My Fight to the Top

by Michelle Mone

  My life changed overnight: four McDonald’s a day – stopped. Twelve packets of crisps – stopped. Fifteen cans of Irn Bru – stopped. And I tell you what, I’ve never had a sip of Irn Bru or Coke since I left Jan’s house that day. I remembered what my Gran told me: ‘The taste of it will send you back.’ Gran wouldn’t even touch the trifle at Christmas because she was afraid the small amount of booze in the recipe would turn her into an alcoholic again.

  I had an addiction – to junk food – and I knew that if I were to taste it again my life, in terms of my diet, would be over. I swear, as long as I live, I won’t drink full-fat Coke or full-fat Irn Bru again. Fizzy drinks ruined my life. Well, I ruined my life, by indulging in food and fizzy drinks and all the rest of it.

  I didn’t stop eating but I ate less because the remedies stopped me from feeling hungry. Jan’s formula rebooted my metabolism and the weight started to come off – 3 lbs every week. I drove down to Troon every week to see him and I let him know how much I was struggling. My body was so used to me feeding it crap that I think it went into shock at first. I was very tired and lethargic for a few weeks until the remedies kicked in and then I started to feel incredible.

  I also thought, This is a business opportunity. This is actually making me lose weight. I need to turn this into something. I’d been losing weight for four months when I gave Jan the chat: ‘Jan, would you like to go into business with me?’

  ‘Doing what, my darling?’ he said.

  ‘Could you put your herbal remedy into a capsule?’

  ‘Yes, of course you can.’ He nodded.

  I got straight to the point. ‘Can we do a business together where it’s 50–50?’ I thought with my marketing skills, my weight-loss story and Jan’s expertise, we could do well together. ‘I think there are a lot of people out there who need this remedy. We need to launch this – because it actually works,’ I said. I’m always being asked to get involved with businesses and products but I only invest in things I can believe in. I do try everything myself but I usually end up saying, ‘No, you’re conning people.’ I don’t mince my words.

  ‘Well, let’s give it a go, my darling,’ he said.

  I drove home and told Michael the good news. ‘I’m starting up a business with Jan,’ I announced.

  ‘What do you mean you’re starting up a business? What are you talking about?’ he grumbled. But Michael got involved not long after. He took over the sourcing and the manufacturing side. We eventually launched TrimSecrets in July 2007.

  I’d lost almost three stone at this point and Michael had barely said a word about it. I don’t think I believed what the scales were telling me. I was so used to seeing a fat me in the reflection that I couldn’t see past that image. I remember one typical morning waking up and avoiding looking in the wardrobe mirror as usual. I put on my outfit for the day – a baggy blouse and some loose-fitting black trousers. I met my mum in town and we walked down Buchanan Street in Glasgow where I stopped outside the window of Karen Millen. I always desperately wanted to go in but they didn’t do my size. There was a really nice pair of fitted jeans on display.

  ‘Let’s go in and try them,’ Mum encouraged.

  ‘I can’t, I can’t, I can’t.’ I backed away from the entrance. I had so little self-confidence. ‘There is no way I will fit into them,’ I said, defeated.

  ‘Let’s just have a try,’ Mum said. She hooked her arm through mine and led me inside. I felt more nervous going into a high-street clothes shop than standing up in front of thousands of people to do a motivational speech.

  I took the jeans into the changing room and my mum came in with me. I couldn’t believe I got them on and they fastened too. ‘Oh, my god,’ I squealed. ‘I’m shopping in Karen Millen and I’m wearing a size 16.’ I shook my head with disbelief.

  ‘Well done, good for you,’ Mum said. She had a tear in her eye. I started crying then too. The shop assistant must have wondered what the hell was going on.

  I’ll never forget that day because it was the start of my transformation. I developed a style. I stopped shopping in the area for big people in department stores and started shopping in places that suited my own style. I always had a really good eye for design and fabric quality but I’d been too big to do anything about it until now.

  I started splashing out on designer clothes. I started to feel good and my confidence grew and grew. Michael noticed the change in me, mainly because I was finally sticking up for myself. When Michael shouted at me in front of the staff, I shouted back. ‘Don’t speak to me like that,’ I told him. I wasn’t going to be humiliated any longer.

