HELLS BELLES!
Words: Sylvia Patterson
23rd September 2000 - nme

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You want sordid secrets from the inner rim of the Met Bar's toilet bowl?
You wanna know the size of DiCaprio's dick / Theakston's twanger?
How's Liams bedside manner?
You want salaciousness, huh, baby... want it baaad, want it now?
And yet you deride 'tabloid filth' and damn those such as the All Saints...

You hypocritical SCUM, we dare you NOT to read this feature. Go on, read on if you can...

The day Nicole Appleton discovered the whole world believed she'd had sex with Leonardo DiCaprio in the Met Bar is the day she knew the Celebrity Pop Tart caper had gone too far. On February 11 this year, she appeared on The Big Breakfast, hadn't seen the papers yet, when Johnny Vaughan presented her with the front cover of The Sun, featuring a highly-detailed sexual encounter wherein it was reported "the pop beauty saucily caressed the actors crotch".

"As soon as I tucking read that I had fucked fucking Leonardo DiCaprio in the fucking toilet I was literally, 'I've had enough,'" she curses, comprehensively. "'Cos it's all bullshit, it did not happen. I thought, 'People are fucking with me. Because they can. Because I've got a famous name and they'll just link me to anybody.' Like they do. I was embarrassed. My mum phoned me and I was, '(Head in hands) Oh, mum.' Everyone thinks this is such a fucking joke but this is my reputation, so that was it."

Prior to this outburst, Nicole had been asked the question, "Have you ever woken up in the morning and thought, 'My life is a vacuous illusion populated by idiots?'" Whatever she understood by that question, she stared hard and said, "Yeah. Yeah. Yeah. It was. It is."

Three years ago, at the height of Spice Girls dementia, crisps, the lot, gateway to the karaoke tots' pop tyranny that grins on in the likes of A1, All Saints were the best pop group in the country. A self-made, class-pop collective given to great tunes - 'I Know Where It's At', 'Never Ever' - and an all-cursin', drinkin', fourheaded flooze-lipped tattooed hydra of 'real' girls who swore on tots' telly, went on about shagging, were "hiphop freaks" and believed they'd "squash" Jarvis Cocker in bed. Today, ten million album sales, several celebrity boyfriends and a friendship with the dog which belongs to the bloke who sells The Big Issue outside the Met Bar later, and they face banners at gigs which read 'Pure Whores'. Grown-up journalists write articles declaring the Appleton sisters The Most Hated People In The World and derisive glee exploded nationwide at their Honest filmic debacle featuring the Appletons' bare bosoms, everything. (Mel, meanwhile, insisted on a "no knockers" clause to spare her daughter's future affrontment.)

Nic: I know. The tits came out. And they ain't coming out ever again. A lot in the script was changed and I kind of felt violated. I mean, everyone saw up my skirt! Oh thanks, you've seen everything now. I was stupid. I've learned a big lesson."

Did you care that men paid money at the box office just to see some celebrity pop tits?
Natalie: "Yep, that's all that film was. But they're great tits so good luck to 'em! That's men for you, the media, everything."

All Saints, generally, couldn't give a flying Sea Breeze down the length of a gilded cocktail bar what anyone thinks of their 'reputation' and if enjoying yourself all the time is an earthly sin, the best way to continue to do it is write a second album of class-pop sparklers and call it 'Saints And Sinners'. And the best way to buffet the abuse through a song called 'Black Coffee', a swoon-pop beezer of advanced harmonic loveliness, produced by William Orbit, as good as 'Pure Shores', and girl pop perfection - the sort you can bawl along to and pretend you're a fabulous singer.

"We didn't actually write 'Black Coffee'," chirps their usual songsmith Shaznay, "I feel like an arsehole but I can't remember the name of the guy who did!"

They're in buoyant mood, the Saints, a great deal chirpier than the ashen-faced "bitches" they became by the end of their inaugural 12-month worldwide promotional tour which saw Nic, by Christmas 1998, threatening to leave the band altogether. She was, she says, "thinner than Ally McBeal, a skeleton, and I love food, I'm a pig; I was so exhausted I couldn't even sleep, I mean, me? I felt like a fucking robot." Last year they sacked "a whole load of people" around them and will no longer promote themselves wholesale across the global media in what Shaznay calls "the equivalent of a crossword puzzle book". At 11am in a north London photo studio, Nicole Appleton, 25, has had five hours sleep - "it's enough" and she's still bollocksed out of her Burberry headscarf (possibly a bandage in disguise).

"Heeheehee!" she rollicks, I am!"

