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.
That Courtney Love was his all-time favourite celebrity, though, the snapper told me as we scrutinised the emerging passengers. She wasn’t fussy about being photographed. Or about which pictures were printed in the magazines either. ‘Tone, that one of yours in Heat was not nice at all,’ he said, taking off her American accent. ‘But that’s just her having her little joke with me,’ he explained. ‘She’s great. Not like that Jude Law,’ he said. ‘There’s someone I can’t stand. If anyone takes a picture of Jude Law, he goes mad,’ he said.
‘Jude Law is a man?’ I said.
‘Correct,’ he said. ‘I took a sneaky one of him last week and he jumped off his electric cart and started yelling at me. Michael Caine was not far behind him. Michael! I said. Michael, that Jude Law has just shouted expletives at me. And Michael says, “I didn’t know Jude Law knew any expletives.” Michael Caine — what a great man.’
Another glut of passengers from LA came through the doors at a fast walk. Not one had so far looked remotely like a supermodel. Without taking his eyes away from the doors, the snapper said, ‘Then I said to Michael, “Michael, what was the name of the first person to be killed in Zulu?” And he said, “Tone, I don’t know.” I said, “His name was Will, Michael. Because during the first Zulu attack the British soldiers were told to ‘fire at will’. Now, not a lot of people know that,” I said. He liked that, did Michael. Made him chuckle.’
It made me chuckle too. I truly love that film — the first I ever saw. I once went to an FA Cup semi-final at Villa Park dressed as Michael Caine in Zulu. I told everyone to fire at the smoke. Talking now to a man who once said ‘fire at will’ to Michael Caine was making me feel a little star-struck.
‘Great man,’ said the snapper, his expert eye roving adroitly over arrivals. ‘But that Courtney Love — she’s my favourite. I’ve seen her come through that door so drunk she can hardly stand up.’
For about two minutes no one came through the door at all, drunk or sober. My attention began to wander. Shutting one eye and squinting along the concourse from one end to the other, I tried and failed to discern the curvature of the earth. ‘Impressive building,’ I said. But turning back I saw that the bags in the hands of the latest arrivals were no longer very LA, and that the snapper had disappeared.
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