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OY VEY!
Confessions
of a rabbi
CAITLIN MORAN
What I learnt
from Boris

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 16.07.22
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5 Caitlin Moran What Boris Johnson’s time as PM taught me. 9 What I’ve learnt I wouldn’t want Amy Whitehouse’s level of fame, says
her former producer Mark Ronson. 10 The contender What would America look like under prospective presidential candidate Mike
Pompeo? 16 Vicky Pattison: ‘I became a caricature’ The reality TV star on confronting her messy relationship with alcohol. 22 Cover
story Ukrainian surrogates The women fleeing a war zone to give birth to someone else’s baby. 27 Eat! Easy recipes from Anna Haugh,
MasterChef’s newest judge. 40 What the rabbi saw The secrets of a quiet synagogue in the south of England – from amorous widows to
an immaculate conception. 44 The new Ibiza How quantum yoga and sunset rituals replaced pills and clubbing on the Balearic island.
48 Home! A Georgian house revamped with a set designer’s eye. 52 Giles Coren reviews Galleria, St Leonard’s-on-Sea. 58 Beta male:
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The Times Magazine 3

 THINGS I’VE LEARNT
FROM BORIS JOHNSON
Caitlin Moran comes clean
W
ell, here we are: the Era Of
Boris Johnson is over, pending
him actually leaving. In truth,
at 2 years and 348 days before
the full-scale Tory party rebellion
forced his hand, it was too short
even for the word “era” – it’s
more of an “er”; fitting, given
how often Johnson would say
that word in between one digression about,
PETER BROOKES
say, Peppa Pig World and the next. Forgive
me. Forgive me. Forgive me.
Still! Every cloud has a silver lining,
and it’s an ill wind that blows no good. In
Victorian times, a reasonable living could be
made as a “pure collector” – picking up dog
excrement from the street and selling it to
tanners. What I’m asking is, are there things
we can glean from the unparalleled chaos
and sleaze of Boris Johnson’s unprecedentedly
ruinous premiership, which brought the
oldest political party in the world to the brink
of dissolution? Is there a “learning moment”
to be had?
And what I’m replying is, “Yes – yes, of
course there is.”
So: What I Have Learnt From Boris
Johnson Being Prime Minister.
1 You can probably tell about two big
lies a year, maximum
The national digestive system can process
a couple of fibs over the course of a year
– parliament, the press and the electorate will
chew hard on them but eventually they will be
swallowed and the course of nature will soon
leave them as ever vanishing fibby poo-piles
in the rear-view mirror of history.
Try a third, though, and the whole system
starts to gum up. You can’t start eating a
new plate of fresh cobblers while you’re still,
metaphorically, on the toilet dealing with
The Times Magazine 5

the last one. It makes people tetchy. They
don’t know if they’re coming or going. Soon
there’s a queue of people banging on the
Bathroom of Events, desperate to say farewell
to the last lot – even as they desperately
masticate on a fresh delivery. Basically, by
piling Partygate on top of Wallpapergate on
top of Chris Pincher, Boris Johnson turned
Westminster into that scene from Bridesmaids.
You know the one. Our moral digestive
systems were thrown into chaos. It got messy.
That was why we wanted him to go. Simply,
our bums of forgiveness were tired.
2 Boris Johnson would never have become
prime minister without Ricky Gervais
In the creation of The Office, Gervais
popularised the concept of a boss who was
“more of a laid-back entertainer” – a persona
that I would suggest was very much the
“infected bat” of the coronavirus of Johnson’s
premiership. Before David Brent became a
national icon, we liked our prime ministers to
basically act like souped-up bank managers:
bit of policy here, lot of ironed suit there.
People who would be happy – nay, desirous of
– being referred to as “the establishment”.
Post-Brent, however, our Archetype File had
a new entry: people who were terrible at their
job but oddly loveable. People who brought “a
bit of fun” to serious issues. People who rebelled
against the idea of being “some square in a
suit”. People who just “said what you’re really
thinking” – about piccaninnies and bum-boys
and letterboxes – but not in a nasty way.
It’s just banter! It’s a parody of that kind of
thinking! So, erm, bagsy no returns, libtards!
Of course, in the end there is no real
difference between “ironic” bigotry and actual
bigotry – other than, if it upsets you, you can be
accused of being “uptight” and “humourless”.
So is it worse than “actual” bigotry? Yes, it is.
As the 375 per cent rise in Islamophobic attacks
after Boris’s “letterboxes” quote – 42 per cent
directly referencing his words – proved.
Boris has, hopefully, taught us that
“the comedy mores of early Noughties TV
translate very badly into a role where you
represent 67 million very diverse people”
– because it’s clear that, to him, the citizens
of this country divide into two categories: the
targets of jokes and the audience he’s playing
to. Divide and LOL. Unpleasant.
3 That there are levels of middle-class decor
way above Farrow & Ball and Fired Earth
Most middle-class people would like to think
BBC, GETTY IMAGES
they’re all across “spendy interior decor”
possibilities. Got the Heal’s gold velvet sofa that
“pops”; got the giant £235 Diptyque “outdoor”
candle in tuberose; got the mid-century Scandi
ceramics and Big Green Egg barbecue.
Role model: Ricky Gervais in The Office
‘Gervais popularised the concept of the boss as laid-back entertainer’
However, it seems that – like Area 51 – the
really rich people know about secret, amazing
stuff that is totally classified to bog-standard
ABC1 shit-munchers. Soane’s Old Gold
wallpaper at £840 per roll? The services of
interior designer Lulu Lytle, who sells “rattan
hanging lights costing £7,200” and “a forged
iron Bascule Desk costing £10,400”? Even the
most “comfortable” members of “the chattering
classes” didn’t know that technology had made
a £7,200 straw lamp possible. It took Boris
Johnson’s £200,000 flat refurbishment to
make us realise what the true dandy playas are
capable of. So long as someone else is paying.
4 In the end, hiring known sex-cases
doesn’t work out
I thought we all knew this but, huh, it turns
out we didn’t. And so we have learnt that,
against all common sense, you can get away
with it for months – indeed, years – at a time,
but eventually, employing a mutant arse-
grabber will bite you on the arse. Indeed,
they might bite you on the arse. Important
information going forward, guys.
5 As the immortal line in Fleabag has it,
‘Hair is everything’
Or, as Danny the Drug Dealer in Withnail and
I puts it, “Hair are your aerials. They pick up
signals from the cosmos, and transmit them
directly into your brain.” Or, as I would parse
it, “Always be wary of a man who has exactly
the same haircut he had as a child.”
Hair takes up a lot of real estate on your
head. It’s 50 per cent of your passport picture.
Therefore, if a great deal of the message you
are projecting to the world is, “I am still
essentially the same person I was when
I was seven,” people would be wise to be
wary around you. Boris Johnson – the Blond
Bumshell – has resolutely stuck with his
“tousled, pie-stealing scamp” do since he was
two. The subliminal messaging of the hair
– which has been recorded daily by Johnson’s
three official tax-funded photographers – is,
“I am still an adorable child. Do not judge me
by the mores of adults with sombre, square
hair: I answer to an older magic still. I am
Tom Hanks in Big, dancing on the giant piano
of British politics during an adventure you will
never forget. Maybe for all the wrong reasons.”
6 Specific words matter
During Johnson’s “resignation” speech, he
never actually said the word “resignation”. Or,
indeed, “sorry”. Kind of amazing when most
British people will say, “Sorry,” if someone
treads on their foot or has put a bag on their
train seat. You would have thought bringing
the entire government to a grinding halt
during a cost of living crisis, as Covid rises and
war rages in Ukraine, would merit a humble
“soz” at the very least.
And this is why I break the news: I suspect
we haven’t stopped “learning” from Boris
Johnson yet. This guy’s not going anywhere.
Caretaker prime minister for the summer?
He’s going to totally Ferris Bueller’s Day
Off this – he’ll spend the next few months
spending his best friend’s dad’s money on
tax cuts, being legendary, stealing a car
and dancing to Twist and Shout on a float.
Reminding everyone what fun he is.
Come October and the Tory party
conference, otherwise surrounded by dull,
old-fashioned “squares” in suits, he’s gonna
do a triumphant, LOL-tastic appearance
– total Elvis Presley ’68 Comeback Special
– to rapturous applause, undermine the new
prime minister, foment a bunch of shit from
the back benches for the next six months and
then run for the Big Job again. Because what
I have ultimately learnt from Boris Johnson
is that you rarely waste your money down at
Ladbrokes betting on him never, ever getting
his comeuppance. He is the Hotel California
of politics: we’ve checked in to him. And now
we can never leave. n
The Times Magazine 7
What I’ve learnt Mark Ronson
Born in west London, the DJ and
producer Mark Ronson, 46, moved to
New York at the age of seven when his ‘I’d wake up at
mother, Ann Dexter, married the
Foreigner guitarist Mick Jones. He night and my
has produced albums for Lily Allen
and Amy Winehouse, and won seven mum would be
Grammys, two Brit awards and an
Oscar. He lives in New York with his having a wild
second wife, the actress Grace Gummer.
party with
My New York upbringing was
surreal, with people like Robin Diana Ross’
Williams tucking me into bed. There
was a giddy thrill of being around
these people, but I was also really
jealous of my friends’ home lives.
They had mums that seemed to be
off The Wonder Years who would
make hot chocolate and had quiet
and stable lives. I guess there was
a bit of the grass is always greener.
I tended to keep some of the more
ridiculous stuff going on at home to
myself. If I started saying, “My
friend Sean Lennon and I had this
sleepover at Michael Jackson’s
house,” I was going to get slapped.
I kept it to myself when I’d wake
up in the night and my mum and
stepdad were having a wild party
and I’d spot Diana Ross or a
member of Duran Duran.
I’ve always been grateful that I’m
not a superstar in the way that
Amy Winehouse was a superstar.
I can walk down the street, and
while somebody might shout out,
“Hey man, love the tunes,” I don’t
have the paparazzi chasing me.
I get to do the thing that I love
with very little rocking the boat
on the way I live my life.
I don’t really party any more. I’ve INTERVIEW Nick McGrath PORTRAIT Dean Chalkley
had periods where I’ve partied a
little dangerously and toyed with
abuse, which, knowing that there of beer and wine, which ten years Gaga, my marriage [to the actress sad chords.” But giving myself
is a history of addiction in my ago didn’t seem like something Joséphine de la Baume] was falling permission to let that be part of
family, was playing with fire. that would be an option. apart. When she sang the line, Late Night Feelings had a lot to do
I think I kept it together just There’s never a single moment “Tell me something, boy/ Aren’t with why it was a heftier record
enough because I am a control where you know you’re creating a you tired trying to fill that void?” than other things I’d made.
freak. The idea of being able to hit record. But there are moments I was incredibly moved. It felt like I’ve started hopeful dad bootcamp.
pop home to the family and keep when your hairs stand up. When she was singing it to me. We all I saw a friend of mine pick up a
up the façade was still weirdly I played the piano track to Amy felt something that night. newborn the other day and he
important to me. on Back to Black, she said: “Give My divorce definitely had an winced. I was like, “All right, we
Because drugs and alcohol are so me that backing track. I need to impact on my creativity. I’ve start Pilates tomorrow. We start
intertwined, I’d think, “Will I have go into the back room and write worked with people whose music yoga. I’m getting ready for this.”
to quit everything? Will I ever be some lyrics now,” and she came is emotional and melancholy but I’m 46 so I’ve left fatherhood quite
able to drink without going to that back and sang it for me, and I was as far as my own records were late already but that’s the goal. n
next level?” But I’m lucky I’m still like, “Wow, this is quite special.” concerned, I was like, “I don’t Mark Ronson’s BBC Maestro course on music
able to enjoy an occasional glass When I produced Shallow with Lady know what to do with these production is available at bbcmaestro.com

The Times Magazine 9

 HOW TO BECOME
THE NEXT US PRESIDENT:
LOSE THE DEAD WEIGHT

Now: 6 stone lighter T hen

Think America cannot get more divided than under

Donald Trump? Think again. The leading contenders to take the
Republican nomination include a slimmed-down Mike Pompeo.
The diehard Trump loyalist and former secretary of state is
hinting he will run. (His old boss won’t be pleased)
Interview: David Charter
 Pompeo and Trump during
a cabinet meeting, July
2018. Opposite: coming
off stage at an American
Freedom Tour event in
Austin, Texas, May 2022

Standfirst here in Times Modern Magazine regular the quick brown fox jumps over the lazy
dog Times Modern Magazine regular the quick brown fox jumps over the lazy dog Times
Modern Magazine regular the quick brown fox jumps over the lazy dog Times Modern
 W
hat would America look like if Trump and Pompeo at a White House meeting with Justin Trudeau, June 20, 2019
a Republican won the election
in 2024? And it wasn’t Trump?
Leading Republican contenders
to take up the former
president’s mantle are strongly
pro-life, against gay marriage,
apocalyptic in their belief in an
existential battle with China
and in no mood to compromise
on anything. Nobody moderate has a prayer.
Among them is Mike Pompeo, one of just
five cabinet-level appointees who managed to
strap themselves in for the entire rollercoaster
Trump presidency. Like fellow pretenders
to the world’s most powerful job Ron
DeSantis, the Florida governor, and Mike
Pence, the former vice-president, Pompeo’s
political views are underpinned by a deeply
felt Christian faith and range from robust
to downright alarming to American liberals.
His CV is impeccable: after graduating
from the West Point military academy and
pursuing a career as a tank commander, he’s
been a businessman, congressman, America’s
top spy and its top diplomat.
He has also managed the difficult trick for
a senior American conservative of respecting
the 2020 election result – in the end – while
staying on Trump’s good side.
Well, perhaps until now. The 58-year-old
is making it plain that he is prepared to take ‘POMPEO IS SMART: HE SHOULDN’T OR WOULDN’T
on his old boss in the battle for the next
Republican nomination. RUN AGAINST TRUMP’ DONALD TRUMP JR
This is a risky position to take in MAGA
(Make America Great Again) world, where Pompeo is clearly testing the water for his “Oh, goodness, we’ll make that decision
loyalty to Trump is valued above all else. own presidential run. He attracted attention after November, sometime this year,” he
The 76-year-old former president expects when he re-emerged into the spotlight by replies, on a recent UK visit that included an
all acolytes to leave the field clear for him. exhibiting Nigel Lawson-style weight loss, appearance at the Policy Exchange think tank.
“If I ran, I can’t imagine they’d want to run. put by Pompeo himself at more than 6st over “I say ‘we’, Susan [his wife of 22 years] and
Some out of loyalty would have had a hard 6 months. “I stopped eating carbs to a large me, we’ll make this decision wholly independent
time running,” said Trump recently, when the extent, and I tried to eat smaller portions,” he of who else decides to get in the race or who
names of Pompeo, Pence and DeSantis were told Fox News, adding that he works out most doesn’t. And if we conclude it’s the right place
put to him. “I think that most of those people, days in a home gym. (Some observers were for us to be and we think that this is the right
and almost every name you mentioned, is more than a little sceptical that surgical or time for us to go serve, we’ll go at it and we’ll
there because of me.” other drastic measures were not involved.) go make the case as best we can. And then
Don Jr, Trump’s eldest son, joined the Slimmed-down Pompeo has been popping we’ll see what the good people of Iowa, New
public pressurising, saying Pompeo “is a smart up at Republican events in the early primary Hampshire and South Carolina think.”
PREVIOUS SPREAD: BRANDON BELL/GETTY IMAGES, JABIN BOTSFORD/

enough guy to probably know he shouldn’t or states of Iowa and New Hampshire and he At this point it is important to point out that
wouldn’t run against Donald Trump”. launched a digital advert in South Carolina name-checking Susan, his second wife, is not
GETTY IMAGES. THIS SPREAD: GETTY IMAGES, REX FEATURES

