Inside Meg Mathews’ Pop Box The Peter Jarrette Interview

Inside Meg Mathews’ Pop Box 

  

The Peter Jarrette Interview

Animal rights activist Meg Mathews. Picture: Caroline True

The first thing that you detect on entering Meg Mathews’ “Pop Box”, her playful name for her slick condominium style Primrose Hill home, is the gentle, sweet scent of French Vanilla candles from Yankee Candle & Accessories.  Indeed, this A-list rock ‘n’ roll socialite, ex-wife of Oasis’ Noel Gallagher, is all about a welcoming ambience in everything she does.  The second and third thing to greet you is the excited Oscar, her Boston terrier, and her more laid back but equally friendly Pug, Pugalicious. 

Both Meg and I have arrived to Pop Box on foot after a short walking tour of Englands Lane, her local high street in London’s upmarket Regents Park area.  We’ve just left Macs Hair Salons where she popped in for an early morning cut and blow dry as she is going to be posing for Absolute’s Graham Franks.  

During our brisk walk Meg points out the health food shop she visits from time to time, the intimate cafes and bijoux restaurants dotting the street that she knows as well as the back of her hand.  “I’m a walk about kind of person,” she states. 

“On mornings like these I can move faster on my feet.”  Around the leafy enclave every street is snarled with early morning traffic. “I’m embracing being green too. I’m actually downsizing from my Toyota 4x4 to a Toyota iQ.”  However she goes on to add, “The 4x4 still will come in handy for trips with Anais back and forth to her country boarding school. There’s also all her sporting equipment to bundle in and out too and her riding gear. She keeps a pony that she’s named Megastar. ” Anais, born in 2000, is Meg’s daughter with Noel and her only child. An adorable blonde with a confidently outgoing nature she has just begun boarding school and according to her mum, “she loves it!”

IMAGE: GRAHAM FRANKS

Meg Mathews is an interesting contradiction. This is the woman whose little black book is full to bursting with the names of more super famous friends than you can shake a stick at. “I was born in Guernsey, an English Channel island, and moved to South Africa with my family when I was eight.” Financially solvent now she says, “My parents weren’t rich. In fact they economised to make sure I went to good schools but I never excelled academically due in part to the difficulties in studying brought on by dyslexia.” She was however a firebrand at sports and captained several sports teams, which assured her popularity with her peers and honed her amazing people skills which serve her well to this day.  The contradictions in Meg are more to do with her life than her person. As a person she is consistent. She is friendly, communicative, engaged with the interests of those around her and of her friends and family she is loyal and supportive.  However the girl with dyslexia returned to the UK, lived in a Brixton squat and eventually, after a series of fashion related sales jobs, debuted on the major music scene as the manager of 80’s pop star Betty Boo. 

“I had dyslexia, yes,” she laughs, “but now there I was, in little or no time, managing the multi award winning pop act of the year...and I was tone deaf!”  In the years that followed Meg founded Flavour Music and managed many more acts. She was a guest of honour in 1997 alongside her now ex-husband and the top UK’s Britpop stars at the then newly elected Prime Minister Tony Blair’s Music Industry Reception at No. 10 Downing Street.  En route to these giddying heights Meg remembers cementing her relationship with her ex in Brighton where Oasis was gigging. She had joined the tour bus entourage. Having only brought a capsule wardrobe onboard, Noel caught her ironing an already worn shirt. He penned the “The Girl with the Dirty Shirt” there and then about her.

Meg Mathews the self made, moneyed, style-setter  who knows everybody, has everything and what she doesn’t have she’ll create herself, like her MM range of must have wallpapers and men’s and ladies scarves.  Today as we enter her Pop Box to be met by Oscar and Pugalicious, Meg is wearing dark Top Shop jeans, black Zara coat, black All Saints boots, a Louis Vuitton scarf and carrying a roomy Alexandra Wang bag. 

“One or two labels mixed with your everyday High Street do the job nicely,” she assures me.  Her chic sunglasses? “A stall in Camden Market!”     

Pop Box is buzzing with activity. An actress friend dashes up the spiral staircase. It’s Sarah Barrand, known to UK telly fans as Shannon from Footballer’s Wives. Meg’s mate has recently finished filming the motion picture The Kid by director Nick Moran and she’s also been appointed Ambassador for the Well Child Charity. Sarah is round for a lunch and offers to pop out to nearby Primrose Hill Park to walk Oscar and Pugalicious as Meg tours me around Pop Box.  In the kitchen Meg’s chef, Sean Paul, is creating Meg’s afternoon and evening meals. A housekeeper is busying herself, the phone is ringing and deliveries arrive at the door.  Still, amongst all the commotion there is that welcoming French Vanilla scent, large, sun-filled rooms and on the walls in the dining area and lounge is Meg’s trademark wallpaper. This pattern; a vibrant pink, faux snake skin with a scant hint of metallic bounces a tropical glow into the rooms. There is a variety of wallpapers arranged across the two floors of Pop Box.  

