true and what isn’t. But that should
never happen in your home.”
There is no doubt that Hart is extremely unflappable.
This might be because he talks of himself not so much
as a person sometimes but a project — as though Kevin
Hart is just another part of the Kevin Hart empire. He is
so in love with his HartBeat Productions company that
he can come across a little Gordon Gekko — “I love the
CEO lifestyle. World of VC. Investing. Creating entities
and IPs.” He also makes motivational audiobooks —
“I’m having a lot of fun in the literature space” — and
even has a young adult novel out this week: Marcus
Makes a Movie, about dreaming big. “I have navigated
it correctly,” is how he describes his controversy-laden
career and, to be honest, you can chuck so much water
his way — poor reviews, Oscars, car crash, Sony, sex
tape — but he just remains the duck’s back.
There is no doubt, though, that his apologies can
sound more like explanations — as if, deep down, he
really just wants to prove he was right all along. Or,
at least, to show that there was a reason for whatever
happened at the time. He was young. The scene was
different back then. He’s grown since. Yet there is
sincerity here, and persuasiveness, not to mention
a willingness to address anything he is asked, which,
in a world full of dubious Hollywood apology and
question dodging, is not only refreshing, it is rare.
“If there’s a message to take from anything I’ve said,”
he concludes, “it’s that in this world of opinion, it’s OK
to just disagree. It’s OK to not like what someone did
and to say that person wasn’t for me. We are so caught
up in everybody feeling like they have to be right and
their way is the only way. Politics is f***ed up because,
if you don’t choose our side, you’re dumb.”
He is gesticulating now, hands like a conductor,
building up to a crescendo. “It’s a divide. It’s f***ed
up. But I’m not about to divide. I don’t support the
divide!” His voice is rising. It squeaks. This is how he
works in his big arenas. “I put everybody in the f***ing
building,” he continues. “We all come into this
building Kevin Hart is in and we all laugh. I bring
people together — like it or not.” n
Fatherhood is released on Netflix on Friday.
Marcus Makes a Movie by Kevin Hart is published
by Random House on Tuesday at £10.99
The Sunday Times Magazine • 15
 HUSH
DARLING,
MUMMY’S
LIVE
ON AIR
Can you host a national radio show from your bedroom
while your five-year-old daughter gets ready for school?
Single mum Aasmah Mir found out the hard way.
Photographs by Tom Barnes
T
he eight o’clock news starts
and I leap out of my chair and
open my bedroom door. My
five-year-old daughter has
been listening at the keyhole
and promptly falls into the
room, Del Boy-style. Luckily
she finds this hilarious and
does not cry; and thankfully I remembered
to put my microphone on mute.
This is what happens when you become
a single parent overnight but you are also
one half of a national radio breakfast
programme. The show must go on — well,
at least till 10am. You just have to broadcast
from your bedroom while your daughter
sleeps on the other side of a very thin wall.
And you have to pray to all the gods that
she doesn’t wake up and wander in,
shouting about hard poos or lost unicorns.
Yes — please let her stay in bed till her
alarm goes at 7.30, at which
point help (either her father
or a relative parachuted in
for a few days) is on hand to
get her up and off to school.
Throughout the
pandemic I had managed to
avoid working from home. At
Radio 4 my co-presenter Richard
Coles and I slowly distanced ourselves
from each other, ending up at desks on
opposite sides of the studio, waving
maniacally and relying on hand signals
and bits of paper. At Times Radio, which
launched last June, my co-presenter Stig
Abell and I have always kept near enough
two metres apart and were later separated
by plastic screens. But through it all I
thanked my lucky stars that I never had to
work from home, which to me sounded
In the Times Radio studio with co-presenter Stig Abell before relocating to her bedroom
Just “getting a nanny” isn’t an option when you leave
for work at 4am and you don’t have a spare room
18 • The Sunday Times Magazine
excruciatingly boring and
unfeasible as a double act.
However, life comes at
you fast and at the end of
March I separated from my
husband of 14 years. When a couple
splits, the children almost always,
rightly or wrongly, stay with the
mother in the marital home — and this
has been the case for us.
My marriage ending coincided with the
beginning of my daughter’s two-week
Easter break, so I took the time off to be
with her and steady my spinning head. But
even then I could see the hideous problem
looming of how I was going to get back to
work and who on earth was going to
look after her at 4am.
My decision to opt for a dream
job at a crazy time of the day
began to feel like a nightmare. So
I asked on message boards and
nanny WhatsApp groups and
people I knew locally. Come
on, there must be someone
who wants to come to my house
at 3.30am and lie on my hard sofa
till my daughter wakes up for
school? But no, strangely no one
was enticed. I had run out of ideas.
In a panic I asked for advice on
Twitter. The response was staggering.
Actual practical suggestions flooded in
from a whole community of women who
for years have been dealing with working
really weird hours — 3am starts or
overnight — and being single parents. One
journalist whom I don’t even know offered
me and my daughter her large spare room
so that I could share her nanny. Another
explained how she sleeps on her sofa so the
nanny can use her bed. One moved her
mother into her house from 300 miles
away, presumably with her permission.
Another told me that her estranged
husband would arrive at the house at 6am
to do the childcare handover.
All these women understood that just
“getting a nanny” wasn’t an option when
you leave for work at 4am and you don’t
have a spare room. But the thing that kept
coming up again and again, from senior
female journalists who get up early, was: you
have to work from home. It’s the only way.
When my bosses realised my
predicament, they moved mountains to
accommodate me. But I am one of the
lucky ones. Many women who messaged
me said that they had to give up their jobs
and do something with more traditional
hours so they could be the main carer.
Something had to give and in the end it
was their careers.
And so at 6am on Monday, April 19,
I nervously started broadcasting a national
breakfast show from an ironing board in
my bedroom — symbolic or what? — with
my daughter asleep, fingers crossed, in
the next room. I was keenly aware that I had
to do a good job, focus on my interview
with whichever government minister was
up that day, with one ear listening out for
any crying from next door. I had to show
that co-presenting a breakfast programme
from home could work, while also
praying that my daughter wouldn’t
wake up and march in shouting for
her breakfast. My stomach was
churning, my voice low, my
eyes fixed on the door
handle. But, bless her, she
slept that morning, and the
next, and the next — so
spooked by my warnings that she
was not to come out of her room
until her alarm went. But every morning
that was the longest hour and a half. The
feeling of intense vulnerability and stress
— that you are doing two very important
things at once. You are responsible for
this small child’s care and wellbeing,
and responsible for presenting a news
programme competently. But we did it.
We are an invisible team. She sleeps,
I speak. That’s the deal.
By the second week she was dying of
curiosity to see what was going on behind
Mummy’s door and why she was talking
to an ironing board. She started pushing
little notes through. “We are going now
bye bye love you so much”, “When are you
going to be finnished?” and “My porrij was
apsolootely horrid”.
 LOW-RES
FINDING THEIR FEET With just a thin wall between Aasmah and her daughter, the ground rules of home broadcasting were soon flouted
By week three she could contain herself
no longer and was striding in, balancing an
unsolicited plate of toast for me, finger on
lips and waving silently at the production
team on the camera.
TOM BARNES FOR THE SUNDAY TIMES MAGAZINE. RICHARD POHLE / TIMES NEWSPAPERS LTD, ALAMY, GETTY IMAGES
So we developed some new rules.
“Mummy will come down and see you
quickly at 8 and 8.30 when the news is on,
OK?” But once I forgot to come down at
8.30 and when I remembered at 8.45 she
looked so sad and forlorn that I almost cried.
She then went through a phase of
illegally bundling in just before the 8.30
news with a brush and hairbands so I could
do her ponytails. Once I was mid-interview
when she slid onto my lap, so all I could do
was ask questions, then mute my mike for
the answers while looping unicorn
hairbands through her hair. You didn’t get
that in John Humphrys’s day.
My crippling fear of her coming in and
being heard on mike has slowly dissipated
over the weeks. What’s the worst that
could happen? She might
shout about bums or
complain that her cereal
was too soggy or some
I was mid-interview when my daughter slid onto my lap. I had
to mute my mike while looping her unicorn hairbands
lavatory-related matter. “Excuse me,
secretary of state, I just have to deal with
a hard poo. Not mine of course hahahahaa.”
Every day I wake to a different set of
emotions. Life is full of exciting future
plans and a deepening bond between me
and my mini-me. It is also a mixture of high
stress, bone-aching fatigue and dizzying
uncertainty. Coronavirus shrunk our
worlds to our local parks; and for me, my
tiny bedroom. Some days it feels stifling;
the blinds are down, it’s dark and I’m on my
own. In those inky, quiet hours between 4am
and 6am I feel like a ship lost at sea, listing
perilously. But as the morning progresses
life arrives with a bang and a crash and I feel
connected to the real world again.
Outside, a child has a tantrum on his way
to school, scaffolding is erected, a bin lorry
reverses and continually tells you that it’s
reversing, a group of men arrives to dig up
the street for gas works, two dogs fight,
a neighbour appears who has a drill and
isn’t afraid to use it. I hunker
down behind my cushions and
hope the listeners can’t hear
the distracting noise.
At nine o’clock I exhale because my
daughter is at school, and by ten I relax as
the show ends. I did it. I bloody did it. Again.
Nothing bad happened. How much
longer can I get away with this?
I’ve had so many messages
from people saying I am
amazing, doing both things
at once. I don’t feel
amazing. I feel frazzled by
the whole situation.
It’s my daughter who is the
hero of this tale. She has had to adapt
to so many things: her parents splitting up
and her mum’s strange work routine.
When I hinted that I would have to go
back to the office one day soon, she burst
into tears and I died a little. But I will,
I have to, I want to. I haven’t quite figured
out how but it will involve compromise. It’s
my next battle and just thinking about it
makes me want to close my eyes for a
hundred years. But I’ll do it for her, my little
Silent Sleeping Beauty n
Aasmah Mir and Stig Abell present Times
Radio Breakfast, Mon-Thu, 6am-10am
The Sunday Times Magazine • 19
Married to the cause:
how Carrie’s eco clique
took control