But the warning shots suggest growing
nervousness in the Trump camp. Upsetting
the former president carries the risk of
excommunication and being counted out of
the reckoning for running mate, for which
Pence’s act of disloyalty in certifying the
2020 election result has created a vacancy.
However, as the revelations mount of Trump’s
machinations to overturn his defeat and stoke
the invasion of the US Capitol on January 6
last year, most of the Republican contenders
for 2024 appear to be calculating that it is
better to run on their own terms than as the
wingman of a doomed Trump campaign.
defending religious freedom, a favourite
topic. Like all wannabe US presidents he has
written a book, due out in November, full of
reflections and observations, but perhaps not
about his weight loss regime, called Never Give
an Inch: Fighting for the America I Love.
However, it is one thing to keep yourself in
front of the public and donors in case Trump
decides to call it a day, and quite another
to go up against him. When I ask him whether
he would continue with his presidential
adventure if Trump does confirm he will
seek a second term, Pompeo says his decision
does not depend on the former president.
simply a husbandly pleasantry for Pompeo.
Kansas native Susan, 57, whose Secret Service
code name is “Shocker” after the athletic
teams at Wichita State University, where she
was homecoming queen, is said to be more
ambitious for Mike Pompeo than Mike Pompeo
himself, and was the driving force behind his
initial campaign for Congress in 2010.
Pompeo met her while negotiating a
business loan from the bank where she
worked. After they married in 2000, Pompeo
jokingly once said, “It’s true: she took my
money. Twice.” He adopted Susan’s son, Nick,
from her previous marriage. Susan’s close

12 The Times Magazine

 interest in her husband’s career controversially
extended to an office at Langley, the CIA’s
Virginia HQ, on the seventh floor where
Pompeo had his director’s suite. She also drew
criticism for asking State Department staff to
fetch dry cleaning, make restaurant reservations
and walk the family’s two dogs. Susan once told
a journalist, “We decided we would do this
together. We set out to do this like we would
do any venture. I loved the campaigning part
of it, much more than Mike did.”
Pompeo was born in Orange, California, and
inherited his surname from great-grandparents
who had emigrated from Abruzzo in Italy.
In 1986, he graduated first in his class of
973 junior officers at West Point having spent
his senior year as a commander in charge
of 120 other cadets. Alongside his scholarly
achievement, he received the General Robert
E Wood award for distinguished cadet and
the General Winfield S Scott Memorial
Award for highest achievement in engineering
management, his field of study. It was also
here that Pompeo joined a Bible study group
and became a devoted Christian.
In a speech to a “God and Country Rally”
at Summit Church in Wichita, Kansas, in 2015,
shortly after a US Supreme Court ruling
With Kim Jong-un, March 31, 2018
backed the right to gay marriage, which he
opposes, Pompeo vowed to “continue to fight
these battles. It is a never-ending struggle...
until the Rapture”. It was a rare glimpse into
his deepest beliefs, a reference to an evangelical
theory that living and resurrected believers
will “be caught up together in the clouds to
meet the Lord in the air” at the end of the
world. In 2019, on a visit to Jerusalem while
US secretary of state, he was asked by the
Christian Broadcasting Network whether
Trump had been “raised for such a time as
this, just like Queen Esther, to help save the
Jewish people from the Iranian menace?”
Pompeo replied, “As a Christian, I certainly
believe that’s possible… I am confident that
the Lord is at work here.”
Pompeo served five years in the 7th Cavalry
Regiment, including a deployment in Germany
during the closing years of the Cold War. He
was a tank commander at US Army Garrison
Bavaria, one of America’s largest overseas
bases, where he became aware of the Iron
Curtain dividing Europe and gained insights
into Nato. He believes, like the former president,
that Europeans should pay more towards
military defence, but would never emulate
Trump in calling the alliance “obsolete”.
Asked whether he wants America to pull
back from Nato, or would threaten to leave
as Trump did at a bad-tempered meeting
in Brussels in July 2018, Pompeo says, “No,
I don’t think so at all. Our presence, alone, is
important. So we should continue to be part
of this important coalition that has been the
With his wife, Susan, at a state dinner at the White House, 2018
most effective deterrent in modern times. We
should definitely be there. But I do hope
our continued presence doesn’t provide the
backstop that causes others to think that they
need not put their own kids in harm’s way.”
After leaving the army, Pompeo earned a
degree from Harvard Law School. He moved
to Wichita in Kansas, which has become his
home state, to run an aerospace company.
It was partly funded by Koch Industries, the
Kansas-based conglomerate active in lobbying
against environmental and other government
regulations that was later the largest donor
to Pompeo’s congressional campaigns. First
elected as a fiscally conservative “Tea Party”
Republican, he came to Trump’s attention
in 2015 during the congressional inquiry
into the killing of four Americans in Benghazi,
including the ambassador to Libya, Chris
Stevens. Pompeo stood out during the evidence
session with Hillary Clinton for his aggressive
questioning of the secretary of state.
This, along with a fervent opposition to the
international Iran nuclear deal championed by
President Obama, helped Pompeo get the nod
as Trump’s first director of the CIA. Pompeo
seized the chance to deliver the president’s
daily security brief in person and became
one of the most skilled Trump-whisperers in
the administration. When Trump ran out of
patience with his first secretary of state, Rex
Tillerson, in March 2018, he turned to his CIA
director, saying: “With Mike Pompeo, we have
a very similar thought process. I think it’s going
to go very well.” Trump pulled the US out of
the Iran deal and met North Korean leader
Kim Jong-un for the first time in Singapore.
Pompeo’s first mission for Trump was
clandestine trips to Pyongyang in April and
May, the first before he was even confirmed
at State, to set up the historic talks, meeting
Kim on both occasions.
His baptism of fire continued in July with
Trump’s Helsinki summit with President Putin,
when Pompeo failed to convince the president
that he should accompany him for the main
face-to-face talks. It ended in disaster when
Trump sided with Putin against his own
security services in a calamitous press
conference, but Pompeo maintained public
loyalty to his mercurial boss. He was rewarded
in August 2020 with the Abraham Accords
that saw key Arab nations including the UAE,
Sudan and Morocco recognise Israel. The
security and strength of Israel is central to
Pompeo, some say because of its role in
evangelical end-times belief, but certainly
because of its importance in opposing Iran.
Pompeo stuck very publicly by Trump in
the early days after the media declared Biden
the 2020 winner, when the results finally
became clear in the key swing state of
Pennsylvania on November 7, a Saturday.
The following Tuesday he was asked at
a State Department briefing if officials were
The Times Magazine 13
 preparing to talk to the Biden transition team
and whether delays could put at risk a
“smooth transition” of power.
Pompeo cast his eyes down and drew a
weary breath, then looked up and answered,
“There will be a smooth transition to a second
Trump administration.” At which point he
cracked a smile, although it was not clear
whether this was intended to signal a joke. In
any case, it was widely taken as an indication
that cabinet loyalists were backing Trump’s
resistance to the will of the people. Pompeo
went on, “We’re ready. The world is watching
what’s taking place. We’re gonna count all the
votes… There’s a process, the constitution lays
it out pretty clearly.”
What we now know about the dynamics
of Trump’s fraught final days suggests that
Pompeo was a prominent cabinet secretary
with future presidential ambitions attempting
a highwire act. He could not afford to fall out
with Trump, who he knew was determined
to fight for his presidency at least until
January 6, yet he was already trying to avoid
the maniacal frenzy over non-existent fraud
taking hold in the White House.
Asked now whether he accepts Biden won
the election, Pompeo avoids endorsement of the
2020 process but nevertheless puts himself at
odds with Trump. “It was appropriate to litigate
it as the president did. The vice-president then
ultimately made the right decision to certify
the election.” It is another unmistakable sign.
In MAGA eyes, backing Pence is not just
heretical, it is tantamount to apostasy.
Pompeo quickly goes on to present a
solidly Republican case for electoral reform
without going down too many MAGA rabbit
holes, adding, “I am worried we have lost
the place where people are confident in the
outcome of our elections. We had, you know,
laws change – lots of absentee ballots. There
are many things that cause people to have
concerns and doubt about the transparency
of the election. We still don’t have voter ID
– people are showing up and voting and we
don’t know exactly who they are in every
case... When you lose confidence in your
elections, republics can fall.”
What would a Pompeo presidency look
like? Top of his foreign policy agenda would
be China, about which he has consistently
sounded alarm bells. “China has been at war
with the United States for 25 years, mostly
fought by commerce,” he says. “It is pretty
plain to me. When you step back and stare at
the predation that has taken place across the
world, certainly inside the United States, but
in smaller countries in Africa… And then you
MIKEPOMPEO/TWITTER
see what’s happening in the bigger markets
where we have become so deeply dependent
on them. And they have used that as an
economic tool to achieve their ends across
the world. It looks and feels very much like
‘LIFE BEGINS AT CONCEPTION AND IS SACRED.’
INCLUDING RAPE AND INCEST? ‘YES’
Graduating from West Point, 1986
what we would have traditionally called war
or conflict.” He says that the West must
demand much more reciprocity from China,
the same access for our companies, diplomats,
students and journalists that we allow theirs.
Does he think a military war can be avoided?
“It all depends on our response. We can’t
avoid it, if we continue to let them exercise
their aggression. The Chinese, much like the
Russians, understand one single thing – and
that is power applied over time, with a level
of consistency that they in fact use all across
their tools, whether that’s cyber, economics,
political, diplomatic, actual military efforts…
We have an obligation to confront them in
every theatre of action that I just described.”
Pompeo says he would also be much
more aggressive in his approach to Russia
and support for Ukraine. “If you believe that it
matters, then it requires much more efforting
than has been demonstrated so far,” he says,
using that American habit of making new
verbs out of nouns.
“Think about this: the rouble is as high as it
was the day that the current conflict began at
the end of February. I had a friend come back
from Moscow not too long ago and all was well
there. I know sanctions take time, but they
haven’t begun to [make] a serious effort to
impose real costs on Putin’s economy and
on the folks who are benefiting from that
economy. I say the same thing with the military
support for the warriors that are fighting in
Ukraine – we have been slow and small and
late because of this implicit fear of escalation.”
As to fears of nuclear war, “There was a
risk of that two years ago and five years ago,
right, and [will be] five years from now. But if
you look how escalatory he [Putin] has been
already, it wasn’t because he was threatened
by Nato. There was no chance that there was
a serious worry that Nato was going to invade
western Russia, zero probability… We ought
not to allow him to drive how we think about
helping the Ukrainians.”
Americans can expect sharp confrontation
with China and Russia during a Pompeo
presidency, it seems. While at home he regards
the US Supreme Court ruling to overturn
the constitutional right to abortion as
welcome, it’s nevertheless unfinished business.
“It should definitely be the people that
decide. So legislators should absolutely
sort this out,” he says. “The court got the
constitutional piece of this right. I pray states
will make good decisions about protecting
the unborn in a way that I know to be both
consistent with science and my faith.”
In an article for the American Center for
Law and Justice, a conservative Christian-
based think tank, Pompeo confirms that
his long-term goal is a complete US ban on
abortion. He writes, “I have been fighting
for life my entire political career. I believe,
without doubt, that life begins at conception
and is sacred… While we would like to see
abortion illegal nationwide, that likely won’t
happen in the near term. Instead, we should
take a two-pronged approach: 1) restrict
abortion as much as possible in each state,
and 2) work to create a society that makes
abortion obsolete.” This would be achieved
by resources for adoption and fostering.
Asked now if it is his belief that there
should be no exceptions for rape and incest,
he says, “Yes, it is. It’s the case that every one
of these is a child.” Pompeo seems to play on
Biden’s own oft-repeated phrase, that he ran
for president to “restore the soul of the nation”
and restore a sense of normality after the
chaotic Trump years, with a twist of his own:
“The overturning of Roe [v Wade] need not
induce national strife; rather, it can herald the
rebuilding of our nation’s soul, which rests on
faith, family, fellowship and children. It falls to
us now to accomplish this work.”
These are not normal times in America,
with an uneasy atmosphere gripping the
nation over heightened levels of violence and
polarisation in society. There is uncertainty
over the intentions of Trump, who continues
to dominate Republican politics but is
consumed with grievances and score-settling
over his election defeat. Pompeo offers
an alternative if Republicans want to move
on or Trump decides not to run again – but
his brand of uncompromising conservatism
may prove just as divisive as the former
president’s demagoguery. n
The Times Magazine 15
‘I never wanted the
party to stop. I drank
to excess and drank
dangerous amounts’

Vicky Pattison was famous for being drunk on

the reality TV show Geordie Shore. Eight years on
she’s made a documentary about growing up with
an alcoholic parent – and the devastating legacy
her father’s addiction has had on her own life
INTERVIEW Julia Llewellyn Smith PORTRAIT Dan Kennedy
Vicky Pattison, 34, styled by
Hannah Rogers. Dress, Sir
(mytheresa.com); shoes,
gianvitorossi.com; earrings,
completedworks.com

