As she turns 40 I want to tell you about the day Kim Kardashian was nice to my mum.
What you’re about to read is an excerpt from my book, ‘Ryan is Ready For You Now…’ a memoir of my life in journalism and a step-by-step guide to interviewing celebrities. It’s everything you wanted to know but were afraid to ask (although if that’s the case maybe this isn’t the job for you).
This passage comes from the Introduction where I talk about where my fascination with celebrity, Hollywood and pop culture may have sprung from. You’ll meet my movie-obsessed dad David, who sadly passed away in 1996, and also mum Babs, who is still going strong, and is most perplexed at how her cameo in this book has caused such a ripple of excitement.
Here we go…
Celebrity and show business has always been of interest me but growing up it was treated in very different ways in the Marks’ household.
My parents covered both extremes. My dad, David, a businessman, had celebrity friends and was also an after-dinner speaker, musician and former stand up. His best friend was the late England goalie Peter Bonetti, and of course hanging around Chelsea FC and the England team in the Sixties and Seventies, Dad had plenty of opportunity to mix in showbiz circles. He loved it.
As well as football, he was such a film buff that aside from the lead actors, he could generally name the extras and bit players in any movie or TV show we watched together. Or at least that’s how it seemed to young me.
Memorably, he would make my brother and I name the actors who played The Magnificent Seven before we sat down to eat Sunday lunch. All I’ll say to you is ‘Brad Dexter’. People always forget Brad.
On the other hand my mother, Barbara (from this moment on known as Babs), had zero interest in the celebrity world. I once asked her who her favourite actor was and after what seemed like an age, and also a mini lecture on how she didn’t really care, she came up with the name Patrick McGoohan.
This was sometime in the Noughties and Patrick McGoohan was famous for his lead role in the Sixties TV series The Prisoner. It was a left field choice but there you go, that’s Babs for you.
While I was living in Hollywood Babs came to visit. I was living at that time near the CBS Studios and had just interviewed an Australian dancer called Kym Johnson, who was one of the professionals on the show Dancing with the Stars, which is the US version of Strictly Come Dancing.
I told Kym that Mum was a big fan of the show in the UK, so she arranged for me to have two tickets to the live show that weekend. Thankfully, and despite the fact that Patrick McGoohan wasn’t in the cast that year, mum was thrilled.
We put our posh dresses on and walked five minutes up the road to the studios. To be precise I borrowed a posh dress from a stylist friend without asking, thinking I would wear it, Febreze it and put it back into its bag without her noticing. My plan spectacularly backfired when the studio manager, for no apparent reason, placed Mum and I on a special two-seater row which was square on camera, at the spot where the dancers made their entrance onto the floor. I was so squirmy throughout the taping I may as well have been wearing a ten-foot sign that said, “I’m a terrible person! I borrowed this dress without permission!”
It had been left in my apartment after a photo shoot for safe-keeping and there it was, all over primetime network television being worn without permission.
We were also seated very near to some of the celebrity dancers’ families, right by the stairs which swooped the couples up towards the balcony after their dances.
Mum recognised Ricki Lake (hurrah!) and waved at her. Ricki waved back (also hurrah!). Kym came over to say hello. The cast also included Carson Kressley, Chaz Bono, Chynna Philips, David Arquette and Rob Kardashian. Yes, a Kardashian. What that meant in practical terms was that a handful of members from one of the most famous families on earth, the Kardashians, were sitting right in front of us. I remember that night seeing Kim, her sisters Khloe, Kourtney and their mum Kris Jenner (more of the world’s most famous ‘momager’ later) all grouped together.
After the taping, which went on for around five (hundred) hours, including two rounds of Susan Boyle pre-recording a performance of her latest single for the following week’s show, we were released from our seats.
Cue the stampede for the toilets.
In the post-show melee, I stepped away from mum to talk to someone I knew and when I turned back I saw that Babs had walked down the steps that lead to the dance floor and was now deep in conversation with Kim Kardashian.
Ha.
Mum is five foot nothing and the first thing I noticed is that she and Kim were the same height.
I watched in amusement as they chatted like old pals. After they exchanged goodbyes, mum walked back to me and said with no sense of occasion, “I’ve just been speaking to a lovely girl called Kimberley.”
Kimberley.
I’ll just let that sit there.
It amuses me to this day that the woman who has 176 million (and counting) followers on Instagram, introduced herself to my mum as Kimberley. It was very sweet.
I said, “Do you have any idea who she is?”
“No.” said Babs. And she didn’t ask.
So happy 40th birthday Kim. You’ll always be the celebrity who was most respectful to my mum, an older lady that you didn’t know but that you still had time for. I think that’s pretty classy. Babs still doesn’t have a clue who you are but she says that you’re always welcome to pop in for a cup of tea any time. She might even break out the chocolate digestives. High praise indeed.
To read more A-list anecdotes and learn about the process of interviewing celebrities (or in Babs’ case, just having a nice chat with them) click here.