The Meg Mathews range of wall coverings debuted in May 2010 and is exclusive to Liberty of London. Known for their luxury goods and accessories, it is one of the most prestigious department stores in the city.  She is Liberty’s “golden girl” as she is given unprecedented support by Ed Burstell, Alexander Stylianidis, two of Liberty’s top buyers, and Lee Whittle; Head of Ladies Wear as well as  Liberty’s Style Service, the suite for clients using Liberty’s personal shopping service that is itself decorated in MM Wallpaper. Lee also works as Meg’s stylist and consultant on trends and colours each season for her scarf range.  

“I entrust Lee as my personal shopper with the majority of my Christmas gift list. I cannot say enough about his wonderful assistance and I recommend him and Liberty’s Style Service highly.” Already Meg has been lavished with two of Liberty’s much sought after windows displaying her MM range of papers and scarves. MM pieces were displayed in an in-house exhibition entitled “Prints Charming” and she’s been given access to Liberty’s print archives and asked to incorporate her design edge to long standing and traditional Liberty brand print designs.

 This new design chapter came about in a serendipitous way for Meg.  Hello Magazine had done a piece on Meg at home, which showed the wallpaper she had produced privately for herself.  “Victoria Beckham clocked the designs and one day and as I was walking down Bond Street  I received a call on my trusty white Blackberry directly from Posh asking if I would consider decorating one of the Beckham homes in my designs.” she shares and then corrects herself, chuckling, “She actually asked me to ‘please’ come and do her home. I was so flattered. Thank god for good reception. Vodafone y’know.” she winks.    

Since May 2010 Meg has worked in the same way on the homes of TV presenter Myleen Klass, Big Brother UK host and Sussex resident Davina MaCall, fashion designer Julien Macdonald, Rolling Stone Ronnie Wood’s ex-wife Jo Wood and UK Boxing Champion Ricky Hatton.  Meg’s lighter than air silk scarves bearing Russian nesting doll motifs and rock ‘n’ roll skull motifs are proving to be equally as popular.

“Right now this one is my favourite colourways,” Meg claims of the colours of the faux snakeskin wallpaper in her downstairs rooms.

  “The faint glow of the pink reminds me of that surrounding feeling of wellbeing you get in warm climes.” In her sumptuous boudoir her bed is populated with plush pillows and cushions and her walls are a soft coral, faux snake skin. The guest room walls have deceptive, grey and black skull wallpaper that read as a floral from a distance.  Skulls are a pet object for her and reappear around Pop Box. A hold over from her darker, more gothic mansion she shared with Noel. In a bathroom there are two life size skulls, side by side, covered in tiny crystals. Anais’ room is like any other young girl’s with bright, playful colours and girlie touches like a mini montage picture shrine to the cast of Twilight. Unlike most little girls though she has a big, personalised, hand signed picture of mum’s friend, Madonna and across from it an even bigger one,  personally dedicated to her from the meteorically popular  Taylor Swift.  

Like her mum, Anais certainly knows her way around the A-list set on both sides of the Atlantic. The walls around Pop Box that haven’t had the MM treatment are hung with photo prints, small paintings and she stops to caress one large piece. “This one I’m absolutely in love with.” It’s a pop-art composition of a picture of her and Anais given to her by her parents. “It was a Christmas gift and my folks had it produced at Snappy Snaps.”         

Meg Mathews has led a bustling and opulent lifestyle for  almost two decades. Her good friendships with super models, music industry giants, film directors, actors, writers, political figures and media greats have given her a rich seam of stories that would easily make exciting reading or in fact a very watchable film. “I’m not ready to publish any sort of memoir, yet,” she says directly when asked of the possibility. 

 “I’m still creating and experiencing. It’s like my MM design company. Suddenly it was there. It’s like a lot of what I do, have done. Nothing is planned. It all just evolves from one experience to another. In the case of MM its direction is open ended. I may take things in yet another direction design wise but who knows. Life’s far too short to try and define things...or do just one thing. I believe it’s alright to sometimes chop and change. Why can’t you try a bit of everything?”  

Meg has definitely tried a lot of everything in her day and talks quite openly of the excesses of a rock royalty lifestyle.  “The drink, the drugs,” she states, “They come with the turf and still do for many. I regret nothing as time always affords you the chance to change, grow, to turn your life around.  That’s if you want to. If you are going to experience something I always feel that you should jump in with both feet.  Others will always think what they will but that’s their prerogative, their life. The trick is not to hurt anybody along the way. If you hurt yourself you can recover...like I believe, time will let you.”  