T
here’s a scene in the new
documentary Vicky Pattison: My
Dad, Alcohol and Me when the
TV personality watches ten-year-
old excerpts of the MTV reality
soap Geordie Shore, in which she
was a main character.
There’s Pattison, then in her
early twenties, being asked what’s
the drunkest she’s ever been.
“You’re asking the wrong person,” she replies
in her strong Geordie tones. “In Marbella, I
once got so drunk I had to be hospitalised. It
was not a proud moment.” The big giggle that
follows her confession belies any true remorse.
“I don’t sound very convincing, do I?”
Pattison says now, face crumpling in shame.
“Looking back I was so shocked I said that.
It was nothing to be proud of.”
There’s more embarrassing footage, which
Pattison, now 34, takes in, looking mortified.
In one scene she’s exclaiming, “F*** it! I am
going to get drunk. Bring on the rosé.” She’s
obnoxious and sweary, endlessly picking fights.
Cackling, she orders ten shots of limoncello
and downs them all. Headlines from the time
roll across the screen: “Vicky Pattison is
escorted out of the club as the cast get
‘mortal’.” “Filming scrapped after Vicky
Pattison arrives DRUNK following chaotic
night out.”
“I felt sick to my stomach watching it back,”
says Pattison, as tears pour down her face.
“I don’t know if I blocked [these incidents]
from my memory or if I was just so pissed
I can’t remember. I’d never watched Geordie
Shore before even when I was on it, because
I didn’t like who it made me become.”
On the surface, Pattison was no different
from the rest of the “cast” of the show, the
British spin-off of the American Jersey Shore
and one of what was then a new breed of
hyper-reality shows, along with The Only Way
is Essex and Made In Chelsea, where real
people lived out their private dramas in public
with heavy direction from the producers.
Shore’s schtick, as Pattison puts it, was “silly
HAIR: HARRY ANDREW. MAKE-UP: KATE GLANFIELD USING VBB AND 111 SKIN
young people kissing each other, drinking
PRODUCTS. THIS PAGE: GETTY IMAGES, COURTESY OF VICKY PATTISON
too much and falling over in bars”.
The drinking too much isn’t just a casual
comment – research in 2018 found nearly
80 per cent of the show’s scenes involved
alcohol. “This series represents one long
advert for drinking... for a teenage and young
adult audience,” said Professor John Britton
from the UK Centre for Tobacco and Alcohol
Studies, who conducted the study. A 2019
survey showed five out of the ten areas
in Britain with the biggest teenage binge-
drinking problem were around Newcastle.
Yet moral panic was generally fairly muted
– after all, Brits boozing to excess is scarcely
unusual. “Everyone was up in arms about us
glamorising binge drinking and being terrible
Pattison (second from right) with Geordie Shore co-stars
‘Other people on the show
got silly when they drank.
I don’t have an off switch.
I was never a nice drunk’
With her parents at the Birmingham Clothes Show in 2013
role models, and we probably did play a part
in perpetuating that culture,” Pattison says.
“But everyone else was doing it.”
For Pattison, however, the ramifications
were far more personal. Having grown up with
an alcoholic father, she was plagued with fears
she was destined to become an alcoholic too.
“I believed I was my father’s daughter, so it
was going to happen sooner or later and didn’t
really matter when,” she says.
While other cast members could stop after
a few drinks, Pattison – who was 22 when in
2011 producers decided she was perfect for the
show after she chucked a drink over a woman
who’d called her a “slag” in a Newcastle club
– was unable to follow their example. “Loads
of people on the show had a really nice time
and became funny and silly and then stopped.
That was never me. I don’t have an off switch
and I was never a nice drunk. You get sloppy
drunks, weepy drunks, aggressive drunks
– I was all of them. I never wanted the party
to stop but I’d be shouting, belligerent. I drank
to excess and drank dangerous amounts.”
The boozing helped her to cope with her
unhappiness at having been coerced into
filming a “massively damaging” scene in which
she had sex on screen with her fiancé at the
time, and from generally feeling obliged to be
“this incredibly loud, opinionated version of
me. I don’t blame the producers for anything,
but I didn’t have the skills to navigate being
surrounded by that much alcohol. I was young
and felt the pressure to be who they wanted
me to be, and that made me feel so powerless.
It definitely exacerbated my issues. I became
a complete caricature.” She fell out with her
mother over how – as a new filming date
approached – “she’d lose her smart, funny,
kind daughter and in her place get a defensive,
edgy and frustrated stranger”.
“I drank more to cope with the fact I didn’t
like what I was becoming, but the more
I drank the less I liked myself.” She asked
for a break but was told she’d be replaced.
Things appeared to come to a head in 2013
when Pattison was arrested after throwing a
shoe at a woman in a bar, hurting her and
a staff member. Pending the court case, she
was suspended from Geordie Shore. She was
charged with two counts of assault and
ordered to undertake 180 hours of community
service and pay compensation to the victims.
Mired in humiliation, Pattison
contemplated suicide. Her younger sister and
a friend helped her through. “I was doing
appearances in Welsh clubs, then my sister
would drive back through the night so I could
go to a charity shop on Wallsend High Street
to do eight hours of community service,” she
writes in her book The Secret to Happy. She
returned to Geordie Shore for two more series,
finally quitting in 2014.
After leaving, she put everything into
shedding the boorish ladette image. The
following year she won I’m A Celebrity… Get
Me Out of Here!, with 80 per cent of the public
vote. Yet, despite her reinvention, Pattison felt
very far from redeemed.
We’re sitting in a studio in east London,
where Pattison has travelled from the home
she shares with her fiancé, Ercan Ramadan,
in Waltham Forest, in the capital’s northeast.
In a jumper and tracksuit bottoms, free
of the make-up and hair extensions that
are often part of her image, she’s thoughtful,
warm and witty. She’s completely without side,
somewhat surprisingly for such a seasoned
media pro (since I’m a Celebrity, in the meta
way of modern fame, she has appeared on
Celebrity MasterChef, Celebrity SAS: Who Dares
Wins, been a regular Loose Women panellist
and has an Instagram following of 5.1 million).
She’s also extremely emotional. Watching
the documentary, she was in tears “for about
80 per cent of the time – people are going to
think I’m unhinged”. Talking to me, she
demolishes a packet of tissues.
The Times Magazine 19
 You don’t need to be a shrink to grasp
where that sensitivity might derive from.
Although her parents were loving, one of
Pattison’s earliest memories is – about the age
of eight – “being used as a human walking
stick” as she tried to support her father, John,
a civil servant, home from a party.
As she grew older his drinking grew worse.
“When you grow up with something, you
just think it’s normal. I thought all houses
were loud. Dad used to fall over an awful
lot. There were terrible injuries. He’s had
two heart attacks, a stroke, cancer of the
mouth – though he’s now in remission
– and he has cirrhosis.”
For a long time her mother, Caroll, a travel
agent, tried to hide the extent of her husband’s
addiction from her two daughters. “But kids
aren’t daft. It was obvious. The boys didn’t
want to knock on my door because Dad could
be scary. I didn’t want to be like him. But at
points, I’ve been exactly like him.”
Like so many teenagers, Pattison began
binge drinking at 14. “You’d be in a field, at
parties, you’d have a couple of WKDs. It was
in my late teens, early twenties when I started
to see elements of my dad – not knowing
when the party should stop, and being shouty.
Then I started to get worried.”
After I’m a Celebrity, Pattison, who’d
studied drama at Liverpool John Moores
University, was inundated with job offers. Yet
she was “convinced that people would realise
I wasn’t anything special and it would all be
taken away. So I started self-sabotaging.”
For years, Pattison consumed about ten
drinks a day – “I could turn anything into
a Magaluf weekender.” Although she never
turned up drunk to a job, she was often late.
“When you’re going on talk shows you want
to be bright-eyed and bushy-tailed, not still
shaking off the lethargy of five gin and tonics.
I burnt some bridges and relationships.” It
didn’t help that Pattison was surrounded by
what she calls “fair-weather friends. They
were probably with me for the wrong reasons.”
Eventually, she became so “sloppy and
aggressive” that her management gave her a
talking-to. “I realised, ‘You’ve got everything
you wanted and you’re going to throw it all
away.’ ” With their help she found a therapist,
whom she sees on and off to this day.
By now, Pattison’s parents’ marriage
had ended. Her father was drinking a bottle
of vodka a day and living as a recluse.
Witnessing this brought Pattison to some
new realisations that, as with her father, her
love of alcohol was beginning to take priority.
“I was always begging Dad to stop. He’s tried
rehab, AA. He’d get hospitalised to dry out, but
he’d start again. It took us years to understand
Dad didn’t want to lose my mam, that he hadn’t
chosen alcohol over us. He just couldn’t help
it. But the idea that alcoholism was some kind
‘I was always begging
Dad to stop drinking. He’d
get hospitalised to dry out,
but he’d start again’
of gene frightened me and made me think
I had no option but to go the same way. I saw
I needed to take steps to change things.”
As is the way with those whose lives are
largely led in public, Channel 4 approached
Pattison to make the documentary – filmed
earlier this year – in order to explore her
relationship with John, who is currently sober
but had a terrifying relapse at Christmas.
In a conversation led by a psychologist,
Pattison, who has previously avoided
confrontation, tells him how agonising it is to
watch him killing himself. If he drinks again
she can’t have him in her life, she says. He
hears her, but refuses to make any promises.
“I have told too many lies,” he says quietly.
“I’ve learnt the hard way you have to be
brutal,” Pattison says now. “I definitely was
an enabler of my dad for a while. I love him,
almost too much, and so I would excuse
anything he did. There are moments where
you naively think, because you want to believe
it, ‘Oh my God, he’s got this licked!’ But then
some tiny grain of rice can totally tip the scale
and he’ll revert. And one day Dad just won’t
be there. I don’t want that for him. I don’t
want him to live a small life. I want him to
have a life filled with memories and grandkids.
But it’s really hard. This is a lifelong illness;
it isn’t something that goes away.”
Still, having these conversations was
“cathartic” for Pattison and, she hopes, will
help others, not least the one in five children
growing up with an alcoholic parent. “I hope
other people will have a better understanding
of what alcoholics and children of alcoholics
go through because I didn’t understand and
I used to get mad – mad at my dad and mad
at myself, because I’d see myself destroying
everything I’d prayed for and I couldn’t stop.”
In the past, Pattison had several times
publicly pronounced that she wouldn’t have
children because she was “too selfish”. Now,
she says, “The real reason was because
I had all my dad’s issues and hang-ups and
addictions, and I was so frightened my
children would end up like me: broken.”
More chilling perhaps was the fact she
didn’t want to get pregnant because that
would mean stopping drinking. “A couple of
years ago that would have been completely
impossible for me to comprehend.”
Now, however, after a string of well-
publicised romantic disasters, Pattison is with
Ramadan, a former Towie cast member, whom
she met after he messaged her on Instagram.
“I love Ercan so much and I really want to be
a mam,” she gulps. “So I find the prospect of
not drinking for a long time less daunting
now. But it is a bridge I’m going to have to
cross. I’m not a paragon of virtue and health
yet.” She’s in the process of having her eggs
frozen to give herself more time.
She has tried quitting alcohol but it’s never
worked. “I’ve always struggled with extremes.
Either I’ll drink green juice and do yoga and
give birth to an avocado, or if I’m drinking
I’ll be the last one standing. But neither one
brings you happiness – being drunk and messy
is awful, but so is having no real joy or fun. So
I’m learning to advocate for balance.”
Does she ever wake up in the morning
craving a drink? “No,” she says after a second.
“But I had to think about that question. I’ve
always been much more likely to wake up
thinking, ‘Oh God, last night was awful. I’m
never drinking again.’ But I’d have pulled
myself round by lunchtime.”
The dream is to have a couple of drinks,
then stop. It would take someone with more
knowledge of addiction than I have to guess if
that’s realistic. I was taken aback when – just
before we met – I saw Pattison on Instagram
on holiday in Positano, Italy, having “booked
limoncello making at 10am and… ended up
steaming before breakfast”.
“God, if that was ten years ago, I would
have done the limoncello and then said, ‘Let’s
go to a boozy lunch,’ and before you knew it
we’d have been there all day,” she says, when
I ask if this is really someone intent on
reform. “Whereas this time we had a couple of
limoncellos and then lay around the pool. The
old me would have thought that was boring.”
For now, things seem relatively hopeful.
“My dad and I speak most days and I feel I’ve
opened a window for honest communication.
He has good days and bad days, but I’m proud
of him, because every day he wakes up
needing a drink and most days he doesn’t
have one. We just have to support him.”
As for Pattison, she’s adamant: “I wouldn’t
define myself as an alcoholic. But I have a
complicated relationship with alcohol. It’s
a slippery slope from being social to being
dependent to being addicted. I’ve danced with
that my whole adult life. But I am aware
I have the potential to turn into someone I
don’t want to be and have a life I don’t want
to have. My dad’s never wanted anything
more than a drink. But I do want things.”
Pattison’s so clearly vulnerable and so
likeable, it’s impossible not to feel for her.
“I need a really big hug now,” she says when
– surrounded by crumpled tissues – we finish
talking. We embrace tightly for a long time. n
Vicky Pattison: My Dad, Alcohol and Me is on
Channel 4 at 10pm on August 2, and All 4
The Times Magazine 21
‘IF I’D KNOWN
WAR WAS COMING,
I’D NEVER HAVE
SIGNED UP TO BE
A SURROGATE’
Until a few months ago, the centre of the global surrogacy
industry was Ukraine, where western couples were attracted
by the cheaper fees and pregnant women had no legal rights
over the unborn babies. When the Russians invaded, many
surrogates fled. So what’s it like to abandon your home for
a foreign city while carrying someone else’s child?
Sally Williams investigates what happened next
PORTRAIT Tom Jackson
 Nataliia Matviichuk, 26 (left),
and Liudmyla Kuzmenko, 32,
both Ukrainian surrogates who
are living in Warsaw, Poland.
Opposite: surrogate babies being
sheltered underground during
the bombing of Kyiv in March
 F
lat No 83 is on the second floor A surrogate baby being comforted
of an elegant new block in the by a nanny in a BioTexCom clinic in
leafy suburbs of Warsaw, Poland. Brovary, just east of Kyiv, on March 11
It has large windows, a view of
a landscaped garden and a well-
equipped kitchen. Liudmyla
Kuzmenko, 32, lives here with
her two daughters. But it’s not
Kuzmenko’s flat. In fact, not much
in the flat belongs to her. Not
the red enamel saucepan she uses to make
borscht, the vase of fake flowers or the sheets
on her daughters’ beds. The blanket on the
sofa where she sleeps is hers – one of the few
things she brought from home. And the Peppa
Pig is a welcome gift from local volunteers.
Polina, 12, and Anastasiia, 14, are a bit old for
plush toys. But it was a kind gesture.
The baby in Kuzmenko’s belly isn’t hers
either. It belongs to a couple from Ireland,
which is more than 1,000 miles away.
Today, the baby is giving Kuzmenko backache.
Sometimes she kicks so hard it’s difficult to
breathe. The baby is also giving Kuzmenko
strange cravings for sweets and pickled
tomatoes. She is not supposed to eat pickles
on account of the contract she signed. Don’t
eat strawberries, watermelon or pickles, the
company said. But Kuzmenko’s had two babies
and happens to know that pickles are fine.
And anyway, nobody is checking, because the
company doesn’t have an office in these parts.
Painted nails are another violation. Nataliia
Matviichuk, 26, Kuzmenko’s friend, who is Ukraine, Georgia, Kazakhstan, Russia Or at least by one of them, plus donor
pregnant for a couple from London, has pink and the United States are just about the only sperm or donor egg. In addition, the price is
acrylic nails patterned with flowers. When countries in the world in which commercial competitive. In the US, the costs can range
Kuzmenko found out that Matviichuk was surrogacy is legal. In the UK, surrogates from $200,000-300,000 (£170,000-250,000).
here too, she was so happy. They now make can be paid “reasonable expenses” to cover In the Ukraine, it’s usually around $30,000
a point of seeing each other most days. such costs as travel, loss of earnings and to $60,000, of which around $20,000, some
Kuzmenko and Matviichuk are among the extra food. France, Germany, Italy and Spain £17,000, is paid to the surrogate (the average
13 million Ukrainians displaced by the Russian prohibit all forms of surrogacy, as do Japan wage in Ukraine is roughly £415 a month).
invasion. They uprooted themselves from and Pakistan. Surrogacy and egg and sperm donation
their homes in Kyiv and Koziatyn in central South and southeast Asia used to be in Ukraine were first sanctioned in 2002. By
Ukraine respectively, and came to Warsaw, popular for foreign couples. In particular, 2018, it was believed to control a quarter of
a place neither particularly like or would Thailand and India, where it cost as little as the global surrogacy market. There are no
choose if they were carrying their own $10,000 (around £8,350) to hire a surrogate. official statistics; companies are not required
children. But neither of them are. They are But these countries banned commercial to register surrogacy births. However, one
PREVIOUS SPREAD: MARCUS YAM/LOS ANGELES TIMES/POLARIS/EYEVINE.
THIS SPREAD: CHRISTOPHER OCCHICONE/REDUX/EYEVINE, TOM JACKSON