Last night Nicole went "out out for the first time in ages" and it was the first time she'd ever been out in public with Liam Gallagher. They went to a restaurant called Nobu, which resides above the Met Bar - "I thought, 'Fuck it, I wanna go to Nobu, I'm not gonna hide.'" And it wasn't like the old days, there were no photographers outside whatsoever. By the time the left, there were so many she was white-blinded by blanket photographic flashlights. "Someone so went. '(Whistles as if after a sheep-dog) Guess who's here?'" The Pop Tart sabbatical, then, didn't last long. The girls can't help it. Since we met, Natalie's begun officially "dating" Liam from the Prodigy and, as we go to press, Nicole and Liam have another month under their belts, as it were. This morning, Liam offered to accompany Nic to the NME interview but she refused, couldn't bear the idea of "posing in front of him". He assured her, "it's the NME, they'll love you, just go in and be honest."

We hear Liam's such an alcoholic these days, he's started to 'lose control of his bowels' in restaurants.

"Nooooo!" screams Nicole, appalled, bouncing hysterically all over a spongy sofa, "Really?! He was fine last night! He's not an alcoholic. You get pissed occasionally, you're an alcoholic."

He's supposed to be a smackhead now as well.

"(Doubly appalled) Noooo waaaay! No way, no way, no way, absolutely not. By far. He chain smokes, though."

He's a drunk and a womaniser.

"(Ruefully) Well, I've had plenty of experience with the last one. But it's a case of... (gleefully) meeting your match. He's got his hands full, too."

Of all the men in all the gin joints...

"I know, but I didn't do it to hurt Rob. Knowing him, I think... I hope he'd think, 'Cool.'"

During her engagement to Robbie Williams, down the Celebrity Rehab Clinic support group meetings, Nic would stand up and introduce herself to the assembled: "Hi, my name's Nicole Appleton and my boyfriend has a problem."

"It was really full on," she's saying, now horizontal into the back of the sofa, "I was shitting myself. It was scarring. So no, no, no, it would never happen like that again. I'm not a sucker. I'm not gonna pick up the pieces. Again. Go to fucking rehab clinics with them. Again. And fucking do all that again. Liam can do whatever the fuck he likes, but I don't have to be involved like that... But he's not had that side, to me, yet. I might be completely wrong, 1 don't know, it's only been a couple of months. (Buries head in hands) Oh God. Should've kept all the numbers, just in case."

Robbie said recently he never believed in his heart he would ever marry you...

"(Quietly) Yeah."

... and furthermore he'd never even been in love.

"I know."

That's treacherous.

"I thought, 'What next?' Y'know?" she says, wearily. I just found it really disrespectful. If he didn't love me he didn't have to tell anybody that. I thought, 'You c--- , I was never the bad guy and I was always there.' I would never talk about Rob like that, never in a million years, and he's not perfect. So. Cord is cut."

Have you heard the great Robbie Williams/Andrea Corr rumour?

"About what?"

(Censored for legal reasons but you get the gist.)

"(Screaming head off) Noooooo! (Head between knees) Help me! I wouldn't expect her to hold hands with him on a first date! I'm really embarrassed for her."

Incapacitated with mirth, she then shoots a fist out from waist-height, twice, with a heroically matey, "Go on Rob, go on Rob... harghargh!"

The Met Bar, of course, is a pub attached to a posh hotel. That, showbiz friends, is convenient. Bands staying at the hotel would call the Saints up, tell them, "Meet you at the bar." For ages, Nic thought it was hilarious that the Met Bar doorman would un-link the velvet rope in readiness when he saw her advancing up the street: "Unlinking the chain! I fucking loved it! Of course I did!" Several months later, I'd turned into a fucking piece of furniture at the Met Bar, 'Nic, at London's trendy Met Bar', that was my second name." Eventually, she felt "fake and phoney, people were going mad and I just joined in". Today, she doesn't want to be "a ringleader any more", she sees the newspapers with their "spaghetti chain-links, who's been with who and who and it's ugly. It's like a small town."

It's a village, Showbiz.

"Yeah! And I'm moving."

However, she's only moved round the corner. Nic, always a guitar-band fan, is an Oasis devotee who always found Liam Gallagher "fascinating", but didn't fancy him 'til she met him.

He is extraordinarily good-looking in 'real life'.

"God, yeah," she faints, "and he's so nice. He's got a heart of gold. I did not expect that. (Wafting off) Everything I had in my head I was... no, you're more... you're one in a million..."

Nic has three cats and Liam is, she says, "a friendly cat person". They talk to each other "about our days, about how angry he gets when people throw shit at him; we have a laugh, it's not that 'serious', we're not getting married." He doesn't talk about Jesus and aliens "all the time, just when he goes mad". He hasn't bought her any presents yet and they don't 'text' each other on their mobiles like new lovers do. "No!" she shrieks, "He doesn't have a phone!" She hopes Oasis will live "forever and ever and ever, amen".