Boris Johnson has never been an enthusiastic
environmentalist. What’s changed? Rosie Kinchen
and Ben Spencer report on the tree-hugging Tories
who are turning the government green
DEMO DUO Stanley Johnson and Carrie Symonds attend an anti-whaling
protest outside the Japanese embassy in London, January 2019
top the slaughter in the water!
S Stop killing whales!” the young
woman shouted. Marching
down Regent Street in
central London en route to a
demonstration at the Japanese embassy
was Carrie Symonds.
It was a chilly day in January 2019 and
Symonds, former head of communications
for the Conservative Party and then the
girlfriend of Boris Johnson, was clearly
enjoying herself. “What do we want? Save
the whales! When do we want it? Now!”
she chanted.
Also at the protest was Stanley Johnson,
Boris’s father. “Save the whale!” he shouted.
Seven months later on a glorious August
day in the southern French coastal resort
of Biarritz, Boris Johnson sat down with
the Japanese leader, Shinzo Abe. Johnson
had become prime minister the previous
month and this, the G7, was his first
important geopolitical event. President
Trump had flown in, France and Germany
were keen to discuss the looming Brexit,
and Johnson was on a mission to negotiate
trade deals outside Europe.
However, on that Monday morning he
had something else on his mind. “There
was a half-hour bilateral with the Japanese
prime minister and Carrie got Boris to
bring up whaling. He talked about it for 15
minutes,” says the animal rights
campaigner Dominic Dyer, who had
organised the January protest. “I think the
Japanese government was scratching its
head, wondering where it had come from.”
Carrie Johnson, 33, has long been a
committed environmentalist. The prime
minister, whom she married last month, has
a rather less convincing green back story. For
years he was considered a climate sceptic,
and his newspaper columns for The Daily
Telegraph regularly characterised opponents
of fossil fuels as “gloomsters”. But as prime
minister he has been undoubtedly green,
even, it could be argued, radically so.
With the Cop26 climate summit planned
for Glasgow this November, his government
has already launched a raft of progressive
environmental policies, from pledging to
cut carbon emissions by 78 per cent by 2035,
to a move to ban peat compost by 2024, to
passing the first laws formally recognising
animals as sentient beings. It has also ended
its commitment to badger culling.
It is a strong shift of direction for a party
that almost reintroduced fox hunting five
years ago. So what is driving this change?
“There’s certainly been a step change,”
says Heidi Allen, former Tory MP and now
strategic advocacy adviser to the RSPCA.
“Although everyone in No 10 will brief
heavily and say it’s not the case, it can be no
coincidence that having Carrie by Boris’s
side is having a phenomenal effect.”
Dyer acknowledges Carrie’s influence,
but believes the prime minister has other
motives. “Boris is not very ideological
The Sunday Times Magazine • 21
 about anything,” he says. “But he has a sort
of grand view of achieving something that
people will remember him for. I think he
understands now climate is an issue leaders
will be judged on. He’s got an opportunity
to be seen as being a key player at a critical
time and if Glasgow delivers some key global
commitments he will be given credit for it.”
This is happening at a pivotal moment.
Britain’s departure from the EU has
provided an opportunity to reconsider the
nation’s green credentials, and one of the
key battlegrounds is the British countryside.
There is a broad consensus that farming
subsidies cannot continue in the way they
had during the days of the EU’s common
agricultural policy. But the question still
rumbling within the Conservative Party is
what should take their place.
Key to that argument is Zac Goldsmith
— a close friend to Carrie and a key ally
of the prime minister. When Goldsmith
joined the Tories under David Cameron, he
did so because he hoped “to weave a green
thread through the Conservative Party”.
And increasingly he is achieving that goal.
Goldsmith and his younger brother, the
financier Ben, have formed an influential
core of passionate environmentalists at
the centre of the Conservative Party who
believe in a green, rewilded, natural Britain.
The Goldsmith family’s influence on
British environmentalism runs deep. In
the words of the Green Party politician and
campaigner Derek Wall: “Green politics in
Britain is branded with the Goldsmith logo
and fertilised by Goldsmith seed funds.” The
story begins with Zac and Ben’s uncle Teddy.
In the 1960s Teddy Goldsmith embarked on
a voyage of discovery through Africa with
his friend John Aspinall. Both returned
committed to saving the planet.
Goldsmith founded The Ecologist
magazine and was influential in the
establishment of the People Party, which
later became the Green Party. In 1974 he
stood as People’s candidate for Eye in
Suffolk, campaigning by parading around
a camel borrowed from Aspinall bearing
a banner reading “No deserts in Suffolk.
Vote Goldsmith.” He lost his deposit.
Within the burgeoning environmental
movement he was unusual in being
politically of the right; he believed in
localisation and argued that central
government was too far removed from
communities to be genuinely accountable.
Although traditionally seen as a lefty cause,
over the years environmentalism has been
hijacked by the far right, who have used
it to argue against immigration and for
population control. Teddy Goldsmith
famously addressed a far-right rally in
France, prompting half of the Ecologist
editorial team to walk out.
He moved in a circle of similarly wealthy
SHUTTERSTOCK
and well-connected greens. There was
Aspinall, who kept a tiger cub and two bears
in the garden of his flat in Eaton Square and
went on to set up a zoo at Howletts in
Kent; and Mark Shand, the conservationist
brother of the Duchess of Cornwall who
married Teddy’s daughter, Clio.
Many of these names still hold sway within
the Conservative Party. Shand’s nephew, Ben
Elliott, a close friend of Zac Goldsmith’s, is
now the party chairman. Howletts and the
Aspinall conservation charity is run by John’s
son, Damian, and employs Carrie Johnson
as its head of PR. (It is currently under
investigation by the charity commission
for alleged financial irregularities. The
charity has promised it will work “openly”
with investigators and that it remains
“firmly committed” to its ethical and legal
duties.) Ben Goldsmith and his half-brother
Robin Birley are on the board. Zac was a
trustee until 2019.
Neither of the Goldsmith brothers went
to university. Zac, who was expelled from
Eton for possession of marijuana, travelled
for four years with environmental charities
affiliated to his uncle before becoming
editor of The Ecologist. Ben went into the
City and began to push for investment in
green technologies. Both made donations
to the Green Party but otherwise remained
at arm’s length. Ben once called the Greens
The Goldsmiths, both
ardent Brexiteers, had
the prime minister
surrounded as Britain
prepared to leave the EU
FRIENDS OF
THE EARTH
Zac Goldsmith with
Boris Johnson, left,
and his brother Ben,
below, a fellow
environmental
campaigner
watermelons — “green on the outside,
red on the inside’’.
Zac was persuaded to join the
Conservatives by David Cameron, who
pledged at the time to make “the greenest
government ever”. Instead policies were
watered down or abandoned and Goldsmith
languished on the backbenches. Yet during
this time he also formed a network of
like-minded allies, including Dyer and
Carrie Johnson. While Carrie has said that
her environmental awareness began during
an internship at the International Fund
for Animal Welfare, it is likely to have
developed further while she worked as
Goldsmith’s parliamentary aide in 2010-11.
She has said she owes her career in the
Conservative Party to him.
Ben was busy too. He founded a green-
investment fund and then launched
Menhaden, an investment firm that focuses
on energy efficiency. In 2012 the former
Conservative MP Peter Ainsworth, who
was then on the board at the Environment
Agency, placed a pile of papers on
Goldsmith’s desk about the Conservative
Environment Network (CEN), which had
formed after the 2008 Climate Change Act
but was now dormant. Ainsworth wanted
Ben to take it on, which he did, reanimating
it later that year as a lobby group aiming to
reclaim environmentalism from the left. The
launch party was hosted by Michael Gove.
When Boris Johnson became prime
minister in July 2019, Zac Goldsmith was
one of his first ministerial appointments. He
was given a job in Defra, the environment
department, as well as a role in international
development; he also had the right to
attend cabinet. Later, after losing his seat
in the December election, he was given
a place in the Lords so he could stay on
as environment minister. One source
close to the department said: “When it
comes to the environment agenda, No 10
looks to Zac rather than [George] Eustice.”
Eustice, the environment secretary, comes
from an old farming family and is seen as
an ally of the National Farming Union. Yet
increasingly he is talking Goldsmith’s
language. Launching new policies on
The Sunday Times Magazine • 23
trees and peatlands last month, Eustice
announced plans for a “rewilding task
force”. He talked dreamily about the
reintroduction of golden eagles and wildcats
to England’s rolling hills and the licensed
release of beavers to the nation’s rivers.
Rewilding is an idea key to the Goldsmith
world view. Both Zac and Ben are
passionate about the form of conservation
that advocates reintroducing keystone
species to restore the landscape to its
pre-industrial form and is touted as a
solution to everything from carbon capture
to flooding. Last year Ben ran into problems
in Somerset when there were claims that
he released deer and wild boar from his
estate deliberately, which he has denied.
His influence has grown regardless
thanks to his role on the CEN. It calls
itself a parliamentary caucus: MPs sign up
and agree to promote its subject areas in
parliament; in exchange the group provides
promotional material for election campaigns.
More than 100 Conservative MPs are
currently on board; alumni include Thérèse
Coffey, Greg Hands and Richard Benyon,
the latest minister to be appointed to Defra.
“While Zac has been doing the ministerial
stuff, Ben is doing the behind-the-scenes
stuff, building a real base of thinking and
policy development within the Tory party,”
Dyer says. In 2018 Ben was appointed as a
trustee at Defra under Michael Gove.
By the time Britain was preparing to leave
the EU, the Goldsmiths, both of whom are
ardent Brexiteers, had the prime minister
surrounded. Johnson’s father, Stanley, is on
the board of the CEN, which is now run by
Sam Hall, Michael Gove’s former special
adviser. His predecessor was Sam Richard,
who is now Boris Johnson’s climate adviser
at No 10. There is a Goldsmith ally
everywhere Johnson turns. It is against
this backdrop that the conversations about
Britain’s post-EU future have taken place.
Caroline Lucas, the Green MP for
Brighton Pavilion, says to some extent there
is now broad agreement. “There is a general
acceptance of the idea of public money for
public good. In other words, post-Brexit any
financial support that goes to the farming
community has to be supporting landscape
and environmental farming.”
According to the climate change
committee, which advises the government,
land use will need to change substantially
if the government is to hit its legally
enshrined goal of eliminating greenhouse
gases by 2050. Agriculture currently
accounts for 10 per cent of the country’s
emissions. Farming land needs to switch
from being a producer of carbon emissions
to removing them from the atmosphere.
With this in mind ministers have drawn
up contentious plans for a one-off lump-
sum payment for older farmers to step aside
to make way for a more green-minded
generation. Eustice says the scheme