both surrogate mothers, two of 13 pregnant
Ukrainian women working with a company
called World Center of Baby (WCOB). In just
under four weeks’ time, when they get to their
third trimester, they will have to move again
– to Prague in the Czech Republic. Surrogacy
is illegal in Poland. If the friends gave birth
here, they would be considered the legal
mothers, and the “intended parents” of the
children would face lengthy challenges to
assert their legal right as parents.
Before February 24, when Russia invaded,
Kuzmenko and Matviichuk had never so
much as left Ukraine. Soon they will travel
even further from their home. “If I’d have
known war was to come, I would have never
signed up to be a surrogate,” says Matviichuk.
surrogacy for foreigners in 2015.
For many couples, Ukraine was the place
where their dreams could come true. The
country has the benefit of clear legal rules.
Surrogate mothers have no parental rights
over the child they carry. They do not
use their own eggs. The baby is not the
mother’s; it is created by the parents-to-be.
There are reports
of the unethical
transplantation of
multiple embryos
company owner estimated around 10,000
surrogate babies were born in Ukraine every
year prior to 2020. In addition to 70 surrogacy
agencies, there were also individual agents
that had large numbers of couples who came
to Ukraine for surrogacy, mainly from China.
BioTexCom, the country’s largest reproductive
company, was responsible for the birth of 588
surrogate babies in 2018.
The scale of the industry first came to
light during the pandemic, when Ukraine
closed its borders and couples were not
able to collect their biological children.
BioTexCom released a video showing around
50 stranded newborns lined up in trolleys
in a giant makeshift nursery. Critics were
horrified. They argued that surrogacy

24 The Times Magazine

 Matviichuk and Kuzmenko with
Anastasiia Lukinova from surrogacy
company the World Center of Baby, Kyiv
commodifies one of the most profound and
moving of human experiences – the birth of
a baby. It also makes surrogates vulnerable to
exploitation, especially if they are poor.
Surrogates in Ukraine have accused
companies of underpayment, providing
substandard accommodation and poor health
care for pregnancy-related complications.
There are also reports of parents abandoning
unwanted children, particularly those with
disabilities, and the unethical practice of
transplanting multiple embryos, particularly
in “guaranteed baby” packages, to maximise
the chance of success, without the consent
of the surrogate or prospective parents.
Unwanted embryos that develop are then
discarded in a surgical procedure known as
selective reduction.
Supporters, however, say surrogacy is life-
changing for both parties: for the parents, the
gift of a biological child after many years of
miscarriages, failed fertility treatment and
brutal losses; and for the surrogate mother,
financial empowerment, maybe even a house.
And now the war has heightened an
already controversial process. It has upended
protocols, raised tensions between intended
parents, companies and surrogates, and
highlighted many of the complex ethical
questions that exist in a practice where a
woman is paid for the use of her body.
They crossed into
Poland on foot. After
a 36-hour journey,
they reached Warsaw
World Center of Baby is owned by
Vladyslav Natochii, 34, and is the latest in
a series of businesses including advertising,
agribusiness and tourism. Launched in Kyiv
in 2018 with a staff of two (Natochii and his
future wife), when Russia invaded Ukraine
on February 24, WCOB had a staff of 45,
37 pregnant surrogates and 130 intended
parents from such countries as Australia,
the US, France, the UK, Spain, Serbia, all
at different stages of the process, from the
recently signed up to those awaiting birth.
From mid-January, many of the company’s
clients were listening to the news and sending
anxious emails. The Republic of Ireland
senator Mary Seery Kearney, a surrogacy
specialist who has been working closely with
Ukraine’s Ministry of Foreign Affairs (the
Irish Republic had the second highest rate of
surrogacy use out of 90 countries in a 2018
survey), started to lobby WCOB for extra
security measures.
A week before the war, WCOB moved
12-15 surrogates in their third trimester to
Lviv, a city 45 miles from the Polish border in
western Ukraine. One surrogate, too pregnant
to move, went into labour in the Adonis
private maternity hospital in Kyiv, on
February 25. Russian missiles were exploding
nearby. She was transferred to the basement,
which served as a bomb shelter, where she
had a caesarean and delivered a baby boy for
a Swedish couple on February 26. Typically,
surrogates hand over the baby soon after
birth. But she had to care for the baby as
air-raid sirens howled for around four days,
before the couple could collect the baby
from a hotel in Kyiv on March 1. “This was
exceptionally difficult,” says Olga Pysana,
WCOB’s “intended parent partner”. “Of course,
she wouldn’t breastfeed, but she made sure the
boy had formula. She was changing his nappy.”
War threw up another problem for the
clinics: a shortage of liquid nitrogen for
storing frozen embryos and genetic material
– semen and donated eggs. “The clinics were
panicking,” says Pysana. One clinic moved the
indispensable material out of Ukraine into a
partner clinic in Slovakia. Staff at the Alice
Fertility Clinic, owned by WCOB, shifted four
tanks to a bomb shelter in the parent clinic,
and from there to a factory that produces
liquid nitrogen in Chernivtsi, western Ukraine.
On January 13, Kuzmenko got up at 5am to
prepare for her appointment at the Alice
Fertility Clinic, an eastern bloc-style building
where all WCOB’s medical procedures are
done. Although technically in Kyiv, the clinic
is six miles northwest of the centre and she
lived in Boryspil, in the southwest, not far
from the international airport. Her daughters
would be on their own, but they were quite
able to look after themselves. Kuzmenko
herself had started work at 13, and she’d
brought up her girls to be independent. Their
favourite things to cook were pancakes or fried
potatoes. The only rule was the house had to
be clean when their mother came home.
For eight years, Kuzmenko was a pastry
chef in a restaurant, but she disliked working
for other people and wanted to start her own
café. Her boyfriend of five years, who runs his
own building business – he is not the father of
her girls, nor did they live together, but is
nevertheless “a great love” – was indispensable
to the plan. He invested money so she could
buy equipment, including a coffee machine
that cost around £6,800. She opened her cafe
in March 2020 – in other words, at the start
of the pandemic. Terrible timing. But she
served takeaway burgers and panini and still
managed to make around £2,500 a month.
She planned to invest her surrogacy money
Continues on page 36
The Times Magazine 25
 PU
Eat!

LL
OU
Introducing Anna Haugh,

T
THE NEW MASTERCHEF JUDGE

EASY GOURMET
DINNERS FOR TWO

T
here’s a change of
guard on MasterChef:
the Professionals.
Monica Galetti has
stepped aside to focus
on her restaurant and
family, and into her
shoes steps Irish chef
Anna Haugh. So for
contestants worried
how they will come across in the
infamous skills test, remember
two things: hold your head high
and look after your knives.
“It’s amazing what you can tell
by the way a chef unravels his
knife roll,” says the 41-year-old
Dubliner. “When someone comes
into my kitchen, I watch them
out of the corner of my eye to
see how they carry themselves.
There’s a confidence, a discipline
that I’m looking for.”
This, she says, is more
important than whether they
know how to tunnel bone a leg of
lamb. It’s a question of how they
approach an unfamiliar task and
draw on the knowledge they do
have. “I will be looking for what
someone has to give. What is
their potential? That’s what really
excites me, the idea of finding
someone with a nugget of talent
and watching it grow and grow as
they progress in the competition.”
Not that she will be giving
everyone an easy ride. The show,
which returns this autumn,
is more encouraging than
judgmental, she says, but anyone
who enjoyed the expression on
Galetti’s face as she watched a
hapless chef butcher a piece of
monkfish will be pleased to know
Haugh’s face is equally expressive.
“I am incapable of controlling
what my face says,” she warns.
“Which is wonderful when I’m
28 The Times Magazine
pleased, but not so good when
you disappoint me. I’m not a ‘Cooking at home, you should just
pushover, but I know the time
and the place to stick the boot in. jump with two feet, experiment’
Firm but fair, that’s me.”
If Haugh is not yet a
household name, the invitation to
join Marcus Wareing and Gregg
Wallace as a judge didn’t come
from nowhere. She’s been a
regular on Saturday Kitchen,
hosting the show a couple of
times, and has two series of Ready
Steady Cook under her belt. “But
to be asked to do MasterChef…
Well, any chef would bite their
arm off to have that opportunity.”
She was brought up in Dublin,
the youngest of four children –
“Can’t you tell? I’m like a terrier”
– and after training in Dublin,
came to London at 22 and
worked with Shane Osborn at
Pied à Terre, Phil Howard at
the Square and was head chef at
Gordon Ramsay’s London House
in Battersea before opening her
restaurant, Myrtle, in 2019. It is
named in honour of chef Myrtle
Allen, who did so much to put
modern Irish cooking on the map.
“She changed the way other
countries view us; I’m standing
on her shoulders,” Haugh says.
From her small, light-filled
restaurant off the King’s Road, in
Chelsea, she waves the flag for
“casual Irish fine dining” and
showcases her favourite produce,
from Carlingford oysters to BUTTERMILK PANNA COTTA • Few raspberries and mint
Burren beef. Although simple- leaves, to garnish
looking, her cooking displays a
WITH MARINATED
level of complexity to match the STRAWBERRIES 1. Soak the gelatine sheets in
environment. On these pages, cold water. Bring the cream to the
though, she’s prepared the kind Serves 2 generously boil and immediately remove
of food she makes at home when from the heat. Squeeze out the
she hasn’t got a brigade of chefs. The beauty of a good panna cotta gelatine and add to the cream
“I love the idea of people lies in its delicate balance of along with the sugar. Stir well
cooking more, of not being afraid. sweetness and acidity. As Irish so both dissolve, then stir in the
They think cooking is governed buttermilk tends to be more grapefruit juice and zest. Check if
by all these rules, but they are acidic than British, I sometimes it needs a little lemon juice too.
only important when you get add a little lemon juice to taste. Finally mix in the buttermilk and
to a certain level. At home you pour into individual bowls or one
should just jump with two feet, • 1½ sheets platinum gelatine larger bowl. Place in the fridge to
experiment,” she says. “Every • 150g double cream set for at least 2 hours.
good chef is a reflection of their • 40g sugar 2. Half an hour before serving,
mistakes, because it’s only by • Juice of half a pink grapefruit sprinkle the strawberries with
making mistakes that you learn.” and a little zest the icing sugar and squeeze over
Let’s hope any hopeful chefs who • Lemon juice, to taste the lime juice. Leave to macerate
mess up her MasterChef skills tests • 150g buttermilk for 30 minutes before spooning
see it that way too. Tony Turnbull • 100g fresh strawberries, on top of the panna cotta with
cored and diced a few raspberries, mint leaves
Myrtle, 1a Langton Street, London • 2 tsp icing sugar and the lime zest.
SW10 (myrtlerestaurant.com) • Juice and zest of half a lime
 Eat! MODERN IRISH
SUMMER CHICKEN
WITH TOMATOES AND
TARRAGON MAYONNAISE
Serves 2
I always associate chicken with
winter cooking, but it goes really
nicely with a warm salad of
cherry tomatoes, which adds
a lovely sweet and sour flavour.
You could add shavings of
parmesan if you like.

• 1 egg yolk
• 1 tbsp French mustard
• 100ml vegetable oil
• 20ml olive oil
• 1 bunch tarragon,
finely chopped
• 2 chicken breasts, skin on
• Oil for cooking
• 300g mixed cherry
tomatoes, halved

1. To make the mayonnaise, whisk

the egg with the mustard, 1 tsp
water and a pinch of salt. Drizzle
in the oils, very gradually at first,
whisking constantly, until you
have a thick mayonnaise. Finish
with the tarragon, check the
seasoning and set aside.
2. Season the chicken. Add a
splash of oil to an ovenproof
frying pan and very slowly
caramelise the chicken breasts.
This should take about
10 minutes. Transfer to a 160C
(180C non-fan) oven and cook
for a further 10 minutes, then
leave to rest for 10 minutes.
3. To another frying pan, add
a splash of oil and, once hot,
add the tomatoes. Leave for
one minute to caramelise slightly,
then continue to cook, stirring
once or twice until slightly
cooked. Season well.
4. Serve the chicken on top
of the tomatoes with the herb
mayonnaise to the side.

PHOTOGRAPHS Romas Foord

The Times Magazine 29

COLCANNON POTATO CAKE
WITH SOFT-BOILED EGG
AND HOLLANDAISE
Serves 2
I can’t not include a recipe for
colcannon. The recipe changes
throughout Ireland, but my
mother always made it with
cabbage and spring onion.
It’s great eaten hot or cold,
and just needs an egg on top
to make a proper meal. The
hollandaise adds a touch of
luxury but isn’t essential.

• 200g hispi cabbage,

shredded
• 500g mashed potato
• 2-3 tbsp flour
• 2 eggs
• Oil for frying
• Hollandaise, to serve

1. Cook the cabbage in boiling

water until softened. Drain and
squeeze out as much water
as you can. Fold the drained
cabbage into the mash along
with enough flour to make
a handleable dough. Season
well and shape into two fairly
flat cakes.
2. Meanwhile boil the eggs until
just set in the middle, about
6 minutes, then run under cold
water. Peel and cut in half.
3. Add a little oil to a large
frying pan and cook the potato
cakes until nicely caramelised
on the bottom, for about
2-3 minutes, before flipping
them over and cooking the
other side. Serve the potato
cakes with the halved eggs
and hollandaise if you like.

30 The Times Magazine

 Eat! MODERN IRISH
ROASTED LAMB CHOPS
Serves 2
We used to have chops at least
once a week when I was young
and I always took them for
granted, but they make such
an easy supper. The potatoes,
piperade and salsa can all be
cooked in advance, then served
cold with the hot chops.