  We were in a room with our board directors and he shouted at me, telling me I didn’t know what I was talking about.

  Yes I bloody did. ‘And you know what you’re talking about do you?’ I snapped. I used to absolutely hammer him back.

  I felt like a new woman by the time I met Bill Clinton again. I suppose I was, in some ways, hoping he might not recognise me after our last run-in! I was invited to speak at a very special event in London alongside some of the world’s most influential leaders. There were 2,000 people and it was being shown live on CNN. I was standing backstage, waiting for my turn, when I felt that familiar feeling of nausea. Oh, my god, oh, my god, it’s coming.

  Mikhail Gorbachev was leaving the stage. He was a tiny wee man, I noticed. And I couldn’t stop the inevitable. The sick splashed on his shoes. What are you doing? The organisers stared at me in disbelief. Gorbachev was horrified. I wanted to die. I had to quickly wipe the saliva and sick off my face because they called my name. So much for leaving a good impression on another world leader! But I went on stage and still managed to give the speech of my life.

  17

  TOO BIG FOR THEIR BOOTS

  People who are meant to be together find their way back; they may take a few detours but they’re never lost.

  ‘She’s Mariah, you have to wait,’ Mariah Carey’s manager reasoned. I had been looking for a new cover girl to keep the brand fresh and among the names was the famous singer. Again, I was thinking big and the meeting with Mariah Carey was quite something. It probably will go down as one of my most unusual experiences.

  I walked into the Sanderson hotel in London to find they had turned her suite into a swimming pool. What the hell is going on here? I thought. It was a proper swimming pool, a massive blow-up one filled with water. She was making a music video in it.

  I arrived there at about 6 pm to talk to her about being the next face of Ultimo. It got to 2 am and she still hadn’t seen me. I needed matchsticks to keep my eyes open. I signalled to her manager that I had had more than enough. ‘Come on, mate, I can’t be waiting here any longer,’ I grumbled.

  He looked at me like I was speaking a foreign language. ‘She’s Mariah, you have to wait,’ he said. He looked over his shoulder to see what the hold-up was. ‘She’s having her eyebrows done at the moment. Won’t be long,’ he explained.

  Another hour passed. I’ve waited for so long now, I thought, I might as well see it through.

  ‘I want a Chinese,’ I heard her ask her staff.

  ‘Mariah, everywhere is shut,’ explained one of her entourage. They came back with a Chinese within 45 minutes though. God only knows where they got it from.

  It was 4 am by the time I eventually got to see her. We were chatting when she suddenly stood up and took her dressing gown off. She was naked except for two butterfly stickers over her nipples. ‘What do you think of my body?’ She smiled.

  God. It’s like five in the morning, I can’t deal with this. ‘Yeah, your body is amazing. I actually need to go home now,’ I said. I left pretty sharpish. She was a potential as a face for the brand, but then I thought she was a bit too much.

  We did a one-off shoot with supermodel Helena Christensen, but I didn’t feel there was quite enough personality there. Blonde models have been much better for sales than dark-haired girls such as her. I’m not sure why that is though.

  In
November 2006 we signed Girls Aloud singer Sarah Harding. I chose her because I thought she was fun, I thought she was great for the brand and I loved her songs. She was like the black sheep in Girls Aloud and I liked the way she stood out. But when we started working together it quickly became apparent that she was extremely insecure. Probably the most insecure of all the models I’ve worked with. She didn’t have any confidence which is surprising because she looked stunning in her photos. She was in tears before every shoot. ‘I don’t like my hair that way’ or ‘I don’t like my makeup that way.’

  You could tell she was going down a dangerous emotional road. I could spot it a mile away. She was like a rabbit caught in headlights. I felt sorry for her lost wee soul. I comforted her a lot – almost like a sister, I suppose. I even invited her to stay in my house so I could look after her.

