She may not be much of a celebrity. But smiley Stacey has proved Essex girls are no joke
The first words that flew out of Stacey Solomon’s wide mouth as she was parachuted from a plane to join the other celebrities in the Australian rainforest were typical: ‘I’m the luckiest girl in the world!’ No hysteria, no vanity, no cod heroics, just pure, unadulterated joy and gratitude. There were no crocodile tears during the three weeks Stacey inhabited the I’m A Celebrity . . . Get Me Out of Here! jungle; merely a desire to grasp life with both French-manicured hands. ‘Lord only knows I’m annoying, so thank you for having me,’ she said as she accepted her crown. And with those words, a brand-new star was born.
Why do I love Stacey? Can I count the ways? There is no artifice about her, no vanity at all — she described her special skill on entering the show as ‘talking’. No chip on those gloriously broad shoulders (unlike Cheryl Cole, who felt the need to tick off a contestant on The X Factor for daring to highlight her working-class roots). When Stacey was crowned Queen Of The Jungle on Saturday night, having brought fellow finalist Shaun Ryder out of his shell (her presence was like a deliriously sunny, ripe peach placed under the nostrils of a particularly recalcitrant tortoise), she was shown clips of her best moments on the show, and could only exclaim how hideously unattractive she looked.
As she hugged the other stars, she warned them disingenuously about her dodgy breath. What a breath of fresh air (probably an inappropriate analogy) that here was a young woman, who, despite her working-class roots and hunger for fame, was not all about false eyelashes, It-bags, and finding fun in the bottom of a vodka shot. She is an unlikely modern-day heroine, not least because she was born of that most vulgar of the decade’s inventions — reality TV. Yet unlike many so-called celebrities who have emerged from the same cocoon, she has remained as true to her working-class roots as the day she was born.
Before coming third on last year’s X Factor, she worked behind the counter at her local chippy, Oh My Cod. Stacey knows how hard real life can be, and does not want to go back to it. That’s why she is grateful for every opportunity her TV career gives her — even if it does mean eating the odd witchety grub. Not for her the anger and unedifying moments of spite and resentment displayed by her predecessor, the tragic, late Jade Goody. Stacey will laugh and chatter her way through everything. Why ponder the darker side of life too much?
Who can forget when, on reaching the finals of The X Factor last year, she was asked what she would do if she didn’t make it. With her big beaming smile and trademark foghorn, she screeched: ‘There’s always Asda!’ Quite simply, she oozed an old-fashioned, natural high. Surely the best kind there is.
Stacey Solomon was brought up in Dagenham, Essex, a place formerly only famous for its car factories. She has a two-year-old son, Zach, with ex-boyfriend Dean Cox. ‘Where is my baby? I want to see my baby!’ she kept asking Ant and Dec as the fireworks were set off, and the closing credits started to roll. There has never been a winner who garnered more votes from the public, or such high praise from her fellow contestants.
To me, the reason she stole our hearts is pure and simple: she’s an Essex girl. I was born in Chelmsford, the county town, went to school in Brentwood, and spent my teenage years hanging out in dodgy nightclubs in Southend-on-Sea. I was Miss Talk of the South 1975 — and by 1979 I was living in London’s Barbican working as a sub-editor on a glossy magazine. I guess that tells you something about us Essex girls: we are fiercely proud of our roots but desperate to leave them behind. The most exciting thing I ever found to do was to trawl Romford Market on a Saturday afternoon, which is why anyone born in Essex is desperate to make it to the capital, so tantalisingly close is it, just down the dreadful A12.
Why are Essex girls the best in the world? Essex girls’ dreams are more vivid than anyone else’s because the county itself is so monochrome: Sixties concrete high-rises, endless roundabouts and housing estates. The beach at Southend is comprised of mud. For Stacey, Liverpool Street station was the shining gateway to success, a new life away from shopping precincts and dead-end jobs. As well as ambition, Essex girls have a great sense of humour, developed after generations of being the butt of jokes, and a real desire for luxury. After all, we invented chavdom, a much-maligned quality — but all it means is we want a better life. We are grafters, too, and independent: we have had to be, given that Essex boys, the randiest boys in the world, love fast cars, copious amounts of cologne, earrings and putting their feet up. Essex boys are charmers, and can lead a nice girl like Stacey down the garden path. It’s nice to see she is now in a happy relationship, with new boyfriend Aaron Barnham, a painter and decorator.
Stacey is a throw-back, the last of a breed we thought had gone out with food rationing and gas masks, the stoicism of the Cockneys who moved north after the Blitz coursing through her veins. Is Stacey a good role model? Most definitely, despite her admitting in the jungle that she believes reading gossip magazines to be as rewarding as reading books, because ‘it’s all stories, I love to see what a celebrity is wearing, and what their house is like’. You can tell Stacey is not ignorant in the way Jade Goody was.
While Rebecca Ferguson, another thoroughly nice single mum from Liverpool who looks poised to win The X Factor next weekend, is much more talented and beautiful than Stacey, it is Stacey’s very British brand of ordinariness that has made even Middle Englanders embrace her. She might have very little talent, but who cares? Aren’t you, like me, a little tired of all these wannabes, giving it 200 per cent? Stacey is a natural, and she’s nice, surely a far rarer quality than being able to top the iTunes charts these days. And what better example for young women than to see someone laughing all the time, rather than moaning and whinging.
Stacey never once gossiped about anyone, or tried to impress (I loved it when she first met Linford Christie and exclaimed: ‘I wanna race you!’), but always tried to see the best in them. She warmed my cold winter evenings like a bowl of creamy porridge. I was so angry when Gillian McKeith made her cry. It was as unnecessary and shocking an act, surely, as placing a kitten in a wheelie bin. What do I hope Stacey does next? I’d love to see her play Eliza Doolittle on the West End stage, but in real life I don’t want to see her Henry ’Igginsed. I hope she finds success. She is not calculating, in the way the dreadful Myleene Klass was when she, too, donned a bikini to wash under the waterfall in the jungle. While Myleene was doing mental arithmetic, wondering how much the exposure of her breasts would earn her in a future lingerie campaign, you could see Stacey was just thinking: ‘Oh my God, I stink!’
I really hope Stacey makes it to a mock-tudor mansion in Loughton, where she will zoom around Epping Forest in an open-top car, singing at the top of those lovely lungs, saying, ‘Oooh, I dunno!’ at every opportunity, purchasing leopard-print cushions and Versace outfits, living the dream we all dreamed.