For the piperade

• 1 tbsp olive oil
• 1 red onion, thinly sliced
• 1 clove garlic, halved
• 1 tsp caraway seeds
• 1 red pepper, thinly sliced
• 1 tsp sugar
• 1 tbsp red wine vinegar

For the yellow pepper salsa

• 1 yellow pepper
• 2 tbsp olive oil
• 1 tbsp white wine vinegar
• Pinch of sugar and salt

• 400g baby potatoes

• 1 tsp mustard
• 1 tbsp olive oil
• Pinch of salt
• 1 tbsp chopped chives
• 4 lamb chops

1. Start with the piperade. Add

the oil to a pan over a medium
heat. Add the onion and a pinch
of salt and cook for 4-5 minutes,
until softened. Add the garlic,
caraway and pepper, lower the
heat and cook for 15 minutes. Add
the sugar and vinegar and cook
until everything is tender.
2. For the salsa, roast the pepper
at 180C (200C non-fan) for
10 minutes until softened. Peel,
discard the seeds, then dice the
flesh. Dress with oil and vinegar
and season with salt and sugar.
3. Boil the potatoes in salted
water for 15 minutes until tender.
Drain and mix with the mustard,
olive oil, salt and chopped chives.
Keep warm.
4. Add the lamb chops to a hot
pan with a little oil (if you put
the chops in a cold pan, they
will stick). Season and cook over
a medium heat until they are
golden brown on both sides,
then leave to rest for 4 minutes
before serving with the potatoes,
piperade and salsa.

The Times Magazine 31

 Eat! MODERN IRISH
OAT-CRUSTED HAKE WITH
WHITE WINE SAUCE
Serves 2
We don’t have the climate for
wheat in Ireland so we often
cook with oats. Here they
add a lovely texture and
are a healthier alternative
to breadcrumbs.

• 1 tbsp jumbo oats

• 2 tsp olive oil
• 1 tbsp sesame seeds
• 1 tsp coriander seeds
• 1 small clove garlic, crushed
• Sprig of thyme, leaves picked
• Half an onion, finely
chopped
• 1 knob butter
• 75ml white wine
• 125ml milk
• 2 tbsp double cream
• Squeeze of lemon juice
• 2 x 150g hake fillets, skin on
• 1 egg white

1. Heat the oven to 160C (180C

non-fan). Mix the oats with the
oil and a pinch of salt and roast
in the oven for 5 minutes. Add
the sesame and coriander seeds
for the final 4 minutes. Remove
from the oven, mix well and
leave to cool.
2. Meanwhile, make the sauce.
Sweat the garlic, thyme and
onion in butter for 5 minutes.
Add the white wine and allow
to bubble and reduce a little
before adding the milk and
cream and bringing to the boil.
Season with a little lemon juice
and blitz with a stick blender or
in a liquidiser. Keep warm.
3. Season the fish portions
with salt and brush the skin
side with egg white. Sprinkle
over the oat and seed mix. Bake
for 6-10 minutes, depending on
how thick the fillets are. Serve
with the white wine sauce,
fresh greens and mash.

The Times Magazine 33

Eat! MODERN IRISH

SMOKED MACKEREL TART

Serves 2
This tart can make a simple
lunch, or you can dress it up
with herbs and edible flowers
to make an elegant starter.

• 125g shop-bought
all-butter short pastry
• 1 fennel bulb, grated
• Juice of half a lemon
• 2 tbsp cream cheese
• 1 tbsp crème fraîche
• 1-2 fillets smoked
mackerel, flaked
• Dill, pickled shallots and
edible flowers (optional),
to serve

1. Roll out the pastry to the

thickness of a £1 coin and cut
into two discs large enough to
line two 10cm flan tins. Cover
with greaseproof paper and add
baking beans to hold down the
pastry. Heat the oven to 150C
(170C non-fan) and blind bake
for 20 minutes. Remove the
paper and beans and bake for
a further 5 minutes until golden
brown. Set aside to cool.
2. Combine the fennel and
lemon in a bowl, season well
with salt and leave to sit for
10 minutes. Squeeze out all the
liquid by twisting it in a clean
tea towel, then combine the
fennel with the cream cheese
and crème fraîche.
3. Fill the tart shells with
the fennel mix and top with
the flaked mackerel. Garnish
with dill, pickled shallots and
edible flowers if you wish just
before serving. n

34 The Times Magazine

The surrogacy front line Continued from page 25
in the café, and buy a piece of land to build a
house. She told her girls that if they wanted to
live in a house of their own, they had to accept
the situation whether they agreed or not.
At 7.30am, Kuzmenko shut her front door
and walked to the bus stop.
Meanwhile, 120 miles away, Matviichuk
was on a train feeling nervous. She, too, had
got up at 5am – to catch the 7am train from
Koziatyn to Kyiv, a journey of around two and
a half hours. One of the benefits of living with
her friend, Liliia, was they helped each other
out with childcare. Her daughter, Diana, and
Liliia’s daughter, Lera, were both eight and
went to the same school. Matviichuk’s ten-
year-old son, Nazar, lived with his father in
the same town.
Matviichuk had done many jobs including
as a cashier in a supermarket, but her current
and all-time favourite was as a waitress in a
nightclub. The name of the club is tattooed
on her forearm: Las Vegas. Matviichuk, who
is smiley and sweet-hearted, liked meeting
the customers. She got the idea of being a
surrogate from Liliia, who gave birth to a girl
for an Irish couple just after Matviichuk
signed up with WCOB.
She decided not to tell her mother or sister.
They said they’d kill her if she ever became
a surrogate. Koziatyn is a small city full
of wagging tongues. Some people thought
surrogacy was prostitution. Matviichuk, on the
other hand, thought it was a “great deed”. She
liked the fact she was helping the couple. The
responsibility of carrying their baby was a
source of anxiety but also pride. She planned
to buy an apartment. “Those people who judge
me for the way I’m making money will not
feed my children when they starve,” she says.
She got a taxi from Kyiv station and arrived
at the clinic at around 10am. Kuzmenko was
already in the waiting room. They got talking.
They discovered they were both scheduled to
have embryo transfers, where an egg that has
been fertilised is strategically placed into the
uterus with the hope that it will bed down
into the uterine wall and grow. Kuzmenko’s
intended parents and Matviichuk’s had already
delivered their genetic material to conceive
the embryos (the method is in person or via
bio couriers). Kuzmenko and Matviichuk had
taken medication to make the uterine lining as
welcoming as possible for the embryo.
Kuzmenko’s appointment was at 11am;
Matviichuk’s – her second attempt, hence her
nerves – at noon.
In the days that followed, as the respective
embryos bumped against uterine walls
searching for the right place to implant, they
would chat on the phone. The two women
became friends and always tried to coordinate
their clinic appointments. Their personalities
complemented each other: Kuzmenko is
pragmatic, steady; Matviichuk more outwardly
36 The Times Magazine
emotional. On day 14, when Matviichuk had
a meltdown after peeing on a pregnancy stick
and only seeing one faint line, Kuzmenko told
her to wait another 15 minutes. Sure enough,
a second line appeared. She texted Kuzmenko
a picture. “Congratulations!” Kuzmenko
texted back. “I told you it would be positive.”
Kuzmenko already knew she was pregnant.
The smell of the bus made her feel sick and
she was craving chicken wraps and coffee – at
night. She knew she needed to detach as much
as possible from the process. She told herself
it wasn’t her baby, and was pleased everything
was going to plan.
Kuzmenko had advance warning of the
Russian invasion from friends in the Ukrainian
government. She told her mother, who didn’t
believe her. They argued. Kuzmenko resolved
not to talk about it again.
On the evening of February 23, the friends
texted each other. By now they were eight
weeks pregnant and due in the clinic the next
day. That night, Kuzmenko didn’t sleep. She
was waiting. At dawn, Russian troops entered
Her father has died in a
bombing in Mariupol. ‘But
I mustn’t get stressed
because of the baby’
Ukraine. Explosions rattled the area near
Kuzmenko’s apartment. WCOB sent an email:
all appointments were cancelled.
In normal times, WCOB discourages
direct contact between surrogates and couples,
partly to protect surrogates from excessive
demands. But couples feared losing touch with
their surrogate, and vice versa. The company
released contact details; couples also found
their surrogates on Facebook.
Kuzmenko started corresponding with
her intended parents in Ireland via Viber, the
messaging app. News reports warned that the
capital could soon be encircled and a siege
might begin. The couple asked Kuzmenko if
she’d like to live with them in the safety of
Ireland. She said she’d prefer to go to Poland,
because she had family there. They agreed.
Early on the morning of March 7, Kuzmenko
told the girls to pack. She stored equipment
from the café in her flat. They walked out with
two suitcases and a bag of food for the journey
– meat, sandwiches, sausages, water, sweets –
and her rug, not knowing if they’d ever return.
They made it to the station, and onto a packed
train bound for Lviv. Space was so tight,
passengers were pushing and shoving. Most
spent the entire journey – 12 hours – sitting on
the floor. Kuzmenko offered an old man her
seat. They took turns to sit down. She dreamt
of her bed and pillow at home. At one point,
she looked out the window and thought she saw
enemy aircraft. The old man started crying
when they reached Holovnyi station in Lviv.
Once there, Kuzmenko got rid of half of
their luggage. It was too much to carry. She
kept the girls’ clothes. She worried about
them being cold. They crossed the border
into Poland on foot, which took four hours,
and then caught a train to Krakow. Finally,
after a journey of 36 hours, their train pulled
into Warsaw.
She and the girls stayed in a hotel for a
few nights, paid for by the intended parents,
and then moved into the flat in the suburb.
The intended parents paid around €800 a
month. They texted Kuzmenko throughout
the journey: “How are you? How are the
girls?” She always replied, “Fine.” She wasn’t.
The journey was really difficult. The stress of
war heightened the anxiety of her pregnancy.
She was scared she’d get hit in the stomach.
But she only told them what they needed to
know, so as not to worry them.
On March 12, a friend drove Matviichuk,
Liliia and their two daughters to Vinnytsia,
where they caught a minibus bound for
Warsaw. It was the first day they could get
seats. Matviichuk’s intended parents had
previously declined to build a relationship.
After the war broke out, they were in touch
every day. They proposed Georgia as one
possibility for her evacuation, but settled
on Poland.
The trip took 17 hours, through snow-
covered fields. The bus stopped at every
checkpoint, where a solider inspected
documents to confirm no combat-age men
were fleeing Ukraine illegally.
The intended parents booked the evacuees
into a hotel for a week, and then moved
them to an apartment. Matviichuk liked the
flat. It was in a quiet area near a park and
playground. But it was a short-term let.
A month later, on April 10, they were living
in a flat in the city centre. The intended father
thought it would be cool to be surrounded by
hotels and restaurants. But Matviichuk didn’t
go to any restaurants or use hotels. Liliia,
however, found a job as a housekeeper in
the nearby Hilton hotel. The flat cost the
prospective parents around €1,000 a month.
Before the war, a surrogate mother would
remain in her home town with her family
until the third trimester. She would then
relocate to Kyiv, where she would stay until
the birth, living in apartments with other
surrogates. Many left their children behind
with relatives. Now, WCOB has closed
down its office in Kyiv and opened offices in
Prague and Lviv where the surrogates are
encouraged to give birth. As a consequence
of war, the company is charging couples
extra money for medical appointments,
 SURROGACY: THE GLOBAL MARKET
Where is commercial surrogacy legal?
Commercial surrogacy is a $4 billion
(£3.3 billion) global market that’s expected
to grow by almost a third by 2027.
Ukraine Legal since 2002, where it costs
from $30,000. In 2018 Ukraine held 25 per
cent of the global surrogacy market.
Georgia Since 1997, for heterosexual couples
only. It costs from $30,000 and is legal for
foreign couples.
Israel In January 2022 legal commercial
surrogacy was extended from heterosexual
couples to same-sex couples, transgender
people and single men. Parents need to sign
a declaration stating they are residents of
Israel, so in effect it is illegal for foreigners.
Costs start at $45,000.
Kazakhstan Commercial surrogacy is legal
for heterosexual couples. The surrogate must
have a child of her own. The same applies in
neighbouring Kyrgyzstan, which has seen a
boom in “fertility tourism” since 2015. Costs
up to $30,000.
Russia Legal, including for foreign couples,
though a law banning it for non-natives
passed in its first reading in May. Costs on
average $50,000-60,000.
USA Varies state by state: legal in California,
for example, illegal in Michigan. Where
legal, foreigners can have a US surrogate.
accommodation, transport etc, in the new
locations – for example, €9,000 for surrogates
at 27 weeks of pregnancy and over who are in
Prague. Before week 27, couples have to pay
€500 a week, unless providing private
accommodation, in which case it drops to
€400 a week.
WCOB has declared force majeure and
suspended normal contracts. Some couples
have rejected the fee out of hand, and claim the
company is making couples a hostage to the
situation. WCOB currently has four surrogates
in Lviv, two in Warsaw, two in Prague, one in
Germany, one in the UK and three in other
cities in Ukraine. Two are living with the
intended parents in their respective homes.
“We are still being asked to pay the
full contract of €49,000, even though the
company has not seen her since week nine
of the pregnancy,” says one of the intended
parents, who paid £6,000 to get her surrogate
to safety. “We entered into a contract with her,
and at a time of war, we felt it was our moral
responsibility to take care of her and make
sure she is safe – not just because of the baby.
That was our choice, and we’re really happy
to do that. However, I don’t feel we should
be paying for services that we’re not able
to use – like accommodation in Kyiv, the
maternity hospital or the legal service.”
Costs from $200,000. Celebrities who have
used a surrogate include Kim Kardashian
and Sarah Jessica Parker.
What is the UK’s position on surrogacy?
Commercial surrogacy is illegal but parents
can choose an “altruistic” surrogate, one
who is not paid. They will be recorded as the
legal parent at birth before a parental order
is made to change parentage. The number of
post-surrogacy parental orders made in the
UK more than tripled in 12 years (in 2020
there were 412). It is illegal to advertise for
a surrogate, or to pay a fee, but there is no
limit on the expenses that can be paid, but
they are normally £12,000-18,000.
Where else is altruistic surrogacy legal?
In Australia, New Zealand, South Africa,
Canada, the Netherlands and Belgium. In
Greece, expenses cannot exceed €10,000.
In India, the surrogate must be a close
relative between the ages of 25-35, be
married and have a child of her own.
Where is surrogacy banned?
In the EU, commercial surrogacy is illegal
and it was banned in Thailand and Nepal in
2015, and in Cambodia in 2016. Altruistic
surrogacy is also illegal in France, Germany,
Spain, Portugal, Italy, Finland and Bulgaria.
All forms of surrogacy were banned in China
in 2001, but there is an active black market.
The tension over money has fed
resentments between intended parents
and the company. Victoria, 24, is a surrogate
from Mariupol, the port city razed to the
ground. At the beginning of the war, she
took refuge in a flat in the city centre with
her husband, five-year-old daughter and
godmother. There was no electricity, water
or heating. Outside temperatures sometimes
dropped below minus 15C. Most days,
Victoria’s husband spent hours searching for
food. Sometimes, Ukrainian soldiers would
open up supermarkets and distribute pasta,
porridge and sausages, which the family
cooked on a fire in the back yard. When the
bottled water ran out they drank water from
the radiators of a nearby kindergarten.
One day, their neighbours were cooking
in their backyard when they were hit by a
bomb. “They died on the spot,” Victoria tells
me. “We had to leave.” On March 18, she was
evacuated by bus to Russia. She said she was
allowed to travel freely in Russia. And after
three weeks or so, she made contact with the
company, which arranged for her, her husband
and daughter to go to the Georgian border
and then into Tbilisi, where she was provided
with free accommodation by the Georgian
government. She is seven months pregnant
for a Spanish couple, and will soon be going
to Prague to prepare for the birth. But the
intended parents say they have not budgeted
for the additional cost of Victoria’s husband
and daughter, and are refusing to pay. “Of
course, we will cover all the expenses, but we
are baffled by this attitude,” says Pysana. Some
couples just don’t have the money and are
already stretched to their limit.
Victoria says she has no words for what she’s
been through. She has lost her father, who died
in a bomb blast in Mariupol – lost everything
she had. “But I know I mustn’t get too stressed
out, because of the baby I am carrying.”
For Kuzmenko and Matviichuk, life in exile has
settled into a routine. Kuzmenko earns around
£170 a week cooking takeaway meals like
lasagne and sushi for the owner of her
flat and her friends. Matviichuk looks after the
girls while Liliia works in the hotel. They get
a monthly allowance from the company of
around €400, and go to antenatal check-ups
– organised with a private doctor, so there are
no awkward questions about being a surrogate.
They compare bumps. Both are due to give
birth at around the same time, but their
pregnant tummies are very different sizes.
When Anastasiia Lukinova, 28, a company
coordinator who lives in Kyiv, came to visit
recently, she looked at Matviichuk’s belly and
said, “Are you pregnant? Where’s the belly?”
Matviichuk had planned to keep her
pregnancy from her daughter. But of course,
there’s no hiding it now. “Hurrah! I’m going to
have a sister,” Diana said when she broke the
news. “Then I told her, ‘It’s not our baby. I’m
just helping a couple,’ ” says Matviichuk.
Kuzmenko’s daughters go to school locally;
Matviichuk’s daughter has virtual lessons with
her teacher in Ukraine. Kuzmenko worries
about her neighbour’s children back home.
They’re scared. Any high-pitched noise
frightens them to death. “They are going to
need a therapist.”
Not being at home was painful to them
both. “Leaving Ukraine was the best and
only decision to keep the baby safe,” says
Matviichuk. She didn’t blame the intended
parents for taking her away from her family.
But she had a video chat with her ex recently
and Nazar was in the background. “He just
went, ‘Oh, hi.’ He’s not interested,” says
Matviichuk, looking upset.
For Kuzmenko, the thought of her
boyfriend defending Ukraine against a
murderous regime is a source of both pride
and fear. She speaks to him on the phone up
to 20 times a day. There was a big explosion
near his house recently. She starts crying.
Friends have been killed. Meanwhile, she
spends her days, waiting, waiting to have
the baby so she can go home. “It’s not difficult
to be far from home. It’s difficult to be far
from the person you love.” n
The Times Magazine 37
 Guilt-racked adulterers!