would help them “retire with dignity”
SHEIKH UP Teddy Goldsmith, Zac and Ben’s
uncle, campaigning with a camel, 1974
and create “important opportunities for the
next generation of farmers”.
As Sir William Worsley, the chair of the
Forestry Commission, said last month:
“In part it’s about persuading sheep farmers
to become foresters. There’s a lot of poor
sheep land that could well be suitable
for tree planting.” This will have huge
implications for the shape of the British
landscape. Fierce debate is raging in and
around Defra about what this woodland
creation will look like. Some argue for mass
planting of profitable crops such as pine
and birch; others prefer mixed broadleaf
woodland, which improves biodiversity.
The Goldsmiths believe land should be
left to regenerate on its own.
While rewilding is fashionable among
the Westminster greenies, in some rural
parts of the country it is viewed with
caution. Michael Sly, a commercial arable
farmer near Peterborough, says: “We’ve a
population that needs feeding; you can’t eat
a landscape.” While Ben Goldsmith insists
rewilding doesn’t mean no farming at all,
but farming “in a wilder way”, Sly remains
unconvinced. “It feels like we are going back
to the early Victorian period; it is a wealthy
landed class re-establishing itself in the
country,” he says. “It is their plaything.”
Dr Nick Fenwick, head of policy at the
Farmers’ Union of Wales, describes it as
“arrogant”. He says: “We’ve been farming
sheep and cattle here for around 6,000
years. To try and turn the clock back to what
it was like 10,000 years ago is a romantic
notion from an urban viewpoint. We don’t
sit around in rural Wales deciding how
people in Kensington should change the
way they live and make an income.”
Green conservatism isn’t a new idea.
It was Margaret Thatcher who declared that
“it is we Conservatives who are not merely
friends of the Earth — we are its guardians
While rewilding is
fashionable among the
Westminster greenies,
in some rural parts it is
viewed with caution
and trustees for generations to come”.
Traditionally, though, the Tory focus has
been on the landowners and the
stewardship of the countryside, while
Labour has pushed awareness around
climate change and carbon emissions.
Today CEN wraps both these together as
fundamental to the Conservative vision.
“In many ways it’s very clever politically
where the Conservative Party is moving,”
Dyer says. “They are seeking to reach out
to a broader demographic audience in the
18 to 24-year-old voting group. There’s
a growing recognition that these
environmental issues really matter.”
For Caroline Lucas, though, Conservative
environmentalism is full of contradictions.
She points to the controversy over Robert
Jenrick and the billion-pound development
on the Isle of Dogs and a proposed coal
mine in Cumbria as good examples of
political incoherence. “They will adopt
parts of the green agenda that don’t give
them ideological indigestion — that don’t
threaten the economic system.”
Those frictions are starting to cause
problems. In March it was reported that
Carrie Symonds had tried to push Eustice
out of his job and there are rumours he will
not survive the next reshuffle. Meanwhile,
the Tory backbencher Steve Baker plans to
make the cost of decarbonisation “his next
great crusade”. Baker, as former chair of the
European Research Group, caused huge
problems for Theresa May on Brexit and
last year was a thorn in Johnson’s side by
rallying anti-lockdown sentiments on the
backbenches. In Downing Street the
prospect of the self-proclaimed Tory “hard
man” gathering the troops is unsettling.
For Johnson it feeds into a bigger
dilemma: how to appeal to the younger
environmentally conscious voter without
abandoning core Conservative principles
regarding the free market and free trade.
The outcry over the proposed free trade
agreement with Australia is one example;
environmentalists complain about the
incoherence of encouraging farmers here
to work sustainably, while opening the way
for beef to be imported all the way from
Australia, where cattle farming takes place
on an industrial level.
Craig Bennett, chief executive of the
Wildlife Trusts, believes the balance is
tipping in the direction of the Goldsmiths
and Carrie Johnson. “My guess would be that
George Eustice was made secretary of state
to try to keep farmers happy during Brexit,”
he says. “But looking ahead to the next
election we know the environment will be
very important, particularly among young
and floating voters, so the Conservatives
will be looking now and thinking where
they want to position themselves.”
The Japanese prime minister, Yoshihide
Suga, in Cornwall this weekend for another
G7 summit, would do well to prepare for
another discussion about whales n
The Sunday Times Magazine • 25
THE
GREEN
PowER
LIST
J oss Garman was one of the first
to be arrested. Before dawn on
a Monday in October 2007, the
22-year-old and 50 other environmental
campaigners invaded Kingsnorth power
station in Kent. Eon, which owned and
operated the station, had applied for
planning permission to build a coal-
burning facility on the site — the first of
a wave of new power stations planned
for the country.
The strategy for the protest was
simple: flood the site with so many
activists that the security team could
not halt them all, and shut down the
station. “We stayed in a farmhouse in
bunks the night before, got up at 3am
and all got into minibuses,” Garman,
now 35, recalls. “We climbed the fence
and went through these dusty tunnels.”
Garman chained himself to a
conveyor belt to prevent coal from
reaching the furnaces. “I was there
about eight hours before I was arrested.”
He was convicted of aggravated trespass
and fined several hundred pounds.
It was no shock to him. A veteran of
direct action, by then he had already
been arrested more than 20 times. As
a co-founder of the campaign group Plane
Stupid, Garman had seen the door of his
student house kicked down following
a protest at an airport. The police accused
Greenpeace activists at the Kingsnorth
power station protest in October 2007
The Sunday Times science
editor Ben Spencer introduces
the influential British minds
engaging with the world’s
biggest problem: how to avert
environmental catastrophe
him of terrorism. Nearly a decade and
a half later he lives a very different life.
The UK director of the influential
European Climate Foundation, he
has worked in parliament, directed
think tanks and has established strong
links within government and to MPs
across the political spectrum. He is, in
short, a key member of the
environmental establishment.
His story is not uncommon.
The following list of influential
environmentalists, climate scientists
and politicians includes several former
activists who now occupy influential
roles in and around government. Tony
Juniper, a former director of Friends
of the Earth and a veteran of the 1990s
Newbury Bypass protests, is now
chair of Natural England. Bryony
Worthington, also previously of Friends
of the Earth, now sits in the House of
Lords and runs an environmental
charity with a £70 million annual
 budget. Craig Bennett, yet another
Friends of the Earth alumnus, is the
current CEO of the Wildlife Trusts.
So has the green movement finally
grown up? Garman believes the goals
have shifted fundamentally. “The
nature of the challenge is different
today,” he says. The year after the
Kingsnorth protest government plans
for a new fleet of coal-powered fire
stations were quietly shelved.
By 2020 only 1.6 per cent of British
electricity came from coal, compared
with more than a third in 2007. “We
have the greenest electricity in the
world,” Garman says. “We’ve made
huge progress and we have the carbon
targets in place. The real nature of
the challenge now is: how do you
actually deliver?”
Emma Pinchbeck, 34, also emerged
from the environmental movement.
A former campaigner at WWF-UK,
she was appointed last year to be CEO
of Energy UK, becoming the face of
the industry Garman was making
trouble for all those years ago.
“The thing that I loved most about
being in an NGO was that your only
job is to tell the truth,” Pinchbeck says.
“I miss the purity of that but I love
my job now, the combination of the
moral mission with the practical
delivery, the pragmatism. I can see
change happening every single day.
“The really big challenges in the
next decade will be around technology
progress, which involves quite boring
government policy work. But that’s
why I choose to do what I do, because
I can see that’s where we need to do
the most acceleration.”
For Pinchbeck, her upbringing
in the Gloucestershire town of
Stroud was instrumental to her
environmentalism. “It’s a mix of
traditional small-c conservatism with
a mad, creative alternative art scene,”
she says. “When I was growing up
there were always protests on the high
street, against the backdrop of this
really pretty English town.”
That same town in 2018 witnessed
the formation of Extinction Rebellion,
a protest movement that burst into
being in the front room of Gail
ALAMY, CHRIS WATT, FRANCESCO GUIDCINI, WILL ROSE©GREENPEACE
Isabella Tree
Author and conservationist “I’m increasingly
Tree is the author of the
rewilder’s handbook Wilding,
vocal because I’m
which chronicles the 20-year
transformation of the 3,500-acre
running out of time”
Knepp Castle estate in West
Sussex, which Tree and her husband have
turned over to nature. She is currently one
of the most influential environmental
thinkers in Britain. This was highlighted last
month when the environment secretary,
George Eustice, referred to her ideas in
a speech on the future of the English
landscape, to the delight of his audience.
Rewilding’s advocates tout it as a solution
to many of our problems: it promises flood
mitigation, biodiversity improvement,
carbon sequestration and a balm for our
battered mental health. Tree, 56, has hosted
politicians at Knepp and was recently
invited to discuss the government’s action
plan for trees with Defra officials. While the
concept of rewilding is fashionable among
environmentalists, many farmers oppose it.
But Tree says: “Rewilding shouldn’t be seen
as the enemy of farming. If anything it is
its greatest ally. It can restore soils, reduce
flooding, clean water, support pollinating
insects and reduce the need for pesticides.
The way forward is a meshing between
rewilding and regenerative agriculture.”
Chris Packham
Alok Sharma Wildlife presenter and conservationist
President of Cop26
Best known for TV shows such as the BBC’s
If the Cop26 UN climate summit, Springwatch and The Really Wild Show,
due to take place in Glasgow in Packham has introduced entire
November, is to be a success, generations to conservation and wildlife.
much depends on Sharma. The But in recent years he has become more
53-year-old, who will preside politically active, co-founding in 2019
over the conference, has the task of getting the campaign group Wild Justice. The
the US, China, India and the powerful organisation saw immediate success,
negotiating blocs of the developing world mounting a challenge to the right of
to agree to play ball. To this end he has landowners to shoot 16 bird species
spent the past few months flying around seen as pests — including crows, magpies
the globe on a diplomatic crusade. He has and wood pigeons. Natural England
already found a strong ally in John Kerry, acknowledged the group’s argument and
Joe Biden’s climate envoy. Last month’s withdrew the licences with 36 hours’ notice,
meeting of G7 environment ministers, triggering fury across rural communities.
which Sharma hosted, secured a crucial Packham, who has also fiercely criticised
agreement to stop funding overseas coal. badger culling, has been targeted as a
He says: “Cop26 is our last hope of limiting result, with dead crows, a fox and a badger
global warming to 1.5C and building a left in front of his New Forest home during
brighter future of green jobs and cleaner air. the past two years. “We can’t have a

