![]() ‘But in reality, I am part of history, merely one chapter of an ancient story. Nothing could be further from the case,’ the Mound protests, reapplying a thin layer of ferns to cover up the smudge. ‘One thing that frustrates me is this caricature that I’m a flash in the pan, a novelty invented in the mind of some over-paid, over-hyped, coked-up committee of brand managers, architects and politicians. ‘At least you’re not the Millennium Dome,’ I offer, and they giggle through their tissue. ![]() Courtesy: Getty ImagesĪs they wipe their moist apertures, I offer some consolation. Gerolamo Ballatti Nerli, A sunny day in London's Hyde Park, with Marble Arch in the background, c.1900. Do you not think I saw those images of beautiful, happy couples strolling up and down my dappled contours?’ They reach for a tissue. I was going to be something of substance, a place of sublime natural beauty in the midst of the modern city. Do you think I would have signed up for this, knowing the way I would be looked at, laughed at? We all saw the first architectural renders. Don’t think your disappointment isn’t shared, by the way,’ the Mound responds. People see right through you.’ I ask if there’s any truth to the suggestion that the plans were actually scaled back, that there had been a far more ambitious scheme originally. But then this is the problem with being made of scaffolding and not earth. Aren’t people sick of this sort of astroturfed regeneration spectacle? The Mound visibly winces, and I regret my faux pas as they self-consciously rearrange their thinning coverage. Yet wasn’t that speed part of the problem, I suggest? The marketing, the planning permission, the cash: it all seemed so manufactured, appearing from nowhere – seemed frivolous and attention-seeking while large parts of society struggled, unaided, during a national crisis. Within two months, my papers were in order, and within days, I was all anyone was talking about. ![]() ‘I think people forget how meteoric my rise was. I’m feeling vulnerable.’ After a year in the headlines, I ask, how are they feeling? ‘It’s certainly been a difficult six months,’ the Mound confides. ![]() How does something so expensive look so cheap, so tatty? So please, go easy on me. As soon as I sit down and turn on my tape-recorder, the Mound grasps the nettle: ‘I know what you’re thinking about me. To some locals, the Mound is a punchline. A few tourists gawp and stare, unaware that in London, while in the presence of celebrity, it is polite to pretend they are a nobody like yourself. Easily dominating the surrounding area, the Mound commands your attention. But nonetheless, nothing prepares you for that first meeting. They retain something of the faded Hollywood starlet about them: while the Mound has clearly seen better days, it’s not entirely clear when those better days were. Courtesy: Getty Images photograph: Justin Tallis It was the least I could do, having been given a journalistic exclusive: mine was to be the only interview granted by that grand old lady of Westminster, the Marble Arch Mound. As the day of the interview approaches, a strange dread filled the writer’s body: how could I find the unexpected, the ambivalent and the real in a public figure about whom the world has already made up its mind? As I took a taxi across London to the exclusive W1 address specified, I tried to play down my preconceptions about the subject to whom I was about to talk. When interviewing celebrities, it can be difficult to resist the pressure added by the anxious PR managers, hovering round their clients, steering your subject towards banal, cookie-cutter answers – as well as the hunger of the public for either a scandalous revelation or the sort of problematic, career-ending remark that the hyper-vigilant handler is seeking to avoid. ![]()
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