C O N F E S S I O NS
OF A RABBI
Oy vey! If only Jonathan Romain’s
rabbinic training had prepared
him for life in a quiet synagogue in
the south of England. Unfaithful
husbands, licentious au pairs and
an immaculate conception were
just the beginning…
The ghost of a wife!

Amorous au pairs!

And a virgin birth

 H
ow wrong can you be? My father
warned me that if I went ahead
with my plans to be a rabbi,
I would live in an ivory tower
of books and scholarship, and be
divorced from everyday life.
Instead I have dealt with
crises, emotional traumas, moral
dilemmas, attempts at seduction,
multiple murders, Machiavellian
families, funerals that go wrong, a virgin birth
and other people’s sexual fantasies (sometimes
about me).
Nothing in my rabbinic training prepared
me. Luckily, my other careers – as a radio
agony uncle, prison chaplain, postman and
nightclub bouncer – gave me insights that
proved useful.
The curious thing is that not only would
my father be surprised to read this, but so
would most of my congregants. As far as they
are concerned we are a content congregation
in the south of England, economically stable
and with few social problems. Congregants
assume I’m ethereally talking to Heaven on
their behalf – not sorting out the mess they
create when not at prayer.
I regularly preach that Jewish values
such as charity, integrity, kindness, honesty
and loyalty are not just for the Sabbath
but midweek too, and it’s important to practise
“love your neighbour as yourself” not just in
the synagogue but the rest of the time too.
But do they listen? Not always.
SHOULD I TELL MY WIFE?
Adultery is a favourite sin. But while it is
clearly wrong, the remedy is sometimes less
clear. I remember a married man coming to
see me about “a little problem I’d like to chat
over with you”. The affair had been during
regular business trips abroad, both he and the
other person had seen it as a “fun fling” and
they had now decided to end it.
Naturally, I told him that it was wrong to
have had the relationship, but good that it had
ended, and asked why he had come to see me.
“Well, rabbi,” he said, “I wanted advice as to
how best tell my wife.” She had not been aware
PREVIOUS SPREAD: GETTY IMAGES. THIS PAGE: TOM STOCKHILL
of it; he wanted to confess and make amends.
Normally, it is better that someone owns
up before their partner finds out. It may be a
very difficult conversation and result in tears
or a walkout (or being thrown out). The sense
of betrayal is always painful.
But in this instance, his wife had not
known and was very unlikely to find out. Why
hurt her unnecessarily by revealing what he’d
done? When I told him that, he was stupefied,
“But I owe it to her. Surely as a man of faith
you should be telling me to repent!”
I lost my temper. I told him he was being
selfish, offloading his guilt and dumping the
knowledge onto her, the innocent party. He
42 The Times Magazine
would also endanger the very relationship he
was trying to secure. I told him that if he felt
uncomfortable keeping the truth to himself,
then that was the punishment he had to bear.
Several years on, they are still married and
I know his wife feels how lucky she is to have
such a wonderful husband. Honesty is not
always the best policy, and morality is much
more complex than simply telling the truth.
A PROBLEM WITH THE AU PAIR
Sometimes temptation is closer to home.
When the mother of three teenage boys fell
off her bike, fractured her hip and broke her
leg, the family found an au pair to help out.
All was well at first, but after a month, the au
pair become dismissive towards the mother,
the husband seemed distracted and the boys
became increasingly rude.
Hobbling around the house when everyone
was out, she accidentally knocked over the
au pair’s handbag and out fell a half-empty
packet of the contraceptive pill. A shocking
thought occurred to her. She went into the au
pair’s bedroom and searched for her diary. Her
worst fears were exceeded, for she discovered
that not only had the au pair slept with her
husband, but also each of the three boys.
The au paid was sacked later that day, but
who to tell what? We decided she should tell
her husband that she knew of his infidelity.
But that she should not let him know that the
au pair had also slept with their sons. Nor did
she inform her boys what she knew.
My role was largely to offer thanks that
there was no pregnancy. Imagine the trauma
of a paternity suit.
A FAMILY’S SUSPICIONS
Charlie was in his eighties, good-looking
and healthy. When his wife died the family
arranged a weekly home help. She turned up,
emptied the bins, did some light dusting and
went to bed with him.
This became a regular occurrence. When
the family found out, they came to me in
distress. They did not mind the sex, but were
worried that, as the home help was only
37 years old, was he being misled emotionally
and financially?
When I spoke to Charlie at their request,
he was adamant the relationship was mutually
meaningful and the family should be pleased
he had met someone who made him happy.
That seemed fair, but worries resurfaced when
he told the family they were going on a two-
week cruise and would then announce “plans
for the future”. Alarm bells rang.
They hired a private detective who
discovered that the home help was not only
married to another octogenarian, now in
a care home, but was living with her long-
term partner (of her own age) with whom
she had a ten-year-old daughter.
I have dealt with
traumas, murders and
other people’s sexual
fantasies (about me)
The family asked me to be the one to tell
him he was the victim of an emotional scam,
lest he think they were concerned about their
inheritance. I knew he would be heartbroken
so agreed on condition that I would let him
enjoy the cruise before breaking the news.
SEX AND DEATH
Sex proved the death of Priscilla’s husband,
who died in circumstances that are sometimes
the butt of jokes, but which, in real life, are
much less funny. He was a big man, due in
part to years of her excellent cooking. You
may guess what happened next. They were
making love when he had a massive heart
attack. Her distress at suddenly losing her
husband was compounded by her inability
to move, pinned underneath him.
We made funeral arrangements. It had
been a happy marriage and her grief was
compounded by traumatic flashbacks to
his final moments. I told her that from a
cardiovascular point of view, sex is like
climbing two flights of stairs or taking a
brisk walk, and so was almost certainly not
the cause of death. Instead, it was just an
unfortunate coincidence, but I knew that
did not help her. Facts and feelings are not
always good companions.
Much worse was the problem a colleague
had to face of terminal lovemaking, except
that the man died while with another woman.
His wife never told the minister the exact
circumstances, with the result that he warmly
eulogised her late husband at the funeral, but
she seethed throughout it. I reckon I had the
easier case.
THE VIRGIN BIRTH
There was never a course in sexual theology
at my rabbinic training college, but I wished
there had been when Doris called me. She was
a scrupulously honest woman, single, in her
early forties, who I knew was desperate to get
married and have children.
“Guess what,” she said, delighted, down the
phone. “I’m pregnant!” I’d always hoped that
at some point she would have a child whether
or not she was married, but I was not aware
that she even had a partner. So I asked as
unobtrusively as possible, “Who’s the dad?”
There was a pause and then she said
sweetly, “There is no father.” I asked if she
meant she’d tried IVF using donor sperm.
“Oh no,” she said.

Rabbi Jonathan Romain in 2017
Thinking she was being discreet, I reassured
her that if she wanted to keep the father’s
identity private, that was fine. When she again
insisted he did not exist, I was glad she could
not see my puzzled look. “You’re not suggesting
it was a virgin birth?” I said in false jocularity,
trying to show how crazy she sounded.
“That’s exactly what it was,” she said,
obviously pleased that I was beginning to
understand the situation. I told her that
many people thought this had happened
once before, but not that it would ever be
repeated. “Well,” she replied, “I didn’t sleep
with anyone, so it must have.” A vicar may
have regarded this as a sign, or even a miracle,
but for a rabbi this was a case for either a
psychiatrist or detective.
Although she never claimed any divine
privilege, she maintained her version for
several months. Then a chance remark offered
a solution. Her mother reminded her that she
used to sleepwalk as a child. Had there been
anyone else in her home around the time of
conception? Yes, a male lodger. The theory
that she had sleepwalked into his room
The wife discovered the
au pair had slept with
her husband and all
three teenage sons
and he had had sex with her seemed more
plausible than the divine option.
THE PERILS OF BEING A RABBI
Of course, it is not only congregants who are
prey to temptation. Clergy too. My brush with
eternal damnation happened when a recently
widowed young woman came to see me. The
conversation started off, as I had expected,
about how she was coping emotionally, as well
as the practical difficulties she faced around
the house.
Then the mood music changed. She leaned
forward and said, “Actually, it’s more than those
things. I miss having a man.” I attempted to
nod wisely, though was not sure where this
was leading. I was left in little doubt when she
undid the top button of her blouse.
I was part flattered, part appalled, but most
of all trying to work out how to extricate both
of us from the situation without obviously
rejecting her. It was a time when she was in
emotional freefall and I wanted her to feel
able to remain part of the community and
be supported by it.
I decided to play the dullard who was
oblivious to her desires and undeserving of
her charms. “I know exactly the person you
need,” I said chirpily. “I know someone who
is wonderful at DIY and can do anything you
need around the house or garden.” Rising
from my chair, I promised to look up his
phone number and send it to her. “That’ll sort
you out,” I concluded, looking pleased at my
problem-solving abilities. I opened the door to
indicate she was better off outside my study
rather than inside – a sentiment she was fast
beginning to realise herself.
She stayed a member, and I contacted
her periodically, as if it had been a normal
bereavement session. She kept her pride,
I kept my virtue, but each of us could so
easily have lost both.
WHICH HUSBAND TO CHOOSE?
Perhaps, at this point, I should make it clear
that my communal work is not dominated by
sexual issues – there are plenty of days spent
in taking services, leading study sessions,
visiting hospital patients, talking to schools
and officiating at moments of hatch, match
and dispatch.
Moreover, affairs of the heart can also have
many admirable and positive aspects to them,
as in the case of Gertie. She had a wonderful
marriage of 28 years to her first husband, by
whom she had two daughters. After a few
years alone, she unexpectedly found love
again with her second husband, who died
after they had been together for 35 years.
Her problem was which husband to be
buried besides when her turn came. Should
it be the father of her children or her second
husband? I told her there were advantages to
both: if next to the former, it would mean
her children could visit both their parents
together, rather than in separate places. If
next to the latter, it made sense as it was the
longer marriage and the husband with whom
most friends and relatives associated her.
There was no right answer, but what was
important was that she consulted her children,
found out if they had strong feelings on the
matter or not, and, above all, let everyone
know her decision in advance so that there
was no surprise when she died, with the family
arguing rather than grieving.
I encourage everyone in the community
to leave instructions as to what they want
– burial or cremation, where and how – so
that relatives not only have a record, but can
have the comfort of knowing they are carrying
out the person’s last wishes. It is now the
biggest file I have in my office.
HIS WIFE’S GHOST
It seems, though, that love can transcend
even the grave. Certainly that was Derek’s
experience, when I visited him a few months
after his wife died. It had been a long and
loving marriage, but he told me he was not
lonely as she regularly came back to visit him.
“Really?” I said, trying not to sound too
disbelieving but interested to know how she
managed that. “Oh yes,” he continued. “She
suddenly appears, sitting in that chair over
there. She never speaks, but I chat to her. She
goes off for a few days and then returns.”
I was very glad he did not ask my opinion.
I reckoned it was some kind of projection or
auto-suggestion, though I would not dismiss it
entirely as I am prepared to accept that things
happen that defy explanation and there is
much that we do not understand.
More importantly, he clearly derived
enormous comfort from it and I would
not have wished to diminish the pleasure
it gave him. If asked, I would have said that
I accepted what he told me and hoped she
kept on visiting him for a long time to come.
It is moments such as these, rather than
the more salacious incidents, that make being
a rabbi such a fulfilling job. No day is the
same, the unexpected occurs regularly and
I get to be involved in people’s lives in a way
that hopefully helps them and enriches me.
You will have noticed one glaring omission.
I have not mentioned God in my description
of a religious life. I’ve realised that, yes, I take
services every week, but ultimately what
draws people to the synagogue is not God,
but camaraderie. What they want most is not
promises of the afterlife, but warmth, kindness,
and a sense of community in the here and
now. A place where they are welcomed when
they come and missed when they are absent.
I reckon God agrees… and lets me get on
with it. n
The Times Magazine 43
 ‘MY MIDLIFE IBIZA TRIP: IT’S NOW HEALERS, NOT DEALERS’

