Changing The Chanelle

If you’re not an avid Big Brother fan, you’d probably have some difficulty distinguishing Chantelle from Chanelle. They have a lot in common. Their names are similar. Both are blonde. Both fell in love with fellow Big Brother contestants, only for their relationships to turn sour a few months later. And they both model themselves and their looks on other celebrities. Chantelle is a Paris Hilton look-alike (pre-Big Brother, she jobbed as Hilton’s doppelganger, and is cruelly known as 'Paris Travelodge') and Chanelle has managed to groom herself as a wannabe Posh Spice.

Chanelle was in Athlone to officially launch the spanking new Virgin Megastore that’s just been opened there. I had trawled the Internet for titbits of information to help draw up a list of questions – the only problem was that I had the distinct impression that I was going to interview Chantelle, as opposed to Chanelle. I knew that I’d pressed the wrong buttons (on the computer) when, moments before being ushered into a room to meet her, I was told by the PR woman that under no circumstances was I to mention Ziggy!
Ziggy? The cogs were turning slowly. I walked into the room, still somehow expecting to see a Paris Hilton look-alike. Instead I was greeted by a five-foot-nothing blonde wearing gigantic sunglasses. It was a basement office. It suddenly dawned on me that the woman before me was the Big Brother contestant who idolised Victoria Beckham. In fact, Chanelle Hayes (for it was she) had recently made a much-publicised journey to LA in an effort to meet her hero.
Glancing at the list of questions I’d prepared, I realised that my error was no big deal. All I had to do by way of adjustment was to replace the names Ziggy for Preston and Posh Spice for Paris Hilton – and we’d be on our way.
We got the ball rolling by talking about her idol.
“I used to sing with my hairbrush pretending to be Victoria Beckham,” Chanelle explains. “When I went to Los Angeles, people thought I was Victoria. She’s gorgeous. She’s a real good mum. A real good role model – you’ve never seen her out drunk or smoking, have you? She’s never had a drugs exposure story. I don’t think anybody can be perfect, but there’ll definitely never be any smoking, drugs or boozing nights out for me. When I go out, I’ll have a bottle of champagne – but we only have one glass and then we have orange juice. We can have a good time without it. Although, I like a good pint of Guinness when I’m in Ireland.”
Suitably impressed by the royal ‘we’, I ask Chanelle about her imminent plans. There is a new calendar out, featuring a series of photos of her posing in a bikini on the beach. “There is just one photograph for each month and it was done in Barbados to show, like, that it can be sunny all year round and you can have me up in your room,” she says, without a trace of irony.
So, would she pose naked for Playboy?
“No. I don’t think I would. Maybe, if it was from the side and nothing was seen and you would probably think that I had a bikini on. Well, never say never – but I’d have to wait for the right price,” she says, giggling. “Nobody is 100% comfortable (about) walking down the street naked thinking, ‘Oh. My God! Does my bum look big in this naked outfit?’ But let’s just say you won’t see me naked any time soon.”
She is about to launch her own perfume. I point out that she’ll hardly be able to call it Chanelle because of Chanel. Has she got a name for it yet? Chanelle whispers something to her PA before answering.
“I can’t tell you the name yet because it’s a secret,” she reveals. “We had loads and loads of bottles – literally about a hundred – and we had to get it down to, like, ten. I called my best friends and their mums and we all sat down and had champagne and smelled them. Some of them were awful but the one that we finally picked was perfect. You should put it on your Christmas list.”
An excellent suggestion! In fact, overall, the Chanelle brand is expanding nicely: she will also be part of a judging panel in a new music TV show, which she describes as ‘an X-Factor type of programme’. “But we are not allowed to say that,” she points out. The show is going to be called Wannabe, taking its name from the Spice Girls’ debut single. “We are auditioning only over-25s – because, that way, it is like their last chance at being a pop star. We get them all auditioning right around the UK and then we’ll get them into a kind of boot camp thing in London. They’ll have to do certain challenges…”
She stops and, covering her mouth, whispers something to her PA, before returning to her answer. “Am I allowed to say this? They are all living in a house together. And then a lot of different things will be thrown at them to see if they can handle it. It’s going to be great – I can’t wait. It’ll be on VH1.”
An accomplished musician, she still harbours ambitions to be a pop star. “But we won’t ever release a song without it being the perfect song,” Chanelle explains. She has already turned down several offers to record a single this year.
On the morning of the interview, the tabloids were full of stories about her having a lovers’ tiff with her soon-to-be-ex, Ziggy. Telling a journalist not to ask a particular question is akin to waving a red rag at a bull.
The papers are saying that you and Ziggy are on the verge of breaking up?
“Pardon?” she says, doing a convincing impersonation of someone who is deeply affronted. But this time, she doesn’t consult her PA. “Oh, no! Everything is fine,” she says. “I had a message from my best friend this morning saying, ‘Is it true what’s in the papers?’ I don’t know – I haven’t seen it – but I’m going to have to see what it says.”
So everything is fine with Ziggy?
“Everything is fine,” she says coyly. “Most things that get put in the papers are untrue anyway. There is so much stuff that gets thrown at you – stuff that you didn’t even imagine could be possible – and you are like, ‘That’s ridiculous’. The first time I read something untrue I thought, ‘Oh, my God! That is so untrue. I want to cry my eyes out’. I was, like, ‘Mum, what’s this?’ But you just learn to deal with it. You can have a good laugh at a lot of this stuff.”
The next day Chanelle reportedly dumped her boyfriend. A week later, she poured her heart out to a women’s magazine. Damn! Hot Press missed out on a scoop. Why, we’ll never live it down...