Bradbrook’s council house in Stroud.
Bradbrook, 49, insists direct action is
still needed. She was arrested just last
month on suspicion of conspiracy to
cause criminal damage and fraud
linked to her group’s attacks on banks
and other financial institutions.
“We stand on the shoulders of
those trying to get action for many,
many years,” she says. “But what
we need right now is to go into
emergency mode. We have to go all out
to get change.”
The single most powerful thing we can do
to get there? Consign coal to history.”
Gail Bradbrook
Co-founder of Extinction Rebellion
A mother of two with a PhD
in molecular biophysics,
Bradbrook co-founded the
Extinction Rebellion protest
movement three years ago. The
inspiration for her movement? A session
on hallucinogenic drugs while in
letterbox in our door any more,” he says,
because excrement was repeatedly
pushed through. Nevertheless he is
determined to keep campaigning. “The
reason I’m increasingly vocal is that I’m now
60 years old,” he says. “I’m running
out of time, and I’ve got this burden
on my shoulders. We’ve lost 68 per cent of
the world’s wildlife, the human population
has shot up to seven-point-something
billion and the world has warmed up by a
degree. And that’s all been on my watch.”

The Sunday Times Magazine • 27

Costa Rica in 2016. She described the
effects in a video posted online in 2019:
“This voice said ‘resistance’. I’ve never
been the same since.” XR, as her
organisation is known, thrust itself into
the spotlight in the spring of 2018, blocking
bridges and causing havoc across London.
While many question the group’s tactics,
there is no doubt it contributed to driving
climate change up the political agenda.
A few months later Theresa May
committed the UK to net zero carbon
emissions by 2050, the first G7 country
to do so. “We said we wanted net zero by
2025, but the government has set an
interim target of 78 per cent by 2035, ”
Bradbrook says. “To some extent our
demands have been met, but not fully.
But we’ve shifted the window.”
Carrie Johnson
Communications director of
the Aspinall Foundation
The prime minister’s wife is
widely regarded as the key to his
new-found environmentalism.
Carrie, 33, who first met Boris
Johnson during his 2012 London
mayoral campaign, is a passionate
conservationist and a patron of the
Conservative Animal Welfare Foundation.
She also works for the Aspinall Foundation,
“The aim is to make
sure no child goes
through what Ella
went through”
Rosamund Adoo-Kissi-Debrah
Clean air campaigner
In December the coroner Phillip Barlow
found that the death in 2013 of nine-year-old
Ella Adoo-Kissi-Debrah was contributed to
by her exposure to “excessive air pollution”.
The verdict — the first time air pollution had
been listed as a cause of death in the UK
— was the result of a long campaign by her
mother, Rosamund. Ella (above right) lived 25
metres from South Circular Road in Lewisham,
southeast London, where air pollution levels
regularly exceeded the annual legal limit.
Rosamund (below right), who set up the
Ella Roberta Family Foundation after her
daughter’s death, says: “The first aim was to
find out how Ella died. But it was also to make
sure no child goes through what she went
through.” In April the coroner published a
report calling for national pollution limits to
be reduced in light of Ella’s death.

The Joe Brindle

18, Wiltshire
Dr Ella Gilbert
28, London

young
What to do when your school isn’t “Climate scientist, presenter,
providing adequate education on boxer” is how Reading University’s
climate change? If you’re Brindle Dr Ella Gilbert describes herself.
you launch Teach the Future, Founder of an Antarctic boxing

ones
Greta Thunberg is far
from the only young
person campaigning
for urgent change.
Katherine Fidler
hails six brilliant
Brits under 30 with
ingenious ideas —
and the drive to make
a difference
a campaign calling for better
education on the climate crisis,
offering support to teachers and
mobilising youth volunteers across
the UK. Oh, and draft a bill — the
Climate Emergency Education
Act — to prompt parliament to
take more action, while continuing
to organise and attend climate
strikes. He recently stepped back
from Teach the Future to “make
more of my gap year”, but plans
to carry on campaigning and
working with NGOs at university.
club during her PhD fieldwork,
Gilbert’s passion for climate
science is matched by her
enthusiasm for communication.
She has provided commentaries
for National Geographic, CNN
and Vice, and also has her own
YouTube channel called Dr Gilbz,
which hosts videos on subjects
such as “What on earth is the
Mya-Rose Craig Interdecadal Pacific Oscillation”
19, Somerset
(answer: “a climate pattern that
A 14-publisher bidding war schleps warm water around the
over the autobiography of the Pacific in distinct cycles”) and
British-Bangladeshi ornithologist
and activist last year cemented
her position as one of Britain’s
leading naturalists. Her Birdgirl
blog has had five million visitors,
while the racist trolling it also
attracted prompted Craig to
found Black2Nature, a youth
organisation encouraging more
people from ethnic minorities to
engage with nature. In 2020 she
received an honorary doctorate
from Bristol University.

28 • The Sunday Times Magazine

 which runs two wildlife parks in Kent.
Carrie is also thought to have influenced
the decision to phase out the UK badger
cull — to the extent that the National
Farmers’ Union mounted a judicial review
when a planned cull in Derbyshire was
cancelled, claiming Carrie had influenced
the “irrational” decision. The High Court
rejected the case, ruling that there was
“nothing irrational” about what had been
a “political judgment”.
Craig Bennett
CEO of the Wildlife Trusts
Last autumn Bennett came
up with a new concept for
conservation. More than 80 years
after “green belts” were first
implemented as a way to control
BEN GURR, ELLA ROBERTA ESTATE, GETTY IMAGES, SHUTTERSTOCK
Joan Edwards wants offshore wind turbines
to be banned from 30 per cent of the sea
belts”. Bennett, 49, admits he was surprised:
“When we launched it last year it was just a
sketch of an idea. And within a month Boris
Johnson was quoting it in his speech.”
It is a mark of the influence of Bennett
visiting farms with the goal of buying them
up and turning them into rewilded havens.
Joan Edwards
Director of marine conservation
at the Wildlife Trusts
A marine scientist for 30 years,
Joan Edwards, 57, has spent her
career mobilising support for
legal protections for the sea. She
led a coalition of environmental
organisations that pushed through the
Marine and Coastal Access Act in 2009,
paving the way for a “blue belt” of marine
conservation zones established around the
coast. But Edwards thinks we need to go
further, and wants 30 per cent of the world’s
oceans to be covered by “highly protected
marine areas” where fishing, drilling of the

expanding cities, he proposed a new “wild
belt” designation to protect Britain’s nature.
Green belts predominantly are made up
of intensively farmed agricultural land,
sprayed with pesticides and home to very
little wildlife. “[They are] not actually very
green,” Bennett says. Wild belts, however,
would be reserved for nature and prioritise
biodiversity. The idea has quickly caught
on. The prime minister, speaking at the
Conservative Party conference in October,
said his vision of a future Britain included
people “going for picnics in the new wild
and the organisation he joined last April. At
his previous employer, Friends of the Earth,
with whom he spent 20 years on and off
including five as CEO, he developed a
reputation as a “modern eco-general” —
mobilising opposition to fracking during
the David Cameron years. But the Wildlife
Trusts is far more influential in the UK, with
more than 870,000 members to Friends of
the Earth’s 100,000. It also has a deeper reach
into middle England, a collective turnover
of £157 million and owns 2,600 nature
reserves. Bennett spends much of his time
seabeds, even offshore wind turbines are
banned. “We think that’s essential because
we don’t even know what a recovering
marine environment looks like,” she says.
Tony Juniper
Chair of Natural England
A world-renowned
environmentalist, Juniper, 60,
has spent his career working for
campaign groups such as Friends
of the Earth and WWF-UK

“Why you should be a cloud nerd”.
Her advice for talking to climate
change deniers? “Try not to be too
combative . . . talk to the person
rather than the perception of what
they represent. If you’re in a
conversation on YouTube or
Facebook, it’s not necessarily
the climate denier you’re actually
communicating with, it’s the
people silently watching, so
it’s important to maintain
compassion and clearly lay out
the arguments. There’s a fantastic
ALAMY, FABIO DE PAOLO / EYEVINE, KATE PETERS/EYEVINE
website, skepticalscience.com, getting single-use plastic bottles overwhelmed by the massive
that has a list of myths often off supermarket shelves, the issues. Make the small steps,
touted and the evidence that campaign has flourished into a because it has a way bigger
shows why they’re wrong.” multifaceted movement, helping impact than you might think.”
schools reduce consumption, Amy: “For corporations and
providing learning resources and governments, I would say really
Dara McAnulty encouraging children to organise listen to what consumers are
17, Co Down
litter picks — Amy and Ella have demanding, and to the urgency
A Northern Irish naturalist, themselves been responsible for — especially from young people
McAnulty has used a talent for collecting more than 90,000 because we’re going to grow up to
writing to amplify his campaigning pieces of plastic waste. be future consumers. Listen to
with colossal success, writing two In their own words: what we’re demanding and don’t
books aimed at inspiring a new Ella: “For individuals, it’s try to bury it in greenwashing
cohort of nature lovers. His important not to feel too or marketing campaigns.”
multiple-award-winning debut,
Diary of a Young Naturalist,
explores both his relationship
with the natural world and
neurodiversity, and was serialised
on BBC Radio 4. He is the
youngest recipient of both the
Wainwright Prize for UK Nature
Writing and the RSPB Medal

for conservation.

Amy and Ella Meek

17 and 15, Nottingham
While many found home schooling
during the pandemic difficult, the
Meek sisters found it afforded
them more time to work on their
charity, Kids Against Plastic.
Founded with the ambitious aim of

