Young Fogles

‘KINVARA Balfour is an aristocratic rebel. In the olden days, this normally involved raising an army and picking a fight with the King (or, failing that, another member of the aristocracy), preferably over religion.

Skye: where people go mad

These days, it involves ”baring almost all for a men’s magazine”, being shortlisted for Big Brother, doing a pilot for ”a dreadful TV dating show” and being invited to appear on Blind Date. And Kinvara – daughter of Lady Tessa Fitzalan-Howard (sister of the Duke of Norfolk) and Roddy Balfour (heir apparent to the Earl of Balfour) – has done the lot.

But it is not that, her old career as a freelance (read unemployed) journalist or her new career as an up-and-coming (read unemployed) actress that Hello! is interested in. It is her boyfriend, Castaway heartthrob Oliver Reed. Sorry, wrong Castaway. Actually, Kinvara is dating Ben Fogle, he of the Arran jumpers, Labrador dog and ‘Why can’t you go out with a boy like that, darling?’ manner.

Not just dating, she is in love and has been ever since their first date at 192 in Notting Hill. ”We sat down at 8pm and at 2am the waitress came to say ‘Sorry, it’s time to close’,” she tells Hello! ”We’ve been together ever since.” So how did Ben feel about Kinvara running off with the waitress? What? It’s Ben and Kinvara who are still together? Okay, now we understand.

”People think we spend our lives going to rent-a-crowd parties but that’s simply not what Ben and I do,” says Kinvara (clearly under the mistaken impression that anyone devotes a second’s thought to what her and Ben do). Okay, so now we’re curious. What do Ben and Kinvara do? ”We do mad things.” Of course, you do. But just how mad? Give us an example.

”To welcome in the New Year, we went to Skye and rented a cottage for ten days and just read books and made bread and took Inca [the Labrador] for walks,” Kinvara explains. ”There was no TV, no phone, no papers…and it was a lot of fun.” Wow, you kids, you’re just mad with a capital B-O-N-K-E-R-S.

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Posted: 4th, September 2002 | In: Reviews Comment | TrackBack | Permalink