Therapists Elke, Judit, Enrico and Francesca

with Simon Mills at Casa Maya, Ibiza
For four decades Simon Mills (below) has danced till dawn on the legendary clubbing
island. Now the 58-year-old discovers getting wrecked is out and wellness is in.
Time to fly in Madonna’s yoga teacher and lie back and think about his chakras…

PORTRAIT Tom Jackson

 I
t is early morning in the rich and rural
north of Ibiza and we are gathered, a
quietly conspiratorial group of three,
beneath the shaded area of a sprawling,
£8.5 million jet-set finca, for an
indulgently hedonic ritual.
Obediently and in unison, under
the instruction of a lithe and charming
stranger, we sniff. First her, then us. Birds
sing, horses whinny and grasses rustle
in a soundtrack of shared, blissful euphoria.
“Cover your right nostril and inhale with the
left. Deeply,” says Francesca. “Cover your left
nostril. Inhale with the right. Now. A couple of
quick, sharp sniffs.” We sniff again and a sense
of clarity, an almost tangible connection with
our surroundings, blows over us.
This new high – new to me, anyway – is a
nostril-centric, Premasati Yoga
technique known as shamanic Mills and Enrico at Casa Maya
breathing and its practice,
alongside other corporeal
therapies and outer-body
experiences, seems to be neatly
representative of the new, post-
Covid Ibiza: a place you visit to
get fixed, not to get wrecked.
With the financially devastating
effects of the pandemic receding
and Balearic authorities pledging
a shift towards “sustainable and
respectful tourism”, Ibiza is
resetting its commercial chakras
and reinventing itself as Europe’s
toniest wellness destination;
masseurs, therapists and yogis are
the new DJs, treatments are the
new choons and luxury retreats
now challenge dancefloors as the
quintessential Ibiza experience.
With superclub Privilege (capacity 10,000)
once billed as the world’s largest nightclub
now closed down, and the world-famous club
Pacha paying off an €18 million (£15 million)
rescue package from the Spanish government
(in the form of a staff furlough programme
during the lockdown), Fincadelica, a 300-year-
old, 20-acre “magical, free-flowing concept
estate inspired by nature and tranquillity”
north of Santa Gertrudis seems like a hipper,
alternative option. Fincadelica comprises nine
suites that are all Roche Bobois sofas and
bone-blonde woodwork. There are farm-to-
table food facilities, a soundproof cave club
and a Lakota tepee with a resident shaman.
It is perfect for the sort of client who “drives
a Tesla, heli-skis in Aspen and offsets the
carbon footprint of their VistaJet flights” and
TOM JACKSON. @LUCIE.APP
is happy to spend £57,000 a week to rent it.
“It’s not about minimalist interiors and
infinity pools any more,” says Serena Cook,
founder of the Deliciously Sorted concierge
service on Ibiza. “Clients now want the ‘back
to nature’ experience… An authentic, more
46 The Times Magazine
bohemian slant.” Accordingly, Fincadelica’s
evening entertainment is all parties in
illuminated cacti fields with staff serving up
platters of San Pedro chocolate mousse mixed
with psychedelic peyote.
A similar energy-positive, nu-hippy mood
is upscaled to stellar levels of mind and body
enlightenment in the secluded Xarraca Bay,
near Portinatx, where Six Senses Ibiza serves
as a sanctuary for Europe’s itinerant, barefoot
billionaire community.
In a naturally cooled environment (no
nasty, dehydrating, energy-sapping air
conditioning here) that has been designed like
a One Percenters’ farmers’ market town, the
key offerings are “culture, longevity and
wellness” and “meaningful moments of
community, spirituality and celebration”.
IT’S FOR CLIENTS WHO DRIVE
A TESLA, HELI-SKI IN ASPEN
AND CAN SPEND £57,000 A
WEEK ON A LUXURY ESTATE
Wander through multiple levels of dreamy
restaurants, superluxe/sea-adjacent “caves”,
boutiques, gyms and yoga decks, and you’ll
come across blackboards that offer a daily
programme of events, including a “beeswax
wrap workshop”, a “cacao ceremony”,
“quantum yoga” and a “sunset ritual”.
And should your inner, Nine Perfect
Strangers’ Nicole Kidman suddenly feel the
need, you can also call reception from your
£1,200-a-night Six Senses bed and request an
in-house amenity that is designed to help you
find your spirit animal. This is now normal
room service for northern Ibiza.
Yes, the southern part of the island around
Ibiza Town and gaudy, perpetually thrumming
San Antonio may still fizz to relentless house
and techno music, but with every passing
season, a bling/boho divide seems to be ever
widening; the south being Vegas, the north
more like Varanasi.
Ibiza south is dealers; the north is healers.
And as summer 2022 enters its hot peak,
Ibiza’s rebirthed wellness economy is positively
rude with health and vitality, its numbers well
ahead of global predictions for the wellness
tourism industry to increase by 20.9 per cent
during the next three years. Estate agents in
particular are now seeing a new boom in the
“wellness property” market – northern Ibiza
villas in the €10-€20 million ballpark (£8.5-
£17 million) requiring not just basics like a
freshwater swimming pool and a soundproofed
party room with DJ decks and weapons-grade
PA system any more, but also a
yoga space, massage deck, therapy
and meditation areas, plenty
of negative energy-absorbing
shungite crystals and, if possible,
some sort of “temple”. Superstar
DJ Calvin Harris recently
announced a move from his big,
white $25 million (£21 million)
Beverly Hills McMansion to sun-
scorched Terra Masia, a 138-acre
biodynamic farm estate and
agrotourismo project near Santa
Eulària des Riu.
“We’re seeing the market
driven by a demographic of rich,
middle-aged people who used to
come to Ibiza to dance their
troubles away but are now older
and looking for something a bit…
deeper and more meaningful,”
estate agent Charlie Hill of the Balearic
Islands firm Charles Marlow & Bros agency
tells me. “Their experience might start with a
simple massage but soon they’ll be exploring,
say, past life therapy.” As well as requests to
rent, for example, Noel Gallagher’s Casa
Atlantis villa – at €93,500 a week in August
– increasingly, Hill is receiving inquiries from
people wanting to buy properties with ten
bedrooms or more that have “retreat
conversion potential”.
“And you know about Tachyon Star Dust,
right?” I shake my head, presuming that
I am being introduced to a powerful MDMA
variant or perhaps a hot new French DJ
talent. “Well, we’re now seeing whole rooms
of it in our villas.”
Tachyon Star Dust actually being a
“tachyonised” powder that is mixed with one’s
emulsion or eggshell to create “a blissful
sanctuary” that protects you “from harmful
electromagnetic (EMF) radiation, cell phone
pollution and dissonant energy patterns”.
Tachyons being “hypothetical particles that
move faster than the speed of light and travel
backwards through time”, of course. Nu-Ibiza
has discovered its equivalent of Farrow & Ball
Mouse’s Back and it costs around €1,000 for a
small room’s worth.
Back at our villa, Francesca ends our
session flat on our backs, eyes closed, with
a mini gong bath; gentle vibrations in our
ears and humming through our bodies via a
strategically positioned Tibetan singing bowl
on each tummy. And for this particular Ibiza
repeater, now in his fourth decade of white
isle visitation, having caroused, chilled,
cavorted and clubbed until dawn, for what
must be at least 50 mentally and physically
damaging trips, everything already feels
calmer, quieter, better.
Naturally, there is now an app for all this –
a healer dealer, if you will. West Oxfordshire-
based entrepreneur Lucy Russell, formerly of
the Quintessentially concierge brand and a
nutritional therapy graduate, came up with the
Lucie app during the lockdown. Identifying a
Cotswolds/west London/Ibiza clientele (Russell
calls it “the new wellness triangle”) the yoga
fanatic saw a gap in the market for the kind
of people who rent superluxe Ibiza villas, but
also want to spoil themselves. The app offers
the services of northern Ibizan masseuses,
therapists and meditators that come to you.
Perhaps a deep tissue treatment courtesy of
Wanda Lammers, who has seen Eva Mendes,
Simon Le Bon and Sigourney Weaver, or a
yoga session with James De Maria, who is
summoned by Leonardo DiCaprio and
Madonna when they arrive on the island, or a
blow-dry from a Jo Hansford or Daniel Galvin
stylist. Maybe some allergy tests, a vitamin C
or B12 shot, or, as I am about to find out, some
alarmingly deep theta healing and a bit of
trippy Clarity Breathwork.
“Post-Covid, we are also seeing a new
generation of Ibiza second-home owners now
coming here for two, three or four-month
periods. For a long stay, they expect to be
serviced with ‘live availability’ experts just
as they would be back in London,” says
Russell. “It’s the kind of home service that
celebrities get all the time, made available
to everyone.” Everyone who is happy to
shell out £300 an hour for non-contact
healing by a Six Senses-endorsed biocuántica
therapist, that is.
These practitioners, Russell says, are used
to being helicoptered directly onto private
yachts to supply a breathwork session or deck
detox. “It’s all yacht or private villa-based,”
explains Russell. “The really wealthy people
looking for wellness prefer to stay at home for
their treatments, rather than go to hotels or
spas, because their houses will be much nicer
and better equipped than any five-star hotel.”
The Lucie app, Russell adds, will also
provide more traditional doctor services
to remote villas, should anyone overdo the
partying and wish to avoid the nightmare of
the island’s A&E department (or “Alcohol &
Ecstasy”, as the locals like to call it).
The villa doorbell chimes and my 11am
breathwork therapist Elke Scior enters the
room like a Mediterranean breeze. She is here
to provide me with a profound tool for healing
and transformation, to gently uplift the spirit.
Scior will do all this via the ancient practice of
circular, connected breathing, improving the
clarity of my mind, increasing my awareness
and presence, releasing my blocked emotional
energy and attaining a higher state of
consciousness. Higher State of Consciousness
also being the name of the acid house classic
by Josh Wink that old ravers like your
reporter used to trance-dance to during
‘THE MARKET IS DRIVEN
BY RICH, MIDDLE-AGED
PEOPLE WHO USED TO DANCE
THEIR TROUBLES AWAY’
the Ibiza summer of 1995, of course. Turns
out Scior was there too.
Raised in a village in Stasi-oppressed East
Germany, she crossed into West Germany
when the Berlin wall collapsed in 1989,
eventually arriving in Ibiza in 1995. She stayed
for ten years finding work with DJ Sven Väth,
running the VIP list for the German techno
legend’s famous Cocoon nights at the Amnesia
superclub and organising the secret Cocoon
afterparties which would often last from
Monday until Wednesday. There was, she tells
me, lots of fun, plenty of drugs, but also low,
dark periods of exhaustion and burnout.
“After three seasons, I was really
depressed,” Scior says. “I woke up, in the
middle of the August high season and said
to myself, ‘I have to go.’ Yes, it was fun, but
I could be ending up in my forties and fifties
still doing this stuff.” She moved to Australia,
and like many midlifers looking for a new,
more natural high, discovered surfing,
wellness, yoga and meditation. Living in
Byron Bay’s famously high-end hippy
community, she qualified as a masseur.
Scior made her return to Ibiza in 2009,
not curating club VIP lists any more, but
laying hands on VIPs like DJs Richie Hawtin
and Luciano, making visits to megavillas
owned by Sean “Puffy” Combs and Robert
Dekeyser, the former Bayern Munich
goalkeeper turned Dedon furniture brand
originator. Scior is now hired by wealthy Ibiza
customers to run a ten-day panchakarma
programme said to cleanse the body of
waste. It costs €3,000 per person. She moves
into a client’s villa where she prepares
ayurvedic meals and treatments including the
purging of intestinal toxins, a flushing of the
upper gastrointestinal tract, a cleansing of
sinus channels, a nourishing wash of the
colon and the final rakta moksha – essentially
leech therapy to purify via the removal of
“unhealthy” blood. Scior asks for total
commitment, including total avoidance of
all system-imbalancing electronic devices:
computers, mobile phones and iPads. Quite
a tough call when one is dealing with newly
enlightened, still double-screening bankers.
Biocuántica therapy is next. Carlos
Aparicio, summoned from Six Senses, sets
up a massage bed in my villa bedroom and
unpacks an intriguing array of Kodak lenses
and mini photographic images on a table next
to it. Somewhat embarrassingly, I strip down
to my underpants and hop on the bed before
Aparicio politely informs me that this is a
non-contact therapy that turns stress into
new vitality, eliminating toxins, repairing
physiological disorders and increasing
longevity, harmonising the energetic
systems of the body.
He positions a lens on one side of my
prostrate and very possibly cynical body,
administering a series of finger clicked
pulses on the other. Suddenly I feel a proud,
quasi-electric twinge in a tennis elbow injury
on my left arm. Then another. I am now
reconnected not only with nature and Mother
Earth, but also with myself and my priorities
in life. Ayurvedic chakras and acupuncture
meridians are aligned.
Judit, symbolic sun tattoos on each of her
nut-brown shoulders, is my last Lucie app call
of the day. She is here for theta healing, a
modality – previously unknown to me – which
will help expel the unwanted and limiting
belief systems that are preventing me from
experiencing life at its highest, happiest and
most fulfilling potential. Which is a lot more
than I used to get from two or three glasses
of chilled, lunchtime rosada during many
previous villa holidays.
We enter a curtain-darkened room.
I sit upright, propped by several expensive
cushions. Our brain vibrates in five different
waves, Judit explains softly, one of them
being the theta wave. Through theta healing
meditation, it is possible, she says, to tap into
the theta brainwave state and gain access to
one’s inner and unconscious world. “We will
be going down,” Judit warns me, “to shit.” And
off we go into a confessional that takes me
ever down and darker.
After an hour, I emerge with a smile
and a sense of relief, repair and emotional
exhaustion. Judit hugs me warmly. I feel the
effects of a sort of anti-Ecstasy therapy that
took me way down to get me high. Eat, sleep,
purge, repeat. Welcome to nu-Ibiza 2022. n
The Times Magazine 47
 THIS OLD
THING? THE
CHIC WAY TO
DO VINTAGE

How a creative couple chased

out the pigeons and gave a
run-down Edwardian home
a theatrical makeover
REPORT Jessica Salter
PHOTOGRAPHS Alicia Waite

48
 Home!

The entrance to the sitting room,

with a Buchanan Studio ottoman in
the centre. Opposite, from left:
Angus and Charlotte Buchanan on
one of their own studio’s sofas
beneath a photograph by Nick
Knight; the en suite bathroom, with
Edwardian bath from Nostalgia &
New and vintage armchair