The Sunday Times Magazine • 29

but now the poacher has turned
gamekeeper. In 2019 he was appointed chair
of the government agency Natural England.
He promised to build bridges with farmers’
groups after they raised doubts about his
appointment. Despite his radical past, his
ability to network has never been in doubt
— he has served as special adviser on
sustainability to the Prince of Wales.
Dr Emily Shuckburgh
Climate scientist at the University
of Cambridge
A mathematician and climate
scientist, Shuckburgh, 47, is
one of the country’s best
communicators of the science of
climate change. She is co-author
— with the Prince of Wales and Tony
Juniper — of the Ladybird book Climate
Change. The brainchild of Prince Charles,
the book provides a simple guide to an
incredibly complex subject and sets out
ideas that will soon affect everyone’s lives.
Shuckburgh is currently most focused on
her role as the director of Cambridge Zero,
the University of Cambridge’s climate
change initiative, which is drawing up
blueprints for a zero-carbon future.
A former government adviser, she also
leads a national programme investigating
artificial intelligence and its applications
for predicting environmental risk.
Emma Pinchbeck
CEO of Energy UK
Last July Pinchbeck was
headhunted to be the face of the
British energy industry. Coming
from Renewable UK, the trade
body for the wind and solar
industry, and as the former head of climate
change and energy at WWF-UK, she was
a perfect fit for the sector’s commitment to
decarbonisation. But Pinchbeck, 34, admits
she had initial concerns that she was being
hired for PR purposes. “We had a long
conversation about it at my interview,” she
says. “From my side, it was about how much
I could use my experience to help the
industry transform. I took the job because
I was content it wasn’t greenwashing. That
has continued to be the case.”
It has not all been plain sailing. “The
energy sector is fully on board with
decarbonisation,” she says. “But there are
differences of opinion about how we get
there.” So far, however, the industry can be
proud of its record. Cheap wind and solar
power has caused fossil fuel use to plummet
in recent years. “It’s been a fantastic success
story in the UK,” says Pinchbeck, who has a
20-month-old daughter. “She’ll be almost
the age I am now in 2050, by which time we
will have to have decarbonised the global
economy. I think about that all the time.
I am deadly serious about this.”
30 • The Sunday Times Magazine
Joss Garman
UK director of the European
Climate Foundation
While at university Garman
co-founded the campaign group
Plane Stupid, which opposed the
third runway at Heathrow. He
co-ordinated several high-profile
protests, including draping a huge banner
from the roof of the Houses of Parliament.
By the time he graduated he had been
arrested more than 20 times. Some
14 years later he runs the UK branch of
one of the most influential philanthropic
environmental organisations in the world:
the European Climate Foundation funds
think tanks such as the Energy and Climate
Intelligence Unit, online publications such
as Carbon Brief and political bodies such as
the Conservative Environment Network.
Now in charge of a budget worth millions of
“We needed a visual
way to show the
world is warming”
1890 1920 1950 1980 2010
Professor Ed Hawkins
Climate scientist at Reading University
In the summer of 2016 Hawkins
was watching the opening
ceremony of the Rio Olympics
when he recognised a familiar
dancing shape on the screen.
“They had a little segment about climate
change and up popped my spiral graphic,
being sent out to about a billion people,”
he says. The graphic, which expands in a
circular motion, illustrates the way global
temperatures have risen over time. Another
of Hawkins’s images (above), which uses
coloured stripes to represent the same
trend, has appeared on magazine covers
and the stage of concerts and festivals. “We
need to reach people who don’t normally
engage with science,” says Hawkins, 44.
“And so we needed a very simple visual way
to communicate the key message that the
world is warming.” Aside from his
communications work, Hawkins is highly
respected as a climate scientist. He is a
lead author on a key Intergovernmental
Panel on Climate Change (IPCC) report due
to be published in August, which will provide
world leaders with the latest assessment of
how quickly the world is warming.
pounds, the 35-year-old is a key player in
the environmental establishment, with
strong links to the government’s Cop26
unit, MPs across the political spectrum and
journalists across Fleet Street.
Lord Goldsmith of Richmond Park
Minister of state for Pacific and
the Environment
Zac Goldsmith, 46, is considered
to be a key driver of the more
radical green policies in
government. His younger brother
Ben, 40, also plays a key role in
the Conservative Environment Network.
Lord Goldsmith says: “The single most
important thing governments, individuals,
businesses and civil society can and must
do is to throw ourselves into protecting
ecosystems on land and sea, and restoring
those that have been degraded. The magic
of helping nature recover — beyond saving
beautiful species — is that in doing so we’re
tackling so many other problems we face:
climate change, hunger, poverty, pollution,
even pandemics.”
Baroness worthington
Co-director of the Quadrature
Climate Foundation
More than anyone else, Bryony
Worthington is considered to
have been the driving force
behind the 2008 Climate
Change Act. The legislation
for the first time made emissions cuts
legally binding, compelling successive
governments to take action on global
warming. First as an activist at Friends
of the Earth, then as a civil servant,
Worthington built support for and then
helped draft the necessary legislation.
The key, she says, was creating a “legal
metronome” that set five-yearly carbon
budgets. “They don’t stop coming, no
matter which government is in power.”
Worthington, 49, was made a Labour peer
in 2011 and served on Ed Miliband’s front
bench before leaving the party in 2017,
when Jeremy Corbyn was in charge, to
become a crossbencher. She now runs the
Quadrature Climate Foundation, one of the
biggest philanthropic climate organisations,
which has an annual budget of £70 million.
Angus Lunn
Northumbrian conservationist
Described by friends as the
archetypal “boots-on-the-
ground” nature conservationist,
Lunn, 87, is credited with
the restoration of an entire
ecosystem in Northumberland. The retired
university lecturer spent decades battling
the Forestry Commission over the planting
of Kielder Forest, the largest manmade

“At Cop26 we may have our last
opportunity to make necessary change”
Sir David Attenborough
Broadcaster
About 20 different species — including
a spider, a butterfly and a dinosaur —
are named after Attenborough, as well
ALAMY, BBC / SAM BARKER, CHRIS STARK, COURTESY OF EMILY SHUCKBURGH, EMMA PINCHBECK, RICHARD CLARK, SOUTH WEST NEWS SERVICE, SHUTTERSTOCK, UNIVERSITY OF READING
as an entire constellation. As the 95-year-
old explained in a 2017 interview: “It’s easy
to be a national treasure if you don’t have to
do controversial things.” That, however, is
to undersell his influence. His overwhelming
contribution to environmentalism has
been to inspire a love of nature — he has
made more than 100 documentaries
stretching across seven decades. But in
woodland in England. “Until the 1980s it
was a completely philistine organisation,”
he says. “They were hellbent on planting
conifers on every bit of land they could
get their hands on.” He produced the first
detailed vegetation map of the area in
the 1950s, identifying the Border Mires
network of peat bogs in and around Kielder,
the first step in the process of saving them
from the foresters. His organisation, the
Northumberland Wildlife Trust, then
leased pockets of land from the commission
in order to ensure their survival.
Chris Stark
CEO of the Climate Change Committee
The Climate Change Committee,
overseen by Chris Stark, devises
the five-year carbon budgets that
determine the pace of Britain’s
decarbonisation. Stark, 42, was
appointed in 2018, with the government
committing to the legally binding Net Zero
target the following year. Stark also drew up
recent years these have done more than
simply entertain. His Blue Planet II series,
broadcast in 2017, triggered a consumer
backlash against plastic packaging and
his recent programmes have focused
heavily on climate change. In November
he will address the Cop26 UN climate
conference in Glasgow, in his
government-appointed role as “people’s
advocate” to the summit. Addressing the
UN Security Council in February at the
invitation of Boris Johnson, he described
Cop26 as possibly “our last opportunity to
make the necessary step change” towards
protecting the planet.
the interim target of cutting emissions
by 78 per cent by 2035, which was adopted
by Boris Johnson in April. A strong
communicator, Stark is highly respected by
the government. One source said he is “the
number-cruncher in chief, a calming voice
of reassurance to ministers grappling with
what to do next”. Stark says: “We have a
lot to do in the UK, changes to transport,
changes in the home, new industries, new
jobs, but these will be positive overall for
Wildcats are among the endangered species
nurtured by rewilding advocate Derek Gow
our way of life. And the move to zero carbon
is permanent, so let’s celebrate being the
generation that will get the job done.”
Caroline Lucas
Green Party MP for Brighton Pavilion
In 2010 Caroline Lucas became
the first Green to be elected to
parliament. More than a decade
on she has been re-elected three
times, increasing her share of
the vote each time. She remains the sole
Green in the Commons, but the party,
which she has twice served as leader, is
on the rise. The local elections last
month saw a record result for the party,
increasing its number of council seats by
99 to 155 and making gains in regions of
the UK that have never elected Greens
before. Lucas, 60, has earned the respect of
MPs across the party benches. She is a vocal
member of the Commons Environmental
Audit Committee. Asked what would be the
single most important action the
government could take on climate change,
she says: “Redesign the economy to make
meeting people’s needs within the Earth’s
finite natural limits the Treasury’s No 1 goal,
rather than the destructiveness of infinite
economic growth.”
Derek Gow
Guerilla rewilder
A decade ago beavers escaped
from Gow’s nature reserve on
the Devon-Cornwall border.
“A badger dug into one of our
central holding pens and a bunch
of beavers got out,” he says. They have
spread along the River Tamar, where several
generations now live in complete freedom.
Natural England reported Gow, 56, to the
police, but the officers decided to take no
action. “They decided it was an act of God,”
he says. “Because we did not knowingly let
them out, that was that.”
A time is approaching when the police
would not even be involved. Gow, formerly
a conventional farmer whose land is
increasingly given over to breeding and
nurturing endangered species such as
wildcats, water voles and white storks, is a
hero to the rewilding movement. And his
ideas are gradually becoming mainstream.
The environment secretary, George
Eustice, last month announced the creation
of a “species reintroduction taskforce”,
which will explore the prospect of bringing
back a raft of animals including golden
eagles, wildcats and pine martens to parts
of England, as well as further beaver
releases. Gow says it is about time. “What
beavers do is repair the terrible damage we
have done. They are the healers of the Earth’s
crust. But do we need another consultation?
Learning is good, but learning at the
expense of actually doing is fatal.” n
The Sunday Times Magazine • 31
 Life
on
the
inside
The photographer
Kieran Doherty
documents the
isolation of his
elderly parents,
who spent the
past 15 months
shielding at home

Doherty’s father,
Hugh, 82, conducts
as his grandchildren
sing Happy Birthday
in the rain
T he past 15 months have been
life-changing for Kieran Doherty
and his family, as they have been for so
many of us. His parents, Hugh and Isobel,
are both in their eighties and classed as
medically vulnerable, so had to shield in
their Hampshire home. As a freelance
photographer, Doherty saw his work
dry up overnight.
In a support bubble with his parents,
he decided to make them the focus of
a deeply personal project. “For my own
sanity I needed to stay creative,” he says.
The resulting images, capturing their
daily highs and lows through those
difficult months, were shot on rolls
of expired film he had found, then
processed in a self-built darkroom.
While his parents were fortunate not
to contract the virus, Hugh’s health
began to deteriorate. He had a bad fall
in September, then earlier this year he
spent two weeks in hospital with the lung
condition idiopathic pulmonary fibrosis.
“Dad said this has been the toughest
year of his life,” Doherty says. “He is still
struggling but this is not a sob story,
it’s the complete opposite. His and my
mother’s resilience is astounding.”
There have been happy moments too,
not least when Hugh received his first
Covid vaccination — one step towards
freedom after such a long time confined.
At the end of last month the fully
vaccinated couple were able to see their
grandchildren in the flesh once again.
What do Doherty’s parents make of
his project? “They are not used to being
the centre of attention,” he says, “but
I think they know how much these
photographs will mean to future
generations of our family. They certainly KIERAN DOHERTY

mean an awful lot to me.” n

kierandoherty.com

TOP LEFT TOP RIGHT

Hugh prepares to Hugh and Isobel
negotiate stairs watch the funeral
fitted with a new of a family member
NHS handrail via Zoom

MIDDLE LEFT RIGHT

The water from a The couple eat
hot shower brings Christmas dinner
some welcome relief on their own for the
to Hugh’s back pain first time since 1967

LEFT
Doherty’s parents
make a racket
during the weekly
Clap for Our Carers
TOP LEFT ABOVE RIGHT
Hugh’s breathing A paramedic The couple share
becomes shallow, so attends to Hugh a tender moment
he takes a moment while Isobel keeps after being reunited
to rest in the hallway her distance at home

LEFT BELOW BOTTOM RIGHT

Isobel checks her Hugh calls home A health worker
husband’s overnight from his bed during gives Hugh the first
bag as he is lifted his two-week stay of his two Covid
into an ambulance in hospital vaccinations
KIERAN DOHERTY

