A father at 58 — and now a grandad as well?!
They were a couple for 17 years — until celebrity hairdresser Nicky Clarke had an affair. And, as he expects a baby with his latest (much younger) lover, his ex Lesley pointedly asks...
HERE’S a strange state of affairs. Celebrity hairdresser Nicky Clarke parades his much younger girlfriend Kelly Simpkin and her baby bump on the pages of a glossy magazine as they gushingly announce her pregnancy.
Kelly, 35, who is due to give birth in August, is wearing a carbuncular pink emerald on the third finger of her left hand. Not an engagement ring as such, apparently, but a ‘sign of their commitment’.
And while Kelly, an aspiring fashion designer, says she is keen to get married, the perennially boyish Nicky, 58, is evidently less so. He doesn’t like the term ‘fiancée’. Neither does he want to ‘make a thing of it’ as everyone will start asking if they’ve set a date.
So a not-quite engagement and a summer baby for the man who has styled the hair of, among countless others, Elizabeth Taylor, Kate Moss, Brad Pitt and Princess Diana.
What is conspicuously absent from the article, however, is any mention of the fact Nicky was, when it went to print, also about to become a grandfather for the first time.
Today, he has a week-old grandson Casper, born to Harrison, 31, and his wife Rhian, 32. Harrison is one of two grown-up children from Nicky’s 17-year relationship with Lesley Clarke. Nicky and Lesley, although she took his name and everyone assumed they were married, never actually did tie the knot. But we’ll come to that.
And glamorous Lesley remains CEO of the £60million family business and the astute financial brain behind it, despite her 20-year separation from Nicky. They split because of his infidelity, yet the relationship remained eminently civilised and he lives just a few doors down from her in a smart street in northwest London. So when Nicky spoke about the prospect of becoming a father again, why didn’t he choose to mention he was also shortly due to be a grandad? Lesley, 64, is bemused by this reticence. ‘I’m so proud and delighted to be a grandma and I want everyone to know about Casper. So I was surprised and quite disappointed Nicky didn’t mention he was going to be a grandad, too. But perhaps it was an oversight.’
SHE adds: ‘Or maybe he just didn’t want to dilute the glory of becoming a dad again. I don’t really know how he feels about it. He hasn’t commented.
‘But I do think that women, when they reach an age when they can’t have children any more, naturally look forward to the next generation. It’s nature’s way of making us good grandmas. But do men want to be grandads in the same way? I’m not so sure.’
Certainly no word is calculated to make a man feel the passing of the years more acutely than grandad – while becoming a dad again at 58 suggests virility and youth. Could it be that Nicky, such a prominent figure in an industry that prizes style and appearance, simply doesn’t want to admit he’s knocking on a bit? ‘Nicky certainly wants to hang onto his youth,’ concedes Lesley. ‘He takes great pride in his appearance.’
Lesley was at North Middlesex Hospital with Rhian’s mother Linda and sister Nina last week when Casper was born by caesarean, weighing 9lb 12oz.
‘I saw my grandson within half an hour of his birth,’ she says. ‘You feel just as much love, definitely, as you do when you become a mum, but you’re not so scared. You have this quiet, grandmotherly confidence.’
While Lesley will retain her role as company CEO – along with her 50% shareholding – Rhian, who also works in the family business, will take over some of her motherin-law’s duties with a view to becoming managing director.
Neither of the Clarke children – Harrison, a corporate financier, or daughter Tellisa, 30, an investment banker – has joined the family firm but both have inherited Lesley’s head for figures.
However, while her role in the company lessens, there will doubtless be no remission in Nicky’s workload as he provides for his new baby. Lesley admits she wouldn’t wish to be parent of a newborn again at his age. ‘To be woken forcibly every couple of hours by a crying baby – it would make me feel physically ill,’ she admits. ‘So I hope Nicky keeps up his energy levels because he’s certainly going to need it.’
As near neighbours who have two children together and also jointly run a business, Nicky and Lesley’s lives remain enmeshed.
When in 2008 he won an OBE, and although they had long since separated, it was Lesley who went to Buckingham Palace to receive it with him, rather than his then girlfriend, interior designer Kelly Hoppen, 57.
An unusually close and amicable relationship persisted. Nicky and Lesley still share a holiday home in Majorca. I ask if she still loves him. ‘I care about him – he is the father of my children and I only wish him happiness.’
She recalls the moment when Nicky broke the news that he and Kelly (Mark II) were planning to be parents. ‘He said: “She’s of that age when she wants to have a baby. What can I do?” ’
Would it have been Nicky’s choice? She laughs. ‘I don’t know,’ she says.
A less magnanimous person than Lesley could well feel aggrieved that Kelly (II) – who met Nicky when she became a junior stylist at his salon and has been in a relationship with him for nine years – has acquired a luxury lifestyle and a lavish home thanks in no small part to Lesley’s hard graft, sacrifices and financial acumen.
Lesley now lives a gilded life, in a six-bed Georgian home complete with a white baby grand once owned by Neil Sedaka; crystal everywhere and a housekeeper. But this has been built from nothing: Lesley and Nicky set up their business from scratch in the early 1990s after Nicky, who was raised in a council flat, left John Frieda’s salon following disagreements.
HE and Lesley took a huge risk, taking out an £80,000 loan to fund their first Mayfair salon, which they filled with borrowed antiques. Meanwhile, Lesley, the daughter of a milkman, was raising two small children while working full-tilt. At the start they sat on deckchairs on bare floorboards because they couldn’t afford furniture. But Nicky – who today commands £600 for a haircut – swiftly accrued a high-society clientele of royalty and rock stars. In 1997, he and Lesley bought the £6 million house in which she still lives, but shortly after they moved there, Lesley discovered Nicky was having an affair with model Susie Bick.
Lesley suffered a breakdown and sought counselling from a therapist who advised her to leave Nicky. Much was made of the fact the Clarkes had an eminently dignified and civilised ‘divorce’. But, of course, only they, and their closest family, knew they had never actually married. Even their children were unaware until they’d reached their teens. ‘Now Nicky’s about to have a new family, I might as well fess up,’ says Lesley. ‘The truth is, we’ve never married.
‘I blame [Duchess of York] Sarah Ferguson who was a good friend of mine at the time – I still see her – and I was going to visit her at the Palace. You had to leave your name at the Privy Purse door, and Sarah put me down as “Mrs Lesley Clarke”. So it’s her fault! That was how it started and we never bothered to correct anyone.’
Indeed, the misapprehension was perpetuated when Nicky bought her a Tiffany wedding band, she assumed his name and newspaper articles reported they’d married in Las Vegas.
So the much-vaunted amicable divorce wasn’t actually a divorce at all, and they continued to run their business, spend holidays with each other and share their Christmases. ‘Nicky used to come to us for a family Christmas every year, and one year Kelly (Hoppen) and her daughter Natasha joined us,’ Lesley remembers.
Nicky’s relationship with Hoppen ended when he was unfaithful and, shortly after, the younger Kelly succeeded her.
There remains the vexed issue of whether, having never walked up the aisle in his (almost) 60 years, Nicky will be persuaded to do so by his (almost) fiancée. Lesley says: ‘I’ve obviously no idea. Only time will answer that question.’