Meg has had the time(s) of her younger life travelling the globe with the likes of her friends Kate Moss and co. She’s partied with Naomi. She’s been a long term guest of the global glitterati. She adores her memories of the warm hospitality of Chris Blackwell’s home in Jamaica at Island Records.  She has riotous recollections of island hopping with Kate and Kate’s ex-partner , actor Johnny Depp when Meg was still married to Noel.  After a three month, rum punch fuelled stay on Mustique where Noel recorded “What’s The Story (Morning Glory)”  they hired a private plane on the spur of the moment to fly to any island that sold KFC to satisfy Noel’s craving. 

They ended up in St. Vincent where she said “We toured the most amazing botanical gardens I have ever, ever seen.”

 Meg has criss-crossed the world many times and still does, especially with Anais. ”Fortunately for us both I can manage to do this and it’s my thinking that travel augments her conventional education, ultimately providing her with an overview and a broader understanding of her cultural circumstance and those of other countries.” For Meg islands of the Caribbean have always been a favourite on her world routing. From Barbados’ renowned Sandy Lane Hotel to private rentals of some of the region’s most desirable holiday beach homes, Meg, her covergirl girlfriends and their coveted boyfriends have relaxed in them all. “We’ve been pampered beyond belief at Jamaica’s Strawberry Hill.” The elite spa comprised of 11 Georgian style cottages nestled in the island’s Blue Mountains has seen many high calibre guests. “There’s something madly exotic about the place. You’re only an hour’s or so drive from the sweltering heat of the coast yet you’re snuggled up under their massive duvets in their fabulous wooden beds surrounded by the cool, cool, lushness of the mountains. I’ve also made repeat trips to Goldeneye.”  

Strawberry Hill, Jamaica

Goldeneye, Jamaica

Goldeneye is yet another exclusive, stylish Jamaican resort. Centred on Ian Fleming’s old island home in Oracabessa, just east of Ocho Rios, it is a collection of small private villas. “It’s got a really chill feeling. There’s this wonderful cliffside dining room and a suave bar just above your own private beach. It’s a tropical heaven. But you know, contrary to what some may believe I can’t always get away for my R&R. Work does come first....but!” Meg smiles, “We’ve always got Brighton!” Ever since she was a youngster she’s been visiting Sussex, The Downs, the seaside and the city proper. “I’ve raced up and down The Palace Pier in my day. I remember being fascinated by the Museum of Stuffed Animals in Hove.

I would visit it with my mum and my Auntie Dorothy religiously. I would always ask to go when I knew we were coming to Brighton. I was enchanted by it...still am in my memories. I would stare at the Gambling Rats display for what seemed like hours. Anais is a history buff and she’s fascinated with the stories of the Prince Regent and the goings on at the Royal Pavilion. ” Meg has friends living nearby and of course she is good mates with Norman Cook and Zoe Ball whom “she loves dearly.” 

 We also share a fondness for another resident, Geraldine Davies, the UK boxing PR who introduced Meg to her client Ricky Hatton. “Thing I love about motoring down to Brighton is that there is always something new to see. A new club or bar like the Merkerba Bar in MyHotel and the wonderful restaurants are growing in numbers too. There’s MetroDeco the 30’s Parisian style cafe in Kemptown and I hear great things of The Connaught Pub and Kitchen, Dyke Tavern and Cote...all of which I plan to hopefully visit soon.  I’ve got Absolute Brighton as my go-to-guide for suggestions. Speaking of which, a friend of mine has just seen a copy at Ralph Lauren’s HQ in New York...very nice,” she coos.

As the decade draws to a close Meg Mathews is as busy as ever. She hosted a variety of radio shows and continued to be a product spokesperson and spokesmodel.  Her commodity rose even further when she appeared on the BBC TV documentary Famous, Rich and Jobless in which she swapped a life of extravagance to live on the dole.  In addition to her demanding work with MM designs she is very active with a variety of animal welfare campaigns and charities. 

It was at Stanmer House in September where Meg, Anais, Oscar and I met as Meg and I judged at a dog show for TV Vet Marc Abraham’s Pup Aid Charity against the cruelty of puppy farming, one of her dear charities. She lends her formidable social might to the International Primate Protection League and their “Save the Gibbon” campaign. 