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38 • The Sunday Times Magazine
Cooking with floral ingredients is not just for professional chefs
— it’s easier than you think and the flavours are divine
Say it with flowers
Skye McAlpine
F or the longest time I only ate
courgette flowers when I saw
them on the menu in restaurants:
it felt daunting to try cooking
them at home. That it’s far easier
than it looks to deep-fry a
courgette blossom has been one of
my happiest culinary revelations
— and that you can cook them all
sorts of other delectable ways too.
I like them in savoury tarts and
quiches, on pizza, in pasta sauce
with a hint of saffron, perhaps, and
a few juicy prawns, or stuffed and
baked (as here). I also like them
raw, the buttery, saffron-tinted
petals coarsely torn and tossed
casually through a salad.
Of course edible flowers are
frivolously extravagant — they can
be tricky to source — but therein
lies part of their charm. If you
don’t have a garden (or don’t grow
them in your garden), you can
often buy them in greengrocers
or from Natoora (natoora.co.uk),
which now delivers nationwide
(and I’ve heard reports of them
in Sainsbury’s before).
Continuing on the floral theme,
another favourite ingredient of
mine is rose. A dash of rosewater
in cooking and baking transports
me back to my childhood and the
box of rose creams my mother
would ration out for special
occasions. Just a dash of the heady
scented water (which you can
find in the baking aisles of most
supermarkets) works a kind of
ethereal magic on the plainest
light sponge or dark chocolate
cake. Try a teaspoonful with
strawberries and a little sugar;
as the berries macerate they
produce the most delicate
pink, floral juices.
1
Baked courgette
blossoms
I’m not usually one for faffing
around with a piping bag but it
makes this simple recipe even
easier. You can use a freezer bag
or similar — just fill it with the
courgette cream and snip off
the corner. To make the recipe
vegetarian, omit the pancetta and
add extra grated parmesan.
SERVES
4 people
INGREDIENTS
100g ricotta
2 tbsp olive oil
80g pancetta
2 medium courgettes,
sliced into rounds
A handful of fresh mint leaves
50g grated parmesan, plus 1 tbsp
1 egg
12 courgette flowers
01 Heat the oven to 160C (180C
non-fan). Spoon the ricotta into
a sieve, set over a bowl and leave
to drain the excess water for
10-15 min while you get on with
making the rest of the filling.
02 Heat 1 tablespoon of olive oil in
a pan over a medium heat, then add
the pancetta and the courgettes
and fry gently for 8-10 min until
the courgettes have softened and
the pancetta is cooked through.
Take off the heat, add the mint
(reserve some for decoration), then
use a food processor or blender to
blitz everything to a thick paste.
03 In a bowl, combine the
courgette paste with the drained
ricotta and grated parmesan and
mix with a wooden spoon. Crack
in the egg and stir again. Season
to taste with salt and pepper.
04 Spoon the filling into a piping
bag, then very gently prise open
the petals of the courgette flowers
and use your fingers to remove the
pistils. Pipe a generous dollop of
filling into the heart of each flower.
Close the petals and gently twist
them together to seal.
05 Arrange the flowers snugly in
an ovenproof dish, sprinkle over
the remaining parmesan and set
in the oven for 10 min until lightly
golden and the cheese is melted.
Drizzle over the last of the olive
oil, scatter over a few mint leaves
if you like and serve warm.
SKYE MCALPINE FOR THE SUNDAY TIMES MAGAZINE
2
Rainbow salad
This salad is all about glorious,
extravagant, intense colour. I like
a mix of buttery, crisp green leaves
with something peppery, like
watercress, rocket and nasturtiums.
Shelled and raw garden peas
make a nice addition to any salad.
Sometimes I like to crumble in
a little feta too. (You can use
ready-cooked, vacuum-packed
beetroot as well.)
SERVES
4 people
INGREDIENTS
For the salad
2 whole beetroot, leaves removed
1 tbsp olive oil
A few handfuls of green leaves
A handful of sweet garden peas
8-10 edible flowers
For the dressing
1 tbsp English mustard
1 tbsp apple cider vinegar
2 tbsp olive oil
1 tsp honey
01 Heat the oven to 180C (200C
non-fan). Put the beetroot in a
small roasting tray, drizzle over
the olive oil and rub the beetroot
all over, then season with salt and
pop in the oven to roast for
40-45 min, until soft but not
shrunken. Set to one side and
leave to cool, then peel off the
skins and slice the beetroot into
thin rounds.
02 To make the dressing, combine
all the ingredients together in a
small bowl and whisk with a fork.
Season to taste.
03 To make the salad, toss
together the green leaves, sliced
beetroot and peas in a bowl.
Scatter over the edible flowers,
then drizzle the honey-mustard
dressing over the salad just
before serving.
The Sunday Times Magazine • 39
 3
Rose Eton mess
This is pretty much a classic Eton
mess. My only addition is a dash of
rosewater, a delicate complement
not only to the flowery strawberries
but also to the richness of the
double cream. Feel free to buy
ready-made meringues from a
The Dish
2 tbsp sugar
1 tsp rosewater
700ml thick double cream
Rose petals, for decoration (optional)
01 Heat the oven to 120C (140C
non-fan). Grease and line a baking
tray with parchment paper. Whisk
the egg whites in an immaculately
clean bowl until frothy, then add
03 To make the Eton mess, hull
and halve the strawberries, toss
them into a bowl and then spoon
over the sugar and the rosewater.
Toss together and leave to
macerate for 15-20 min.
04 Meanwhile in a second bowl,
whisk the cream until stiff. Take
care not to overwhisk it — you

bakery or supermarket for ease. the sugar one spoonful at a time,
whisking all the while, until stiff
peaks form.
SERVES
4-6 people 02 Spoon the glossy white mixture
onto the tray in three or four
INGREDIENTS generous dollops. Place in the
For the meringues middle of the oven and bake for
2 egg whites 1 hour, then switch off the oven
100g caster sugar and leave the meringues in the
oven (without opening the
For the mess door) for at least a further hour,
450g strawberries or even overnight.
want it pillowy and stiff enough
that peaks form, but not clumpy
like scrambled eggs. Crumble the
meringues into a large mixing
bowl or serving dish, add the
whipped cream and mix together.
Now fold in the strawberries along
with their syrupy pink juices.
05 Serve immediately — decorate
the dish with a few fresh rose
petals if you like before bringing
to the table n

The Sunday Times Magazine • 41

 Lessons in longevity from an
Table Talk
old-school Italian charmer
Il Portico
Kensington
Marina O’Loughlin
H ow, in an atmosphere of
febrile novelty-seeking, do
you keep a restaurant full — never
mind year after year but decade
after decade? Il Portico has existed
in one shape or another for four
generations of the same family.
And I’d never noticed it. I’ve
Il Portico walked past its Kensington High
277 Kensington Street frontage, but since it had no
High Street, font-porn signage, no Big Green
London W8 6NA; Egg smoke, no tiling or studied
020 7602 6262, modernism or Georgian opium
famigliaportico.co.uk den paintwork, it simply didn’t
register. Topiaried hedges, for
God’s sake: what self-respecting
professional neophile, what
kimchi and fermenting fetishist
perves over the likes of that?
Il Portico’s owner, James
Chiavarini, son of the original
padrone, brought it to my attention
by the dangerously subversive
expedient of dropping me a line.
Chiavarini is a bit of an occasional
agitator, a grit in the oyster of
unhelpful councils and grasping
delivery platforms. He made
a lot of noise during lockdown
about the fate of the restaurant
industry in general — and his in
particular, of course — writing
impassioned pieces in the popular
press (met, as is the way, with
comments such as “better off
with Chinese takeaway”). He has
a podcast too, inviting all sorts
of interesting types to have lunch
and sound off about the topics
of the day. The restaurant may
be old-school; Chiavarini’s
initiatives are anything but.
This is a place that revolves
around family and tradition,
specifically their Emilia-Romagna
background. The chef has been
with the business for 32 years.
When I ask how the daily special
of roe deer is served — “shot near
my father’s farm”; everything
comes with a story — the answer is
comical: “Our chef is still cooking
in the Seventies.” So there’s a
sauce of wild mushrooms, a touch
of cream, perhaps something like
marsala. It’s a barnstorming dish,
vast quantities of extremely fine,
rosy-pink and pleasingly gamey
venison, genuinely more than
enough for two, the sauce more
dressing than swamp, with a
hashtag of fried polenta batons
on the side. Yes, possibly a bit
autumnal, but do you remember
the weather last month?
I’m ahead of myself. We have
pasta first, blissfully chewy wriggles
of strozzapreti (“priest stranglers”)
tossed through nuggets of frazzled
prosciutto and oozy squacquerone
cheese. Cappellacci are models of
their kind: delicate, eggy
The Sunday Times Magazine • 43

