Abbey Clancy On Fashion, Football And Mrs Beckham

With a Premier League footballer husband, Abbey Clancy could happily never work again. But then that's just not her style. Over a bacon sandwich (white bread) she talks money, motherhood and her new role as a judge on Britain's Next Top Model. 

- Laura Craik, photos by Tung Walsh

Although I was prepared for Abbey Clancy to come with an entourage, I wasn’t prepared for her to come with a baby. Yet here she is, strolling down the street not with some ostentatious designer handbag dangling from her arm, but her four-month-old daughter, Liberty Rose. As anyone who has attempted to carry a baby around in a car seat will attest, it isn’t the lightest of loads. But Abbey blithely totes her from coffee shop to coffee shop until we find one with a table. 

‘I’m starving,’ she says, as we eventually sit down. ‘Can I order bacon on toast? And a cappuccino, please.’ The waitress asks whether she would like white or brown bread. ‘White, please. And butter.’ 

We’re all versed by now in the great, deliberate show celebrities make of Being Starving And Eating A Lot In Front Of The Journalist, but the speed and gusto with which Abbey demolishes her bacon sandwich suggests it’s no mere prop. Despite newspapers lauding her for Shedding The Baby Weight In Record Time, ten minutes with Abbey is all it takes to realise that she isn’t ‘the determined blonde’ of tabloid legend: just predisposed to eat as much lard/have as many babies as she likes and still not put on any weight. ‘It’s just genes,’ she confirms. ‘If I’ve got a big job on, or if I’m going on holiday, I won’t sit and eat a packet of biscuits with a cup of tea – I’ll try and be a bit good. But I love my food. I’ve got kids and I’m married to a professional athlete, so I can’t have fish and chips every night. Although we did last night. We got a takeaway,’ she says, grinning.