MEG MATTHEWS AND PETER JARRETTE CELEB JUDGES @ PUPAID 

IMAGE: MELISSA BUCHANAN

She’s co-designed a T-shirt with designer Rory Dobner to raises the awareness of the often overlooked gibbon. This T-shirt is adorned with a fashion gibbon decked out in Ray Bans and Chanel accessories and the story goes there is a tribe of these naughty Artful Dodger characters living at the top of London’s Bond Street streetlights that descend on well-heeled fashionistas and swipe their designer gear. Meg and Anais both support The Brooke Charity helping workhorses, donkeys and mules.       

Back at Pop Box Meg describes a typical day. Although she is well into her 40’s her energy levels are high. A morning person; she’s up at 6:30. 5 mornings a week she’s down to her gym, Spring Health, for a cardio vascular workout, 3 mornings she works out with her personal trainer at Spring Health, Ben Cook.  By nine she’s back to Pop Box, walked Oscar and Pugalicious, showered, had her energy drink and she’s ready to go. 

Her days are PR meetings; interviews; photo shoots; liaising by phone with her MM factory in Macclesfield and pouring over ideas for further ranges of product. She’ll break for lunch, often with a friend and then it’s a round of the shops and designer boutiques but always with an eye for trend seeking, sourcing upcoming colours and textures.  Back at Pop box it’s more work on the phone and the laptop with clients and colleagues. When she lunches at home, as she does today, her chef Sean Paul sees to it that Meg has a meal to reflect where she is in her training and energy levels. Sean Paul, who has cooked for many celebs including Sir Paul McCartney, recently worked with Heather Mills as a consultant at her Brighton vegan cafe V-bites establishing her kitchens and menus.

 Sean Paul tells me that he is re-introducing protein to Meg’s diet as her workouts and workload continue to become more demanding. Initially to drop pounds she was protein free.

Her morning energy drinks will be energy rich Hippy Hippy Shakes; juices containing spirolina, dried bee pollen as a sugar substitute and a variety of powder supplements.

For mid-morning elevenses he creates smoothies with carrot, beet root, courgette, cucumber, ginger and seasonal fruit to sweeten, like apples.  She is also fond of his spinach, kale, alfalfa, blueberry, mango, plum and mineral water blend.

For lunch Sean Paul will produce perhaps a crunchy Asian salad with sprouting broccoli, green beans, courgette, cucumber, carrots, balsamic and soya dressing with Japanese seaweed, sesame seeds and the dried Japanese condiment , furikake, for a piquant taste, topped with grilled salmon.

 For her late meal Sean Paul will serve something like a puy lentil salad with cherry tomatoes, red and green veg, carrots, basil and yellow pepper.  This might be topped with grilled fish, turkey or chicken. Meg always keeps fruit salads and brown rice which she’ll top herself with soy dressing for between meal snacks. 

“Ever so occasionally,” she says, “I’ll have a piece of red meat when I have a Sunday roast with Anais.” Sean Paul adds. “If you crave it, have it and get over it. If you resist eventually you’ll break down and binge.”   Meg’s regime is working for her as she radiates happiness and good health. She looks splendid and bright-eyed, her hair shiny and thick. Her figure is fit and she happily lifts her T-shirt to pat her tanned, toned and flat tummy.  Meg’s beauty regime is paired down and easy. Her two cornerstone brands are Sisley and Elemental Herbology whose masks and washes Meg enthuses about. “No fuss and all the benefits.” Her hair is looked after by Kerastase L’Oreal.  Her fake bake for the winter months is simply Johnsons Holiday Skin.  To get her even glow and maintain her flawless youthful complexion she uses Laura Mercier Cosmetics. Her signature perfume is Santa Maria Novella’s 'Garafano' with its gentle carnation notes.

At night time in Pop box, when Meg is not required elsewhere in London’s shiny nightlights, she relaxes with the box sets of US shows like Mad Men.  On nights when Anais is back from boarding school they cuddle up like best friends and watch movies. Meg still is into her music and currently she’s listening to David Geta and now to a new soon-to-be signed London band Panning For Gold.  Our rock and roll chick is up to her bedroom in Pop Box by 10pm these days where she’ll drift off after another full and productive day with the lingering scent of autumnal bark, smoky musk and Russian leather of a John Galliano candle.  Of the Meg Mathews today she says easily, “I love life...all of my life.”  And of the Meg Mathews of time gone by? “Maybe I loved life too much.”           

    

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Archived interview appearing in CaribbeanBELLE Magazine and the defunct Absolute Brighton Magazine.

PETER JARRETTE & MEG MATTHEWS

     IMAGE: DIANA FRANGI

PETER JARRETTE IS AN ARTIST AND INTERNATIONALLY PUBLISHED AUTHOR OF SEVERAL FICTION, NON-FICTION AND MEMOIR ADULT TITLES AND CHILDREN'S BOOKS. HE IS A COLUMNIST AND CELEBRITY INTERVIEWER.