dough, juicy braised veal shin
filling honking with aromatics,
sage butter and parmesan to
scoop into the dumplings’ al dente
nooks and crannies. I haven’t
eaten cappellacci this good since
Ferrara. It’s ballsy of them to be
from Emilia-Romagna and not put
lasagne on the menu, but it’s not
that kind of restaurant — they
crowd-please in their own
merry way. Hence a textbook
saltimbocca: thin veal, good ham,
crisped sage leaves in a boozy,
buttery puddle.
But Il Portico is filling its sweet,
faux-beamed and atmospheric
dining room for more than just
the food. People are surprisingly
forgiving of bad Italian cooking:
there are restaurants the length of
the country piling in punters for a
diet of pizza and pasta and shtick.
I go to one near the BBC studios
the same week and it’s Il Portico’s
polar opposite. “Sauvignon blanc
or pino grigio,” the manager snaps
— the “laydeez” was subtextual.
That saying, there’s no such thing
as bad pizza? Wrong: my salsiccia
e friarielli (misspelt) — believe me,
I’ve a lot of time even for a bad
sausage, but this tastes as though
its leathery casings were stuffed
with pebbledash. And its greens:
etiolated pond scum.
The walls are lined with pictures
of beaming celebrity diners and
Textbook
saltimbocca: thin
veal, ham and sage
leaves in a boozy,
buttery puddle
the place is mobbed. Even though
the food … I think the professional
term is “crap”. This doesn’t bother
the girl dirty dancing on the
pavement as the sound system
croaks out Tainted Love for the
third time. Or the chap behind
us who cracks his head on the
ground after falling off his chair.
Had he fallen into his pizza he’d
have undoubtedly bounced.
Either way, he’s feeling no pain.
No, I’m not going to name it. Plate of the nation
What would be the point? Ready-meal lasagne
Nobody eating here cares enough
about food to give a toss about that’s too fancy for
restaurant critics anyway. one’s microwave
Il Portico couldn’t be more
different. It could probably survive I was fantasising on Twitter
by doing the same: pizza and recently about a vast, béchamel-
commercial pasta and cheap wine rich lasagne and someone popped
STUFF OF DREAMS are good for profit margins. Not so up suggesting Charlie Bigham’s.
Cappellacci di good is delivering half a roe deer I’ve never been drawn to this brand
Ossobuco were on the plate. Or hand-making their — it seemed like a mix of low-rent
“honking with own gnocchi and cuttlefish ink ready meal and aspirational boujie,
aromatics, sage butter linguine. Or using gloriously invented by someone a bit posh
and parmesan” grassy olive oil. Or offering the and, um, chinless. But I’m always
finest cheeses and salumi — DOP up for being schooled.
— from the homeland. First hiccup: an oven cooking
That’s all joyful, obviously. But time of 35 min. Have posh people
this little place thrives because it not heard of microwaves? But no,
makes diners feel special. It is according to the packet “this
beloved. When we visit there’s recipe is made from some raw
a family with children to one side, ingredients and isn’t suitable for
an elderly couple to the other, microwaving”. Which suggests I’ve
sleek Kensington youth elsewhere, been using the microwave wrong
all cheersing with glasses of all these years. There’s not much
good Italian wines. Apart from of a seductive lasagne-in-the-
Chiavarini himself, voluble and oven aroma either.
FROM THE MENU
super-informative, the floor is run Surprise: it’s delicious. Not the
STARTERS by the kind of lifer Italian waiter amorphous red slurry of lesser
Cappellacci di forever ready with a quip and a lasagne, but discernible meat,
Ossobuco £10.50 “bella signora”. Cheesy? Maybe, vegetables, herbs (rather too much
but pass the formaggio. This all oregano for me, and Bologna might
Strozzapreti might be because I’m with Lisa, balk at the star anise, but that’s
Romagnoli £10.50 the editor of these pages, and being super-picky). Good, not
we’ve been clocked as a result; flabby pasta. And yes, a thick layer
MAINS/SIDES but it also might not — everyone of velvety, cheesy béchamel on
Roe deer with seems to be getting the treatment. top. Nice one, Chaz. MO’L
mushroom sauce £26 I have now joined Il Portico’s
legion of devotees. Since going
Saltimbocca alla there I’ve been evangelising —
Romana £19 but replies have frequently been
along the lines of “Oh yeah, I went
Zucchine fritte £4.50 there in the Eighties/Nineties/
Noughties”. Seems like I was the
DESSERT only one out of the loop. As L
Cheesecake £6 said on the night: “I’m definitely
coming back here.” Me too.
DRINKS PS Chiavarini is just about to
2 negronis £16 launch Pino, a pizza and wine bar,
a couple of doors down in their
Bottle of Is Argiolas former pizzeria. I’m imagining
Vermentino di something like the enoteche that
line Bologna’s ancient streets:
Sardegna DOC £36
tradition and forward-thinking,
TOTAL
For two, including 12.5%
a killer combination n
Twitter: @MarinaOLoughlin
Charlie Bigham’s Lasagne for
One, £4.75; bighams.com
service charge £145 Instagram: @marinagpoloughlin
The Sunday Times Magazine • 45
Drink
The wines that pair best
with food’s fifth taste
associated with foods such as miso
soup, parmesan, tuna and beef.
The source of umami is glutamic
acid and we humans love it.
According to Professor Barry
Smith at the Centre for the
Study of the Senses, umami is a
taste we are innately attuned to,
but unlike sweetness and
Will Lyons sourness, which fall away quite
If you pair a wine that contains
umami with food that also does
you get a synergy, an explosion of
flavour. Try pairing oysters,
parmesan or scallops with aged
champagne or dry sherry and
you’ll taste the synergy in action.
However, not all bottles go with
umami-rich foods, as umami tends
to make wine taste a little bitter.

I t was Kikunae Ikeda, a

chemistry professor at Tokyo
Imperial University, who in 1908
proposed there was a fifth taste,
umami, to slot in behind salty,
sweet, sour and bitter. Described
as savoury and roughly meaning
“deliciousness” in Japanese, it is
quickly, umami leaves a long,
pleasurable aftertaste.
A study last year by researchers
at the University of Copenhagen
discovered that aged champagne
also contains umami, derived from
the dead yeast cells that give it
that attractive biscuity character.
As a rule of thumb you need wines
with freshness and fruit — think
crispy duck pancakes and fruity
pinot noir, or anchovies with a
glass of fresh, aromatic vinho
verde from northern Portugal n
Twitter: @Will_Lyons
Instagram: @mrwill_lyons

2017 Exquisite Ayala Brut Majeur 2020 Ribolla Gialla 2019 Weingut Jülg 2018 Dominique 2014 Le Soula
Vintage Cava Champagne Marks and Weissburgunder Piron Beaujolais Blanc Vin de Pays
Aldi, £6.49 Tanners, £29 Spencer, £7 The Wine Society, Villages des Côtes
Spain France Italy £11.50 Waitrose, £11.99 Catalanes
I am impressed with When it comes to Part of M&S’s new Germany France Bowes Wines, £27
the quality of high price Ayala “Found” range. Made In June I love to Dominique Piron France
street cava this year punches well above from ribolla gialla pull out white wines has been on my One of the most
and this Aldi bargain, its weight. This grapes, which come from the Pfalz, radar for a few food-compatible
coming soon, has a combines toasty, from the Fruili region which have a years and this wine wines I know. From
crisp, savoury depth. bready, oaky of northeast Italy, precise, dry, crisp will not disappoint the Roussillon, it’s a
Although a umami aromatics with a it has attractive finish. I could with its smoky, dark blend of vermentino,
synergy for cava is crisp, bright tropical fruit flavours imagine this with fruit and soft, sauvignon and
unproven, it goes character. Try it with with a soft texture. something like an evolved texture — macabeu and others
well with cured ham parmesan and revel It goes well with Asian-inspired try with pan-fried with a citrus tang
and tapas. in umami on umami. umami-rich scallops. pork dish. tuna steaks. and great texture.

46 • The Sunday Times Magazine

 I’ve decided I need new fences to keep my animals safe. Thanks to a
Farming
Canadian beetle, a Wuhan bat and all you DIYers, that’s impossible
Cows on the rampage?
Better get used to it
Jeremy Clarkson
L ast month I watched some
alarming video footage
of a policeman near Reading
deliberately ramming a cow with
his pick-up truck. The poor thing
had escaped from its field and was
wandering around on a road, in
some distress. Apparently it had
knocked a shopper over and there
were fears it could eat someone’s
lawn. But even so there was no
need to kill it. It’s not like it was
a brontosaurus or a saltwater
crocodile. It was just a cow.
48 • The Sunday Times Magazine
So why didn’t plod entice it
with a bit of hay, or call a vet, who
could have pulled something
humane and scientific from his
bag of Herriot trickery. Ramming
it with a two-ton police truck
seems so brutal.
We are told that the cow
represented a significant danger
to motorists but as the road had
been closed this seems unlikely.
What seems more likely is that
whoever decided to implement
a new policy of ramming cows is
“a bit thick”.
Still, the British plod did better
than their counterparts in
America because back in March,
when officers in Virginia were
asked to deal with an escaped
cow, they reacted by arriving on
the scene in a blizzard of noise
and flashing lights and tried to
shoot it — which resulted in
them missing ten square feet of
slow-moving cow and hitting one
of their colleagues. Then, after
he’d been taken to hospital and
the cow had been wrangled to
the ground by someone who
knew what he was doing, they
shot it anyway.
It’s all too tragic for words
but at least there is a silver
lining. I’ve decided, against all
my instincts, to install some
new fencing.
When I was younger I used
to sit watching the most
interminable drivel on television
because I couldn’t be bothered to
get out of the chair and change
channels. Now, of course, thanks
to the remote control I don’t
have to. As soon as James May
says “Hello and welcome to …”
I just press the button and,
kerpow, he’s gone.

