MEET THE NE
They looked on with pride as their children became household names – but now the
Early last year, 56-year-old Anne Twist shared news on Instagram that she’d written her first children’s book, Betty and the Mysterious Visitor. The story about a badger wreaking havoc in Betty’s grandma’s vegetable garden wasn’t obvious viral hit material and yet her post received a massive
127,600 likes .
The comments were glowing. (‘Do I have children? No. Will I still be buying this? 100%.’) And the book did well offline, too. Last October, Waterstones included it in its Best Books of 2023 list alongside Zadie Smith’s The Fraud and Salman Rushdie’s Victory City.
So why all the furore over a kids’ book?
HARRY STYLES’S MUM IS NOW AN INFLUENCER WITH 2.6 MILLION FOLLOWERS
Because author Anne Twist is Harry Styles’s mum.
She’s the poster girl for a new brand of celebrity: the nepo parent. In 2022, everyone was suddenly obsessed with nepo babies – children of celebs who get work because of their parents’ connections – as though this phenomenon wasn’t literally thousands of years old (I’m looking at you, Augustus Caesar). Now it seems the roles have reversed.
There’s an important distinction to make here: nepo parents aren’t to be confused with the controlling, stagemanaging variety. We are not talking about the likes of Jamie Spears (Britney’s opinion-splitting father), or even Kris Jenner, the 68-year-old Kardashian matriarch who capitalised on her daughter Kim’s sex tape to create the uber-famous family dynasty in California. Nepo parents are those who have led entirely normal lives, only to watch their offspring become dizzyingly famous and, off the back of it, seize the opportunity to get ahead.
Twist is a case in point: she’s now a bona fide Instagram influencer; her 2.6 million followers are willing to buy anything Harry’s mum has touched. But she’s certainly not alone. Take Rob Grant, the septuagenarian father of 11-time Grammy-nominated singer Lana
Del Rey.
Last summer, Grant released his debut album, Lost at Sea. It was favourably reviewed by stalwart indie magazines such as Rolling Stone and Pitchfork, neither of which generally feature classical ventures by 70-year-old web-domain investors making their first foray into recording. But despite being just 40 minutes long and sounding incredibly like those relaxing whale soundtracks you must endure while having your legs waxed, reviewers couldn’t get enough of it. At least Bob’s honest with himself. He raved in an interview with US GQ (yes, really): ‘I’m happy to be the first nepo daddy.’
It’s the same story with 83-year-old Michael Whitehall. Until 2017, he was a retired theatrical agent living in London with his wife Hilary. That was until his son, the comedian Jack Whitehall, mentioned him in a few stand-up