Sleb Safari - Jo Malone is a dynamo

JO MALONE, she of the spendy scents, has always struck Sleb Safari as the type who gets more done in an afternoon that most achieve in a week.

It could be because Jo set up her Jo Malone empire from her kitchen table and then flogged it to Estee Lauder for “undisclosed millions”, before leaving the company altogether and starting another perfume business called Jo Loves.

Or it could be because of an interview Sleb Safari read in The Guardian in which Jo described in intricate detail how she gets ready for a night out in 25 minutes flat. Reader: she crams a spa day into 25 minutes.

Here goes: She makes a face mask, applies it, drinks a glass of wine in the bath by candlelight, dyes her eyebrows, eats a baked potato or toasted ham and cheese sandwich, bleaches her teeth, paints fragrance on to her body, oils her hands and feet because "nothing looks worse than dry feet if you’re wearing sandals", gives her hair a "zhush" with a rotating brush because it “often drops” and then she's out the door in a black suit, drop-diamond earrings and vintage Prada shoes.

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Jo Malone is a dynamo and that’s all there is to it. She’s also a talented businesswoman who has flogged so many pomegranate noir candles that if you were to place them in a line they’d stretch around the world. Twice. Sleb Safari made that up but wouldn’t be a bit surprised if it turned out to be true.

Jo has been chatting to The Telegraph about travel and holidays and how she feels like “a council estate girl made good”.

Since this is Jo Malone we’re talking about it will come as no surprise that she has six adventures under way in 2018 and “among them, I’ll be making my own prosecco in the Bottega wine region near Venice and visiting an elephant compound in Florida”.

Jo also really, really wants to go scent trekking which is a bit like pony trekking but with heightened risk to life and limb.

“It’s a dangerous method of collecting scents whereby scientists clamber precariously up above the forest tree line, sit on these bouncy canopies and capture the chemical compounds of the blossoms and bark growing high out of human reach,” she says.

“It’s a health and safety nightmare, but I’m desperate to have a go.”

No better woman Jo, no better woman.

Sleb Safari was very taken with one of Jo’s stories in particular. It concerned “an astonishing man” she met once.

“He worked for the Forestry Commission and had travelled the woodlands of the world. He was returning from Borneo where he’d just escaped a tryst with an orangutan who had mistaken him for her lover.”

And on that top note, we’ll wave Jo goodbye, close the front door softly, light a scented candle and spend some time in silent appreciation of our own, very normal, orangutan-free workplaces.

Jimmy Nesbitt the karaoke king

And so to Jimmy Nesbitt who has shared an anecdote about a night out in a Hong Kong bar. Jimmy says he always bumps into people from home no matter where he is in the world and he gets treated like he’s part of the furniture, or, as he puts it, “everyone thinks I'm part of their family”.

“There was a group of young Irish folk who came over to me at a bar in Hong Kong recently and I said, 'Come on then, let's have a quick photo', and one woman said, 'Oh no Jimmy, I don't want a photo – do you know where the karaoke bar is?' It was quite funny.”

Yes, yes it is.

Keira Knightley on working and parenting

HAT tip to Keira Knightley who’s been speaking about the challenges parents face when working full time and raising small children.

Her husband “largely put his life on hold” after they had a baby daughter, she says, and that, coupled with support from her mum and a nanny, has enabled her to continue working.

“He's been travelling with me since we had her… I'm super lucky, I can afford child care. I have a wonderful nanny that has travelled with us as well. When she's there, I feel completely safe that Edie is good. And my mum, whenever my husband can't be there, has flown to wherever we are.”

She added: “They say it takes a village to raise a child – it takes a village to keep a woman at work as well. But if that's where she should be then everybody is very supportive and it's possible.”

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