  I remember telling her off, like a big sister would, on the way to a shoot. We were in upper class to Miami with the hair and make-up team behind in economy. The make-up artist appeared next to us. ‘Sarah, can I get you a duvet, darling? Can I get you a pillow?’ she said. ‘What can I do? Can I tuck you in?’ Am I really hearing this?

  Sarah turned and smiled, ‘Yes, could you tuck me in.’

  I didn’t have time for this. I stood up and told them off. ‘What the fuck? I’ve never heard anything like this in my entire life – you coming here to tuck Sarah in,’ I scolded. ‘This is lunacy. You,’ I said, pointing to Sarah, ‘you shouldn’t be behaving this way.’ I turned to the make-up girl. ‘And you… you get back to your seat.’ Sarah looked at me like a wee kid. But that was the relationship we had developed. I looked out for her. I was like her sister, her mentor.

  It’s funny. I think the people around celebrities are to blame for spoiling them when they should be telling them to behave themselves. Apart from a few celebrities, like Rachel Hunter and Michael Bublé’s wife, Luisana, most celebs are like kids. My daughter Rebecca hates the celebrity world. So much so that she didn’t care for the idea of Sarah Harding staying in our house.

  ‘Can Sarah have your bedroom?’ I asked. Rebecca was 14 at the time and all the wee girls her age were into Girls Aloud. We even had a load of teenagers outside our house screaming when they discovered Sarah was staying with me.

  But Rebecca wasn’t having any of it. ‘No chance,’ she said. ‘That’s my bedroom and she’s not staying in it.’ And she crossed her arms. She doesn’t give a damn about celebrities. I think that’s probably because she’s seen a lot of drama with the press and me. I ended up putting Sarah in our spare room in the end.

  I guess I understood what Sarah Harding was going through because I too suffered from a serious lack of confidence; although that was changing, week-by-week, with every pound I was losing in weight. I was now not just changing my clothes but also my hair and make-up. I was rebranding myself. I was starting to spend money on myself.

  I got French manicured acrylic nails. I put on fake tan. I threw all my make-up in the bin and started again. I received some tips from the make-up artists I’d used on my shoots and then I went to House of Fraser in Glasgow and bought bagfuls of new lipsticks, glosses, eye-shadows and mascara. Rachel Hunter even gave me some tips, like how to blend eye-shadow. I had a blow-dry several times a week. The only time I’d had a blow-dry until now was if I was going to a dinner-dance. Now I was getting them done just to go into work and I felt amazing for it. I believed that to be a success, you have to look successful at all times.

  I was really changing and Michael hated it. He ripped into me for ‘looking fake’.

  ‘You look like Jordan,’ he said. ‘Fake Jordan.’

  ‘Why am I “fake Jordan”, Michael?’ I replied, sticking up for myself. ‘Your friends’ wives have blow-dries like me.’

  ‘No, they don’t.’ he said. ‘They do their own hair.’

  ‘No, they don’t,’ I said.

  I was growing so much in confidence that I decided to appear in the Ultimo brochure alongside Sarah Harding. Under my picture was a message welcoming readers to the Ultimo range. For the first time in years I didn’t want to turn away when I looked in the mirror. ‘You actually look okay,’ I said to myself. I’d always had attention from men before but I used to laugh it off, thinking they must be joking. I never believed they could be chatting me up. Now I believed it because I believed in myself.

  I suppose, if I’m honest, I also thought that if I lost the weight Michael would start to be a husband again. But when that didn’t happen I filled the void with material things. We were earning lots of money, big money. Ultimo was probably worth multi-millions at this point. I started splashing cash like it was going out of fashion. Jewellery, flash cars, designer shoes and designer dresses. I had a new office built from scratch in East Kilbride. It was massive: the two storeys had glass panels throughout. I designed it in the shape of a breast. I couldn’t stop. What next? It was always ‘What next?’

  I designed a house for us – my dream home. I’d grown up watching Dynasty and Dallas, telling my mum and dad that one day I’d have the mansion with the sweeping staircase. I chose the most expensive postcode in the whole of Scotland – Thorntonhall, an exclusive village in the countryside of the outskirts of Glasgow. The houses would be worth £80 million if they were in London. It was millionaires’ row. Thortonhall was the dream destination for all our friends. I had thought, Give me a few years and we will get there – and we did.

