Dear oh dear, Jodie Kidd, eh? In what is this half of Showbiz Perdue's third favourite news story of the late summer / early autumn (obviously the self-claimed fathers of Anna Nicole Smith's child allegedly being gay lovers is number one, followed hotly by Alan Yentob faking his interviews for Imagine, if only for the image of Alan nodding dumbly at nothing three weeks after the interviews took place for those crucial noddy shots) it turns out that Jodie Kidd and her smashing sounding brother Jack are, far from the polo playing Sloanes we'd always assumed, actually characters straight outta a 1970s Scorcese fantasy. Thanks to good ol' Mazher Mamood in the News of the World, it transpires that the two of them run a bit of a coke ring in southern England. "We know ten people now who we can go to in Windsor," she sneered to Mamood when scouting for coke, sounding very much like a local panto version of Joe Pesci, the early years. And just to compound that impression she added the memorable and presumably rhetorical question, "Do you know how many dealers I know in a little town called Billinghurst?"
But, one is forced to ask, as one rarely is in stories about coke busts, what is Marks & Spencers going to do about it?
Worshippers at the temple of St Michael know well that Ms Kidd is the face of M & S' car insurance. Apparently, not a very successful one as probably quite a few of you out there are going, "They do car insurance? Is it hilariously overpriced and microwave friendly?"
But will the face of a young lady with all the hot connections in Billinghurst prove more or less of a convincing attraction to middle Britain's car owners? The unfortunate slogan on the M & S advert could be seen as referring to both of Ms Kidd's businesses: "goes the extra mile." Whether the rest of the sentence is equally true in regards to her personal sideline - "at no extra cost" - LiS will, it now seems, sadly never know for sure.