Are you in love yet?

"I'm just extremely happy."

What kind of a 'lover' is this man, exactly?

"He's soooo lovely. He is. If he has a bit to drink he gets a bit lairy and that's all that people see. They don't see he's actually one of the good guys. It's always the same. You have these pop stars with their squeaky clean image and they're the ones, they treat their assistant like a c---, talk to people like shit. They're evil. And it's the 'bad' ones who have a heart of gold."

Give me five examples of his 'loveliness'?

"Oh God, nooo! He's gonna fucking kill me! I can't give him the reputation of being a big softie! I mean... he's not soppy. I just think... he's really smart."

Not one of the other Saints have ever talked to Nicole about her relationship with Liam, and neither has anyone else.

Shaznay Lewis, 24, is ravishingly well. She's had her own personal fitness trainer for the last six months and brims with good health, her eyes imbued with the deep, deep sparkle of the creatively, financially and emotionally fulfilled. Reports in the newspapers will tell you she's the seventh wealthiest woman in Britain under 30 ("I wish!"). Before All Saints' success, she'd only ever been on a plane once in her life, been out of Britain once full stop.

"Everything happened for us, more or less, at the beginning of our career," she says, "and I thought it was all I had. I love All Saints, and I love the girls, but now I realise this is not what makes me breathe. If I woke up tomorrow and All Saints were gonna split up or my mum was terminally ill, God, I know where my heart would go."

Both Shaznay and Mel took the public perception of their celebrity superficiality "really hard, it became really ugly, I didn't wanna be known as just some celebrity known for doing absolutely nothing".

Did you think, 'You're fucking up my credibility, my career and my life'?

"Yeah, but you can't tell the press to stop writing..."

I don't mean the press, I mean Them Two.

"The girls? Well... nah. 'cos I'm not their mother, they're big women. And there's nothing wrong with going out. OK, I may have had a dabble in my opinion on who they were hanging out with, but then again. so did they. My judgement just came before theirs, that's all. People live and they learn."

Have you ever woken up in the morning and thought, 'My life is a vacuous illusion populated by idiots'?

"Heheheh, no I haven't, actually. The idiots, I call them lost souls. I think what really lacks in this industry is normal, genuine values It's all about the next A-list party, the next big thing, the next best person. to try and be friends with, and people that act like that are not happy; they lack confidence, believe they themselves are not interesting people. God, it's putting such a devalue on yourself."

Can it also be nothing more than a load of larks while you're young?

"Well. yeah, but that changes. Loads of people ask me. '(Faux-dimly) What's it like being fameuth?' And the only way you can enjoy being famous is if you're still yourself."

In the very beginning, All Saints were Shaznay and Mel traversing Britain, bottom of the bill at pop PAs. They always wondered what it was like "on the other side" and when they finally stood in it they went bonkers for a while. The pair used to have a competition to see who could get their photo taken coming out of Gucci with the biggest bag. Shaznay always won.

"Five, six years ago," she says, "I never had my own flat, I never had two cars, I couldn't just go out and buy a nice dress, but I still had a good life. I had good friends and I had a good time. So I've just mixed the two now and I'm bloody excited about all of it. Rather than, '(Theatrically) This is how it's always been for me, this is how it was meant to be for me, and it's all about me and this is how I was born to be!"

You're not "born to do it", like Craig 'Craig' David?

"I got lucky," she guffaws. "Well, no, I worked hard and I managed to achieve something. And when this ship does sink, hopefully it won't hurt me as much, because I've kept the real important side to my life. And knowing that I've done good work, that matters to me. Knowing that it didn't turn out to be '(Wistfully) Oh I wish. oh if only.' That could kill me."

The reason Natalie Appleton, 27, likes famous men so much is they tend not to sell stories to newspapers. Sometimes she's seen blokes on the telly she fancies and found ways to track them down. Years ago, Duran Duran did exactly the same thing with model agencies' books; it's how Simon Le Bon met Yasmin.

D'you think it's fair or a lie you've become known as Celebrity Pop Tarts?

"It's just one of those things," she says. breezily, in her supersonic Canadian trill. I wish I wasn't. I'd rather not be. We're not doing bad things, we're not causing any wars. Imagine it every time you went out with your friends to have a laugh you got slated for it? It's not nice. But I didn't care what they said, take a picture, so be it, I guess they like my look!"

Have you ever woken up in the morning and thought, 'My life is a vacuous illusion populated by idiots"?

"Yeah. I'd wake up thinking, 'Am I happy?' Sometimes I'd think that more than anything. And. 'Who am I? What do I really think, feel? Where's the real Natalie gone?'"