  Stretch, stretch, stretch.

  It was on my list of things I wanted to achieve and, tick, I did it. We’d gone from a two-bedroom flat in Shawlands, to a conversion in Mansfield, a house in Newton Mearns and now this – the ultimate. I designed a grand, sweeping staircase to be made out of walnut wood. The builder had a complete nightmare but I wanted it badly so I pushed and pushed. I also designed a walk-in wardrobe – another item I’d seen on Dynasty. All my shoes could be lined up. I wanted lingerie drawers for all my bras and inventions to be neatly displayed in rows just like in a shop.

  In total, the house featured six bedrooms, a bar, a TV room, a cinema with reclining leather chairs, a lounge, a dining room and a 30-ft family room. There was even a nightclub out the back. You couldn’t have got any bloody bigger. I designed the interior to look like that five-star suite from the Dorchester hotel that Tom Hunter had put us up in on the night before our launch in Selfridges. That night was just magnificent. I really felt that the Dorchester represented a life that I wanted, a life that was amazing, a life that was a fairy-tale. Every piece of furniture was made for the house by Dorchester suppliers at a cost of around £600,000. The master bedroom had a 7-ft bed with a padded headboard, Romano lamps on both side tables and a Sonos sound system.

  The house was perfect. I named it Telperion, after a tree in Tolkien’s Lord of the Rings. I thought that was my path to happiness – the more things you have, the happier you become.

  I couldn’t have been more wrong.

  18

  DIVA BEHAVIOUR

  The strongest people are not those who show strength in front of us, but those who win battles we know nothing about.

  ‘Too much salt, start again,’ I barked at the caterers. I was hosting a massive party for 200 friends and family in our new house and it had to be perfect. Everything always had to be perfect. Don’t give me all right. I don’t do all right. Give me fucking brilliant or don’t give me anything. I wanted people to leave saying the food was incredible and that it was the best party they had ever been to. ‘Why has this not been set up yet?’ I shouted at the guys putting the marquee together in the garden. I was turning into a real monster – a diva.

  It wasn’t just the party. Nothing was ever good enough. The hotels I was staying in weren’t good enough and the restaurants I was dining in weren’t good enough. I once asked to change rooms at the Dorchester because I didn’t like the way it was decorated. I found fault in everything. In the same way, I bought more things because I thought they would make me happier. I’d got rid of my addiction to
junk food and replaced it with an addiction to buying things – very expensive things.

  We had five cars in the driveway at one point, including an Aston Martin DB9 and a chauffeur-driven Bentley Arnage to take me to events. To be fair though, Michael was also very materialistic. He loved the cars – they were like his babies. If I even so much as scratched a wheel he would go ballistic.

  Alongside the vehicles I owned 100 pairs of Louboutins and my dresses were £4k a pop. One of the most expensive things I bought was a custom-designed Rolex with diamonds. And even then I found fault – it was a vicious circle – with the watch, ‘No, those aren’t enough diamonds, send the watch back,’ I ordered. I didn’t go off the things I bought, I would just think, What’s next? The same way I did in business. I thought I had to have all these things to demonstrate my success as a high-profile person. I suppose footballers are the same – they often come from a working class background and suddenly make a huge amount of money.

  It first dawned on me that I was turning into an diva one day when my driver took me into town so I could do a bit of shopping. He opened the door for me, and instead of saying thank you, I said: ‘You’ve not parked in those lines straight.’ I pointed at the painted parking space. He just looked at me in disbelief. I think he was thinking, You are a witch. I’m surprised he didn’t tell me to stick my job up my arse. I stared at him, and he stared at me. Did I just say that? I thought.

  Yeah, it’s fair to say, I went a bit off the rails in our new house. I used to always dream about having these amazing things, and now I had become like, ‘Yeah, so what.’ I didn’t appreciate what I had and nothing was ever good enough because I was really unhappy. I was in an unhappy relationship and I was buying all these things because I thought it would numb the pain but it didn’t.