Nor when I want to speak with
a friend do I need to go to the
phone box and stand in a puddle
of tramp urine, or wait for the
neighbour to get off the “party
line” because today it’s considered
a “human right” to have a
smartphone of your own.
Life is easier and faster in
every way. We don’t have to
crank a handle to start the car. We
don’t have to put up with feeling
green around the gills for 90
minutes when we want to cross
the Channel. We don’t even have
to go to the shops when we
want something.
However, when we want to
build a fence, we are still expected
to use the exact same system
as those apes we saw at the
beginning of Kubrick’s space
odyssey. You deploy something
called a “fence knocker”, which
is a heavy bit of iron with
handles on the side and is far
and away the most tiring thing
in the world.
Knocking in one post takes
about 20 minutes and in a mile
ILLUSTRATION BY BEN CHALLENOR
of fencing there are 1,320 posts.
And on my farm there is maybe 20
miles of fencing. Get that job done
and I could beat Tyson Fury at arm
wrestling. That’s why I use a
different system, which is called
“paying someone else to do it”.
Except now, thanks to global
On my warming, or transgender issues,
farm there’s or some other kind of woke
plague, I can’t even do that
20 miles of because there’s a massive
planetwide shortage of timber.
fencing. Get A small beetle, no bigger than
a grain of rice, decided recently to
that done eat Canada. It started in British
and I could Columbia, stripping the bark off
every tree it could find, and now
beat Tyson it’s halfway across Alberta. God
knows how it’s still hungry after all
Fury at arm of that but it is and soon there will
wrestling be no trees left.
And it’s not just the six-legged
Mr Creosote that’s causing the
problem, because there’s also the
Wuhan bat. When that caused the
world to shut down, some people
went home and spent their newly
gifted free time making bread.
Some learnt French and some
broke out the watercolours. But
the vast majority reckoned that
because they were stuck at home
they may as well spruce the place
up a bit.
So off they went to the DIY
store, where they bought timber
for decking, timber for new
fencing and timber for an
extension. And this wasn’t just
happening in Britain. It was
happening everywhere.
So now there’s a huge surge in
demand for what the beetle hasn’t
eaten and, to create the perfect
storm, there’s also a shortage of
sawmills. After the last recession
in 2008, a lot of lumber yards
suffered a kneejerk reaction to the
sub-prime problems and shut up
shop. So now, when timber is cut,
there are very few places that can
turn it into lumber.
And Covid has also caused
chaos with shipping. So even if
you can find a tree that hasn’t
been eaten, and you can find a
sawmill that’s still open, you’re
going to struggle to find a
company that can deliver it.
Which is why you might want to
look at getting your wood from
Europe. Yeah, well, post Brexit,
good luck with that.
The upshot is that fence posts
now cost more than most space
rockets. And to buy one you have
to meet a shady chap called Derek
round the back of the pub.
Sure, I have planted many trees
over the past year or so, but it’ll be
30 years before they can be used
to separate farm animals from
idiotic policemen, which is why
I turned my attention to fencing
made from iron.
And it’s the same story. Because
wood now costs more than heroin,
everyone has thought the same
thing, and as a result every
company making metal fences has
filled its web pages with words like
“Due to unprecedented demand”.
Which is corporate speak for
“oops, we’ve sold out”.
Walls are not the answer either.
Yes, there’s no shortage of stone.
We are standing on it. But there
is a shortage of people who can
arrange it so that it doesn’t fall
over. I have a great guy on the
farm but he’s 72 years old and can
barely keep up with the badgers
that knock over what he repairs
every night. Asking him to build
20 miles of wall would finish
him off. And anyway a drystone
wall is no real barrier to livestock.
Sheep just clamber over it and,
given the right motivation, a cow
could win the Grand National.
Pigs, meanwhile, are so good at
escaping, they make Steve
McQueen look like a rank amateur.
I’m fearful then that in the
coming months we will see a lot
more livestock on our roads and
that maybe some new legislation
may be necessary. Legislation
that reminds officers they may
not deliberately run down cows,
or dogs, or any animal for that
matter. Just burglars n
The Sunday Times Magazine • 49
 The Porter Review: Toyota Supra
Driving
This is not the answer
to your midlife crisis
Richard Porter
T he current Toyota Supra is
the result of a terrible
misunderstanding. The roots of
this are in the late 1970s and the
original Supra, which was little
more than a Toyota Celica injected
with protein.
The second generation sported
more rakish styling, which gave it
a distinct whiff of “Dad seems to
be getting over the divorce”, and
the third one really ran with this
CONTACT US vibe, the bonnet getting longer,
Write to us at the wheels getting whiter, the
driving@sunday- calls from your sister getting more
times.co.uk or Driving, urgent and ending with: “Well,
The Sunday Times, at least it’s not a motorbike.”
1 London Bridge Street, Then there was the fourth
London SE1 9GF generation, which was attractive
in a steroidal sort of way but hard
DRIVING.CO.UK to take seriously and viewed with
For daily news, reviews, little affection in its day. One
videos, buying guides British car magazine described it
and advice as “surprisingly unentertaining”
and when it was killed off without
replacement in 2002 no one
seemed especially bothered.
Then Supras appeared in the
video games Gran Turismo and
Need for Speed and starred in one of
the Fast & Furious movies, which
made a new generation aware of
them, and this is where the
horrible misunderstanding arose.
In the 2010s Toyota mistakenly
thought that, because the car had
been immortalised in pixels and
on film, people actually liked it.
Trouble is, just because you
remember something from the
past it doesn’t mean that you want
it in your life today. See also Parma
Violets, Global Hypercolor
T-shirts and Anthea Turner.
Unfortunately, before Toyota
realised this it had entered into a
partnership with BMW to bring
back the Supra as a sister car to the
Z4 roadster and arranged for both
to be built in a factory near Graz.
Great fanfare was made about
the return of this supposed
Japanese sports car icon (built with
German engineering in Austria)
and then … well, it’s been out for
two years and have you ever seen
one on the road? I don’t think it’s
exactly flying out of showrooms.
So in an attempt to broaden
the Supra’s appeal there’s now this,
a new entry-level model that
replaces the BMW-sourced 3-litre
straight six with a 2-litre four-
cylinder engine, also from the
German side of the partnership.
It’s less powerful (254 v 335
horsepower), it’s slower (0-62 in
5.2 v 4.3 seconds) and it’s cheaper
(£46,010 v £54,365 for the most
basic models) but, aside from
slightly different exhaust pipes
and wheels, it’s identical to look at.
From some angles it appears
muscular and serious, from others
cartoonish and silly. It’s striking,
though you probably wouldn’t call
it pretty. When you drive it
through densely populated areas
you become aware that people are
looking at it, though that might be
because they’re saying: “I’ve never
seen one of those before. What is
it?” Or, given the image of
previous Supras: “Hey, isn’t that
your dad? Why has he spent so
much on a car when he lives in a
flat above a newsagent and has no
furniture except for a futon?”
The problem with this new-
variant Supra is that it has a vast,
priapic nose designed to take the
lengthy straight six with which the
car was launched. Running a
weeny four-cylinder motor and
shrouding it with that long,
bulbous bonnet feels a bit like
stuffing a sock down the front of
your swimming trunks.
Still, you might hope that a
smaller, lighter engine tucked
1,299mm
entirely behind the front axle
would have a positive effect on the
weight distribution and therefore
the handling, making this Supra
a delight to dance down an
interesting back road. Sadly this
is not the case. There’s nothing
wrong with the engine itself,
which is muscular and keen, its
output plumped by a turbocharger,
but it’s attached to an eight-speed
automatic gearbox with paddle
shift that undoes the engine’s
excellent efforts by being too soft
and sloppy in standard mode and
needlessly aggressive in sport.
Likewise the adaptive
suspension, which, in its sporty
setting sends unpleasant jolts up
your spine. Then there’s the
steering, which is too quick
whichever mode you’re in and,
combined with the shortness of
the wheelbase, gives the car a
nervous, twitchy feeling as you
turn into a bend that, conversely,
then dissolves as it settles down
and clings tightly to dry tarmac.
Guiding this car briskly
cross-country becomes a series
of short, sharp shocks. Good
driver’s cars let you build up
a satisfyingly smooth and
consistent rhythm over a snaking
bit of road. The Supra is the
opposite of that. It’s staccato and
angular. It has no flow to it. You
feel like you’re trying to dance to
a piece of music in 5/4 time.
However, once you take it out of
sport mode and stop haring about
The Portometer like you’re travelling to or from a
Toyota GR Supra 2.0 Fuji fire it’s altogether less uptight. It
changes its own gears smoothly,
Speedway Edition pads over bumps softly and is a
perfectly reasonable cruiser, much
like the 3-litre version.
If you’re in the market for a
Supra you should know that the
larger engine uses more petrol
and costs more to buy but makes
1,854mm 4,379mm a nicer noise and, of course, fills
Engine Fuel / CO2 that codpiece bonnet more
1998cc, 4 cylinders, 37.7mpg / 167g/km convincingly. However, the real
turbo, petrol problem for this lower-powered
Weight
Power 1,395kg
version is what else you could
254bhp @ 6500rpm have for similar money.
Price If it’s a four-cylinder sports car
Torque £47,410 you’re after, the fabulous Alpine
295 Ib ft @ 1550rpm
Release date A110 is within a couple of grand of
Acceleration On sale now the GR Supra 2.0 Fuji Speedway
0-62mph: 5.2sec Edition tested here, and a basic
Richard’s rating
Top speed Porsche 718 Cayman is actually
155mph less, though with Porsche’s usual
generosity that price might not
include windows. Both are
brilliant sports cars and perfectly
Head to head competent cruisers while the
Toyota GR Supra 2.0 Supra is only one of those things.
Fuji Speedway Edition v If you don’t fancy the A110 or
Porsche 718 Cayman the Cayman, if you prize all-out
driving pleasure above everything
Price 0-62mph
else, and if you’re determined to
give your local Toyota dealer some
£47,410 £45,230 5.2sec 4.9sec
of your money, save yourself a
Power Top speed packet and get the sensational GR
Yaris that Jeremy raved about not
254bhp 296bhp 155mph 170mph
too long ago. Any of these three is
nicer to drive than the Supra. In
fact, it’s hard to think what this car
can do that they can’t and as a
result it’s impossible to think of
Toyota thought that, because a reason to recommend it. It’s not
the car had been immortalised terrible, but I can’t imagine you’d
ever buy one unless there was
on film, people actually liked it some terrible misunderstanding n

Kevin Hall
A Life in the Day
The UK’s only Lego certified professional
on his dream job working as a brick artist
H all, 48, was raised in New
South Wales, Australia, and
worked as a graphic designer
before relocating to the UK to
work with Lego full time. In
2015 he founded Brick Galleria,
a Lego modelling company that
designs and creates models
for events. In 2019 he became
the UK’s only Lego certified
professional, one of just 21
people in the world with the
title. He lives in the Cotswolds
with his colleague Emily Corl,
a Lego brick artist.
I live and work
in a 236-year-old
converted barn on
a dairy farm. I’m usually up at
6.30am and begin every day with
a walk across the land. It feels like
we have a 100-acre backyard. Then
I’ll eat breakfast and review our
daily schedule. Luckily the Brick
Galleria studio is in my home, so
I only have a ten-second commute.
When I was five my mum got
me a Lego set for Christmas and
WORDS OF
WISDOM
BEST ADVICE
I WAS GIVEN
How inspiring this
work could be
ADVICE I’D GIVE
Never stop building
WHAT I WISH
I’D KNOWN
Hold out for your
dream job
58 • The Sunday Times Magazine
I built it just by looking at the
picture. I have a photographic
memory and, even as a kid, if I saw
a Lego model I could recreate it at
home without instructions.
There are no formal
qualifications to become a brick
artist — my job is the result of my
lifetime passion for Lego. When
I moved to the UK from Australia,
I left everything behind apart from
200kg of Lego. There is a huge
community called Afol [Adult
Fans of Lego] that I’ve been part of
for 20 years. It started as a hobby
but then by participating in events
my work was noticed and agencies
began asking me to design and
build models for ad campaigns.
Eventually the amount of
commissions I was getting made
it possible for me to go full time.
I love every minute of it and never
dread Mondays.
In the mornings I devote time
to designing new models. I build
them virtually, brick by brick,
with 3D computer software before
physically building them.
It was such an honour to be
named the UK’s only Lego certified
professional. I had to apply with
my portfolio and go through an
official interview process. The title
means that I am authorised to
design and build models for the
Lego Group itself, but also in an
official capacity for third parties.
Some jobs take two weeks, others
can take six months.
I’m a huge Disney fan and so
it was a dream come true to build
the Beauty and the Beast castle
(pictured). It is 2.2 metres tall and
consists of half a million bricks,
but I built it freehand after a lot
of research. There was no plan. If
I can visualise it, I can recreate it.
The past year is the busiest we
have ever been. We produced two
Lego books, built a giant pair of
shoes for Adidas and built models
for Covent Garden for Christmas.
We currently have a Tudor
exhibition in the Salisbury
Museum, with models of Hever
Castle in Kent, Shakespeare’s
Globe theatre and the six wives of
Henry VIII. If I am caught up in
the work, sometimes lunch will
pass me by and by mid-afternoon
I’ll suddenly realise I’m hungry.
A lot of people reconnected
with Lego when they were
stuck at home during lockdown.
I think it’s because you can
actually make your own world.
There is no right or wrong with
Lego — if you can dream it, you
can build it. For me a model is
not a finite thing. I can make
something, then I’ll tear it down
to make something else.
I finish work officially at about
6pm but Lego fills a lot of my
personal time too. In the studio
I can be surrounded by up to
ten million bricks and parts, and
they inevitably spill over into
the house. Emily and I have built
loads of practical things to use at
home, such as a Lego spatula and
kitchen roll holder. When I’m
not building I love to study history
or go for an evening walk. I’m
usually in bed by 10pm.
There are so many elements
to being a brick artist — design,
engineering, maths — but the act
of physically bringing something
COURTESY OF KEVIN HALL. GETTY IMAGES
to life is the part I love. I’m living
a dream and don’t think I’ll ever
retire. I’m a firm believer that
growing old may be
inevitable but growing
up is optional n
Interview by Helen Cullen
See Kevin’s work at brickgalleria.com