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Dave’s girl and her dragon tattoo
The Camerons come across as a normal family to a fault.
Samantha Cameron came across as warm-hearted and friendly in her interview with Geordie Greig, the editor of The Mail on Sunday, an interview she gave while making her children porridge and taking them on the school run. Nancy, 11, Elwen, nine, and Florence, four, have all inherited a sense of humour from their father, she says.
"It's what attracted me toDave when we met on holiday. The children have definitelygot it they're very funny.He is not allowed to get away with anything." (Nancy is threatening to publish a tell-all memoir of life in Number Ten.)
Samantha says she wishes her children were better mannered sometimes and recalls a family trip to visit the Merkels at their country schloss outside Berlin. She put the children to bed, but a member of staff whispered in her ear during dinner: she should go upstairs urgently. "The children were having a huge pillow and duvet fight and no one could get them to calm down, so there were some very firm words from me."
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She revealed that she is addicted to BBC 6 Music, the indie rock fan's radio station "I listen to Radio 4 in the morning and the rest of the day I have 6 Music on.I love it" and (something else I didn't know) that she has a tattoo of a leaping dragon on her foot. "I had it done on my foot because I thought, You're going to have this forever; so you might as well feel the pain'." What do the children make of it? "Tattoos are everywhere now so I don't think they've noticed."
She makes light of most things, which is an attractive quality; she also talks movingly about the life and death of her disabled son, Ivan, and how she felt when he was born. "It changes your life forever You're living in a completely different world to your friends, who've had babies at the same time." The experience, she says, has made them closer as a family.
One reason, I'm sure, is that Samantha is so reassuringly normal. So is her husband. "David Cameron is a rarity because he is so relaxed," Anthony Seldon, who is writing a biography of him, toldThe Times this week. "He has an almost disgraceful balance in his life. He seems to be at ease with himself, although that does come across as smugness, which can be a problem. He is too sorted; it's hard to see his vulnerabilities. It actually makes him seem inauthentic, but it will help with his life after being prime minister."
Ed Miliband says he'd like to see James Bond played by a woman and recommends Rosamund Pike. "I think she is a great British actress. She would make a great Bond," he says. The Tory MP Philip Davies disagrees. "James Bond is not a woman the clue is in the name."
"From Frump to Queen of Style," said a Daily Mail headline. Underneath Ingrid Seward tells us why Camilla looks so much glossier, and younger, than she used to. One reason is her stylist, Hugh Green, from Hugh & Stephens hairdressers in Belgravia. He works for her full time, "ensuring not a lock is out of place".
Tabloid money: turkeys in No vote for Christmas shock
"That's 103 rich people not wanting a mansion tax or a 50p top tax rate or their workers getting a living wage and no zero-hours contracts." It would be no more surprising if the Telegraph had an exclusive with the headline: "103 members of the Grand Orange Lodge of Ulster say they probably won't be voting Sinn Fein."
"Fashion designer Lamis Khamis chased a cyclist who kicked her car after a row at a roundabout, causing £300-worth of damage, and knocked him off his bike," says Carole Malone in the Sunday Mirror.
"While I accept motorists can't go round ramming cyclists, why do cyclists think they can go round kicking cars... without consequences? Khamis was fined £600, but why wasn't the cyclist prosecuted for causing criminal damage? I'm with Khamis here. We feel intimidated when a cyclist attacks our cars. But they never get nicked for it or for jumping red lights, breaking speed limits or cutting us up."
"I briefly worked in the same office as Natalie Massenet, who founded Net-A-Porter, and who stands to make a fortune from a merger with Italian online fashion retailer Yoox," says Sarah Vine in the Daily Mail.
"There's a tendency to assume that if someone is rich, successful and in fashion, then they're ghastly. Massenet couldn't be further from that stereotype. Even aged twenty-something, she was one of the most level-headed... and unpretentious people I ever met. She's a success because of her drive, vision and work ethic [and] deserves every penny of her fortune."
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