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Saturday 30 August 2008

Looking for Kate

Jeremy Clarke on his Low Life

Kate Moss was due to walk out of the door and into the arrivals lounge at Terminal 5 at any moment, the photographer said. He was ready with his camera and scanning the emerging passengers with a practised eye. He could tell that these people coming out now were just off the LA flight, he said. Kate Moss should be among them. How could he tell they had come from LA? I said. Easy, he said. Look at all the designer suitcases.

I decided to hang around and see what Kate looks like in real life. I like Kate Moss. Not that I know her, of course. But I take an interest in her because she strikes me as being singularly unaffected by fame and fortune. Being a supermodel has remained incidental for her, I get the impression. It hasn’t changed her. She’ll have a laugh with anyone and doesn’t care what other people think.

A Kate Mosse presents the BBC Radio Four programme A Good Read. For two weeks I listened attentively to this programme in the mistaken belief that this cultured, articulate woman was the Kate Moss. Goodness me, I thought, now there’s a supermodel who wears her learning lightly. An error of this proportion gives you some idea of just how credulous I am. Also of how highly I esteem the woman.

I stood next to the snapper on the concourse and watched the latest arrivals coming out. Terminal 5 at Heathrow is vast. It must be quite a trek from the baggage pick-up hall, because some of the passengers burst through the double doors into the arrivals lounge as if they were finishing strongly in a long-distance walking race.

The ones who had read in the papers about the chaos and the queues at Terminal 5 may have been expecting the worst. But contrary to the media reports of unbelievable chaos during the past fortnight, Terminal 5 was today as peaceful and orderly as a Japanese Zen garden. It was almost as deserted, too, given the size of the building relative to the few people in it. For example, there were as many temporary employees wearing T-shirts saying ‘Can I help?’ standing idly around as there were travellers.

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