She's had "real bouts of depression, because it is depressing when you don't know really who you are any more. And frightening."

If you looked at you, from the outside, would you be embarrassed for yourself and your celebrity blokefest?

"Well, all of us have had our share of famous men," she supposes, "but no more than anyone else. I guess we're lucky! And so are they! I am dating again... no-one you know! Well. maybe... but I've just come out of a serious relationship (Jonny Lee Miller) and it's not fair to my daughter, I don't want her to get close any more. Too many uncles. Too many uncles spoil the broth."

What would you like girls to learn from All Saints example?

"That we've managed not to be puppets."

Jamie Theakston's penis, incidentally, was, and probably still is, "massive".

All Melanie Blatt, 25, ever wanted to do was sing, be good at it, be obscenely well paid and retire as soon as possible. "The best job in this business ever," she hoots, "is Bez!"

She finds it hilarious that this summer the whole band got the words to their Greatest Hit wrong every time they stood on a festival stage: "I don't think I've ever sung 'Never Ever' all the way through properly. 'cos you think you don't have to think about it. But Tina Turner's on Autocue after 50 years! That's so me!"

She'll say: "We're not that serious, what Shaznay writes, she means, but we're not fucking REM. We're entertainment." Today, in her soul, she's "battling conflicts, getting there... I still have to work". Mel was on the dole for years. Now she has three credit cards "and I still can't believe it". Her chat-up line to her husband Stuart, ex-Jamiroquai, was, "D'you wanna come in for a spliff?" She ran out of Celebrity Life jubilation after six months - "I lived it, enjoyed it and got bored of it" - and feels the damage done to the band's credibility may be permanent.

"To a degree," she muses, "people don't see us as how we were at the beginning. But it's no-one's fault. Someone thrusts all these party tickets in your hand, you're not gonna go, '(Haughtily) oh no, that's not for me,' you just wanna go'n see what the fuck is happening and what you've been missing all these years."

Have you ever woken in the morning and thought, 'My life is a vacuous illusion populated by idiots'?

"Ffff yeah! Every morning! I still do, I only have to watch MTV to think that. Especially when you have a child, you have to feel worth. And this is a hard business to feel worth in."

Celebrity Culture distresses her a great deal. She's the first one to buy OK! - "I'm such a hypocrite!" - but is simultaneously tortured by it.

'I think there's all this focus on people's lifestyles and lovelife and material gain," she's saying, "because most people in this business now haven't got a leg to stand on as far as talent's concerned. So what else are they gonna talk about? Really? (Witheringly) What's going on in their heads? Like, 'Wow, you think this!?' It's not like that at all any more; everyone's so fucking normal and boring and average. There's no rebellion, all the corporations, consumers, all the media, everything, basically they've won. They've won. Twenty, 30 years ago, kids went out of their way to not do what their parents did and wanted to change the world. No-one wants to do that any more; they're very happy just to consume, take what they've been force fed. '(Airly) The next big thing? I'll have that!' They don't even think there's another world out there because they don't even know. That's what the world is. And I can't change it, and I won't change it, 'cos I'm justa s lazy as the next person. I mean. what am I doing? I'm... a vocalist. Everyone's just kushty in their own fucking armchairs. I would've loved there to have been a point in my fife where I... (bawls) stood up for what I believed in! And marched everywhere! With a big placard!"

The placard, she adds, would have "What the fuck..." on one side, and "...is going on?" on the other.

Where,are you going tonight, then, Nicole? "I'm having an early night." Rubbish. "I am! We've got a show tomorrow."

She might, she concedes, go to the pub in Hampstead 'round the corner from her "lovely country mews" house. Or she might stay in and cook.

"I love cooking!" she brims, springing all over the sofa once again, the most irrepressible Celebrity Pop Tart the world has possibly ever known. "I cook the best fucking Sunday roast ever."

Well. there you go. That's Liarn's special thing.

"Is it?"

Yes it is. Cooked it for him yet?

"No!"

Well. here's a tip for you: come the time, and you'll be his Dream Woman; he likes two shots of Jack Daniel's in his Sunday roast gravy.

"Oh no. (Faux-vomits all over the floor) Hyuckuckuck! That's awful. Gross. God, I didn't even know that was his favourite meal. That's so shocking. (Begins giggling head off) No wonder he didn't like Nobu."

Thought it was a bunch of poncey baloney. did he?

"He was like (pulls horrified face. imaginary chopstick aloft).. I'm like, 'It's Japanese' It's sushi!"

Don't forget, two shots.

"(Nodding) Two shots. JD."

You don't know what you've gotten yourself into. do you?

"Oh, I so don't. Oh my God."

Actually... of course you do.

"Heeheehee!"

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