Birmingham-born Brit School graduate Gemma Cairney began her career as a fashion stylist, turning to radio following a course at Point Blank music college. After stints on Big Brother’s Big Ears, the Kiss FM breakfast show and BBC Radio 1Xtra, she presented the Radio 1 Weekend Breakfast Show from 2012 to 2014. She then moved on to the Early Breakfast show, and since June has presented The Surgery with Dr Radha Modgil on Wednesdays. From 7pm tomorrow, Cairney will host Earth Can You Hear Us? at St Pancras station, London, to mark the beginning of the UN climate change talks in Paris.
1 | Comedian
Jack Rooke is a comedian/poet extraordinaire with the biggest, curliest lion mane of hair. He does poetry about deep human issues, such as death and suicide, but at the same time has a punchy sense of humour and an anarchic, naughty spring in his step. I went to see him at the Edinburgh festival with his show Good Grief, which is about the death of his dad: he can make your face wet from crying, but you’re also laughing hysterically. You get to know his family: his grandma is interviewed on screen and she’s really funny. And he has the coffin of Hayley from Coronation Street on stage, covered in pictures of flowers and filled with biscuits, which he hands out to the audience. It sounds bizarre, but he’s really funny and distinctive.
2 | Fashion
Tuxedos from Costume Studio, London
I’ve become quite obsessed with tuxedos, suits and male tailoring. Recently, a friend of mine and I both hired – last minute because we weren’t happy with our dresses – two matching tuxedos from Costume Studio in Islington, which usually hires costumes to theatres. We rang up, gave our measurements, and they had two perfect tuxes hanging in the changing room when we got there. It was so exciting: they fitted absolutely bang on. It felt so comfortable to wear something that was simple in shape, had big pockets, and wasn’t too tight and awkward. It was liberating and warm and cosy. It really worked for both of us – I’d definitely be up for doing that again.
3 | Place
This is my favourite day out: it’s a reopened amusement park on the Kent coast in Margate, which as a town has totally captured my heart. I went to a festival there called By the Sea a few weeks ago, and watched Hot Chip in an illuminated roller disco with a huge arched ceiling, original, from many years ago when it was a dance hall. It was super fun: there were loads of rooms to have a boogie and everyone looked like they’d stumbled across a secret. And Dreamland makes you feel like that every time you go. They’ve got a multicoloured slide and the Scenic Railway, which I’m too scared to go on; I think it’s one of the oldest rollercoasters in Europe. Over Christmas you can get on the rides for free, and they’re curating some special stalls and there will be a Christmas market.
4 | Music
There are a few female MCs that I really respond to, such as Lady Leshurr, Lady Lykez, and Little Simz. There’s a side of me that’s a bit more gnarly, that wants to listen to music that packs a punch, that enjoys a hard, fast female rapper. Little Simz has a really rounded talent: she can play within the realms of the slow jam but also has a good flow, and I love her opinions and the way she uses words. I spoke with her on a panel earlier this year at the Women of the World festival in London, and she very much has this sense of being in control of her career. It comes out lyrically as well, when she talks about independence and doing it her way.
5 | Restaurant
I always become exasperated when I try to organise Sunday roasts – in my mind I feel like it should be a really relaxed affair. I want to live in a Richard Curtis film where all my bohemian friends find each other easily in a hungover tangle and we can just eat roast and drink red wine all afternoon. But it’s hard to find a banging roast in east London. You either have a gross roast, you can’t book or it’s too busy, but now that it’s properly got cold I seem to have found somewhere. I shouldn’t really say it because everybody’s going to be in there, but they do a proper northern roast with giant Yorkshire puds and gravy. Roast beef, bit of horseradish: happy days.
6 | Book
The Isobel Journal by Isobel Harrop
I recently discovered this book, which is really light and fun to flick through. It’s funny sketches and musings on this girl’s everyday life, which I think a lot of girls who sometimes feel a little anxious (like me) can identify with, even though I’m a bit older than Isobel. In one picture she’s wearing a T-shirt with Destiny’s Child on and it says “Sometimes I worry that people don’t understand the slight irony in my love of 90s girl bands”: hear hear. She started drawing this book when she was 16, so it has this really nice young voice. I want to find a teenager that I can buy this for this Christmas: it’s like a journal for people that don’t always feel like they fit in, which I think is most of us these days. It definitely appealed to the inner 13-year-old in me.