The children’s bathroom, likened
by the family to a Battenberg cake.
Right: Studio sofa by Buchanan
Studio in the rear extension
S
tepping into Angus and Charlotte
Buchanan’s exuberant Edwardian
London home, you can instantly
sense former set designer Angus’s
background: each room feels like a
little stage, waiting for its audience.
“There’s a sense of theatre and
of the unexpected in everything
Angus does,” Charlotte says.
While many designers might
stress about keeping rooms in a house looking
unified, Angus takes a different tack. “I think
the aesthetic should change as you move
around the house,” he says. So a sleek,
modern, stainless-steel kitchen abuts a
traditional-looking pantry, complete with linen
skirts to hide utilities; upstairs, a calm white
master bedroom with a floaty linen canopy
above the bed contrasts with the children’s
bathroom – a riot of pink and yellow tiles.
Angus took a circuitous route to running
the couple’s eponymous design studio, which
they founded in 2018. Straight from school he
began working with the photographer Mario
Testino before joining the late, legendary set
designer Michael Howells as his art director,
working on catwalk shows for John Galliano
at Dior, for Versace and Burberry, as well as
television sets, ballet productions and window
design. “We worked at a high intensity, with
the ability to be genuinely creative on very
different budgets but at a massive scale. What
I learnt with [Michael Howells] has influenced
everything I do,” Angus says.
Now, as the creative director of Buchanan
Studio (Charlotte is CEO), Angus has kept
up a similarly eclectic approach to projects:
interior design for residential and commercial
properties around the world, from a townhouse
in Chelsea to a dining room for the Middle
Eastern restaurant chain Le Bab; branding for
the Delevingne sisters when they launched a
prosecco; set design; parties for private clients.
The studio also has its own product range;
last year it launched the now Instagram-
famous Studio Chair. But the most personal
project so far has been the family home. In
2020, after a year of renting with their two
children, Riva, 6, and Wylder, 4, the couple,
both 36, bought a three-storey house in
Harlesden, north London, that had fallen
into disrepair. The previous owner, an elderly
lady, lived in two rooms downstairs; the only
residents upstairs were a flock of pigeons who
flew in and out through broken windows. The
house took another year to renovate.
They knew, even before they found the
house, how they wanted to decorate some of
Home!
the rooms. “There was always going to be a big
stainless-steel kitchen with concrete floors,”
Charlotte says. “It had to be bombproof with
the kids and the dog.” It also had to cater for
parties. “After the past few years, we’ve been
making up for it,” Angus says. In the corner
sits a Buchanan Studio sofa upholstered in
their own sage velvet Checkmate pattern,
surrounded by large potted plants.
There is also a humorous nod to the
building’s former tenants. A stuffed pigeon sits
in the exposed rafters. “We take interiors very
seriously, of course,” Angus says with a smile.
The children have their own bedrooms but
no separate playroom; their toys live in a large
unit in the kitchen and a specially designed
Buchanan Studio ottoman in the living room,
which has hidden storage underneath, or are
on display on open shelving. “Not all children’s
stuff is ugly,” Charlotte says.
The whole family agree that their favourite
room to hang out in together is the kids’
bathroom. Tiled with pink, white and yellow on
the walls and a black and white chequerboard
floor, it features a pastel pink bath, loo and
sink. “It’s such a fun place to be,” Charlotte
says. “It’s like being inside a Battenberg cake.” n
buchanan.studio; @buchanan.studio
The Times Magazine 51
 Eating out
Giles Coren
‘My meal at Ynyshir attracted
criticism about the cost.
So here’s a cheap restaurant
a mere eight-hour cycle
ride from my home’
Galleria
ast week at Ynyshir, where I went
L
to report on a restaurant recently
voted the best in Britain – a national
story right in my slot that I couldn’t
not follow up – I paid my half of
a four-figure bill (including room
for the night and wine and spirits),
about half of which will be charged
to this paper as expenses, and half will be
taken on the chin by me, and attracted some
predictable but perfectly understandable
criticism regarding the cost.
How could I, at a time like this, spend
such…? Did I know there is a cost of living
crisis which is compelling people to…? Could
I not comprehend the vulgarity, when food
banks are…? What is The Times thinking,
to be running restaurant reviews at all, with
everything that is going on in the…?
And I do appreciate where you are coming
from on this. People around the world are
starving because of a grain and oil shortage;
families in this country are having to choose
between food and fuel; with wages stagnant
in the face of rising inflation, restaurants will
become increasingly inaccessible to all but the
very wealthiest. So what the hell am I doing,
TOM JACKSON
still drivelling on about posh restaurants for
rich wankers who don’t know they’re born?
Can’t I read the room?
52 The Times Magazine
It was the same the week before, at
Amethyst: how could I “boast” about eating
caviar and foie gras when Tesco was having
to drop Heinz baked beans because people
can’t afford them any more?
And the week before, at the Woolpack
in Slad: £4.40 for a pint, with the triple lock
under threat? Smoked morcilla risotto, with
Kyiv in flames?
And every week before that, all the way
back, for as long as I (or anyone else) have
been reviewing restaurants. Champagne again,
Giles, with the credit crunch on? Truffles,
in the midst of austerity? Pizza, with the twin
towers tumbling? Linguine al granchio when
“back to basics” is tearing us apart? Steak
chasseur, during the three-day week? Missiles
in Cuba and you’re eating pork chops????
Do you see, it has never been okay to
review restaurants? Never been tasteful. Never
been fitting. Nor even to go to them. People are
always starving. There are always wars. Death
and desperation and hunger have always been
the bass line of the human experience, the
drum beat of evolution. You play your own
tune, your life, your death, your ups, your
downs, with all of that going on, always. It’s
a given. To be rich and happy and healthy
and not give a damn is never, ever acceptable.
But, okay, this is a newspaper. A certain
level of topicality is expected. As I write, I have
in front of me a Times feature about summer
days out for under a tenner (Do you walk
there? Do you lunch on your own bogeys?),
which nobody anywhere thinks anyone will

actually do, but which seems like the right sort
of piece to be running just now. And I guess
there are restaurant critics who would respond
to a time like this by offering round-ups of
places you can eat for less than a certain fixed
amount. And that’s great. Except, I’ve always
made it clear that, from a financial point of
view, restaurants are stupid and if you ever
go to one, you have only yourself to blame.
Personally, if I didn’t have this job, I would
live on anchovies on toast and never leave
the house except to pee (because I would be
so poor, I wouldn’t have an indoor loo).
But, screw it, I am nothing if I do not listen
to my readers, so here is a cheap restaurant.
It’s called Galleria and it’s in St Leonard’s-on-
Sea, a mere eight-hour cycle ride from Kentish
Town. Or 22-hour walk if you haven’t got a
bicycle. And I have to confess, I didn’t know
how cheap it was going to be when I set off
(I got a train, by the way, because at that stage
in my education as a restaurant critic I still
had no sensitivity towards the less well-off).
I had been invited to the coast by my old
friend Michael Foster, the renowned super-
agent and philanthropist who broadly gave up
agenting to devote himself and his fortune to
saving the Labour Party from Jeremy Corbyn.
That done, he repaired to St Leonard’s-on-Sea
for personal reasons. “I’m still an agent,” he
says. “I just haven’t got any clients who ask
me to do anything. It’s absolutely marvellous.”
So I went there rather anticipating a major
slap-up. He likes his claret, does Michael, and
in the high and far-off times was rarely not in
Galleria
39 Norman Road,
St Leonard’s-on-Sea,
East Sussex (07445
033561; galleriabar.co.uk)
Cooking 6
Location 8
Value 9
Score 7.67
his favoured spot at Fischer’s in Marylebone,
where they do not by any means give away
the wurst and herrings for nothing. He met
me at the station – St Leonard’s Warrior
Square, what a name! – and excitedly told me
this was the poorest town for miles around.
“All built by the same guy who built
Regent’s Park,” he told me as we rounded a
corner and came eye-to-eye with the grey-
green greatness of the English Channel, away
down the bottom of a vertiginous street, the
way you do in these parts. “So it’s all of a
period, not a mishmash. I love it. But there’s
just no money.”
It’s true, too. There is none. Cost-of-living
crisis or no cost-of-living crisis, central
St Leonard’s is, and has been for some time,
one of most deprived communities in the
South East – I checked government stats. So
I probably shouldn’t have been as surprised
as I was by the low, low prices on the menu.
Not so much the £24.50 for 12 Whitstable
oysters, perhaps half what you’d pay in London,
but the 2-course set lunch menu for £15.
“FIFTEEN POUNDS?” I spluttered,
choking on one of my Nocellara olives with
garlic, chilli and lemon (which, by comparison,
were daylight robbery at £4 for a generous
bowlful), and having to be Heimliched back
to life by Michael as I lay convulsed and
laughing on the antique parquet floor.
“Yes,” said Jack Booth, the Leeds-born
co-owner of Galleria who runs front of house
(read: waits on all the tables) while his partner,
Gianluca Tozzi, from Manfredonia in Puglia,
does the cooking in the small kitchen out back.
“Fifteen pounds.”
Well dang and blast, that’s less than the
average children’s menu in a London gastropub,
and provided very little opportunity for
me to plough a significant amount of my
hard-earned (and yours) into the depleted
local economy, to say nothing of lend a hand
to Jack and Gianluca, who first made a move
for the space in November 2019, went through
the conniptions that convulsed the whole
industry in that dark time, got the keys in
July 2020 and finally opened that August.
So I ordered everything. All the starters
and all the mains. Which, seeing as there
were only three of each on the parsimoniously
pared-down menu, only meant pretending
there was one extra guest at the table than
there was, and spending £45 for lunch for 2
instead of just £30. Hope that’s okay with you?
And so we had four fat slices of shimmering,
amber, gin-cured sea trout (not a poor man’s
salmon, the sea trout, but a sound and sensible
man’s), with some rocket leaves and nubbins
of orange; a thick slice of spinach, tomato and
pecorino frittata with creamed parmesan; and
a dish of mussels with garlic and chilli.
To be transparent, we had also had a plate
of the courgette fries with lime and mustard
mayo (£4.50) and some of Gianluca’s excellent
mascarpone-based smoked mackerel pâté with
sourdough toast (£6), from the “Snacks” menu,
to go with our £32 gavi di gavi (yes, it is a
bit thoughtless to drink wine at this difficult
time, but show me a gavi for £32 on any other
restaurant menu and we’ll talk about it then),
so could probably have stopped eating there.
But we didn’t. There were two pastas
next: a mezze maniche (meaning “half-
sleeves”), which are a short tubular pasta
(in a sort of fresh puttanesca sauce without
the anchovies, and a creamy linguine dish
with baby prawns, courgettes and dill pesto.
Also a nice thick piece of plaice, crumbed and
fried, with Jersey Royals.
And that’s how you do it, I guess:
unfashionable fish – mussels, sea trout,
plaice, mackerel – and plenty of pasta, one
of you cooks and one of you serves, in a town
where, I’m guessing, rents are not punishing,
and everyone is very, very glad to see you.
And even happier to see change out of a
twenty. Unless you have pudding of course.
Which is a lemon posset and comes in at
£7. But I didn’t, obviously. Who do you think
I am, Jeff Bezos? n
The Times Magazine 53
LIFESTYLE
LIFESTYLE
LIFESTYLE
LIFESTYLE
 Beta male
Ben Machell
Here’s my life in I went to an awards dinner the other night.
I’d been nominated for something but didn’t
win, which was honestly genuinely totally fine.
awards – and I’ve The main thing was I had fun. I got to wear a
necktie, enjoy a delicious silver service chicken
got the certificates dinner, show off my Loud Clapping and, best
of all, take part in the complimentary drinks
to prove it! reception. Nothing takes the sting out of being
an also-ran like feeling as though you’ve just
been on the receiving end of a prosecco enema.
But when I came back empty-handed, my
children were genuinely shocked. They win
awards all the time. Our fridge door is entirely
camouflaged behind a dense foliage of
certificates and commendations. Our house
is at genuine risk of subsidence owing to the
sheer weight of medals they each have hanging
from their bedroom walls. What can I say?
Glory just seems to stalk them. Same with
their little primary school mates. They are,
somehow or other, despite the logical
improbability of it, all winners.
“Have you ever won anything, Dad?” they
asked me, which did hurt a little. So I told
them that my own childhood was punctuated
by all kinds of accolades, yes. For example:
The “Big Boy Ben’s Dry Week award”, 1986.
During my early years I was locked in a tense
duel – a winner-takes-all deathmatch – with
my bladder. Particularly at night. But when my
mum produced an elaborate reward chart and
the promise of an A-Team sticker for every
unsoiled sleep, I knew I had to dig deep. By
my sixth consecutive dry night, I felt like
Muhammad Ali: cocky, confident, almost
toying with my urinary system. The following
morning, I received a little trophy and, more
importantly, the knowledge that in life,
nobody hands you continence. You have
to win it. Or at least, I did.
North Leeds Primary Schools Road Safety
Quiz, 1991. At the age of nine, I was selected
by my school to be part of an elite team
of Green Cross Code experts, who would
compete against other schools in a series
of gruelling quizzes. I took road safety very
seriously, and had an instinctive knack for
knowing speed limits, recognising all different
kinds of signage and for clearly demonstrating
risk-minimising road-crossing technique.
Motorists would have to be at the absolute
KATIE WILSON
top of their game to run me over, and I knew
it. Did our team win the entire competition?
Did we get our photos in the local paper as
© Times Newspapers Ltd, 2022. 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.*
a result? And did our awestruck peers then
treat us like bona fide celebrities? Quite simply,
yes, yes and not really, no.
Pie Eating, 1992. For a long time I had
relatives in upstate New York and, during a
trip to a county fair, I found myself entered
into a contest that involved eating a banana
cream pie as quickly as possible. I was proud
to go toe-to-toe with some of the greediest
children rural America had to offer and, after
a close second-place finish, was thrilled to be
awarded the same kind of big rosette they
pinned to the prize-winning pigs.
Tug of War, 1993 and 1994. Around the time
of the pie eating, I began to gain some serious
pre-pubescent mass. By 12 I had the fleshy
steamroom physique of a 50-year-old Russian
oligarch, which I cleverly put to good use as
a tug-of-war team captain and “anchor” at
successive school sports days. I tied the rope
around my waist and just… wouldn’t budge.
Even when burly PE teachers helped the other
teams, it was nothing doing. I had Newtonian
physics on my side and glory in my sights.
Sadly, it was Game Over when eventually
lankiness kicked in. But I’ll always have
the silverware.
Chief Scout award, 1998. I definitely did get
this – it’s on my CV and everything; it’s just
for a long time I had no specific memory of
doing anything to earn it. It’s only recently
I’ve fully understood that all those weekends
I spent eating Pot Noodles in the dark
halfway up a wet Lake District mountain
with a bunch of knife-obsessed, pyromaniac
15-year-olds was, in fact, directly contributing
to this achievement. I just thought it was
something all teenagers did. Apparently not.
School Battle of the Bands, 1999. I played
bass guitar as part of a nameless ensemble
who performed what I have to say was a really
quite haunting rendition of (Everything I Do)
I Do it For You by Bryan Adams. I was 17 and
it was, in fact, the last thing I ever won.
“Did you get a medal?” my son wanted
to know. No, I explained, but afterwards
some girls came up and started talking to
me. He seemed to think I’d been short-
changed. “I’d have wanted a medal,” he said,
frowning. Yeah, I said. I know. But sometimes
it’s nice to do things even if you don’t get a
certificate at the end. Not everything in life
is a competition. n
Robert Crampton is away