An exciting career evolution for former Made in Chelsea star Spencer Matthews, who this week starred in a reality-based crime event in a London luxury watch shop.
In this era of unscripted reality shows, the challenge for any star is to adapt their persona into new formats, constantly evolving beyond the premise of the last show in which they learned patisserie or telemarque skiing or drawled “stop getting up in my grill” to someone who would go on to design a shortlived line of yoga-attire.
And so with Spencer, who began his career on Made in Chelsea, a show that seemed primarily to consist of people affectlessly discussing heavily staged betrayal-effect events over drinks in Fulham. Thereafter, he progressed through The Bachelor, where he featured as the eponymous bachelor, I’m a Celebrity, where he left camp due to steroid cravings, then on to The Jump, which he won, and Celebrity Masterchef, where he cooked some lovely mullet or something. Earlier this year, he and his wife and baby starred in the dedicated reality show Spencer, Vogue and Baby Too.
If you were wondering “where next?” – and it seems unfathomable that you wouldn’t have been – the answer is perhaps to be found in a video upload to Spencer’s Instagram, where he detailed his involvement in a dramatic heist.
We lay our scene in high-end Mayfair watch shop The Hour House – and I want to say right off the bat that this column’s tireless commitment to service journalism isn’t going to extend to finding out a whole lot about the type of products on sale there. There’s really only one word for the sort of person who knows the difference between a luxury watch and a chronometer – or even worse, between a chronograph and a chronometer. Unfortunately, we just don’t use this word in the Guardian unless it’s in reported speech. And at the time of writing, I was unable to lay my hands on a public figure to say it loud about “watch people”, so do please fill in the blank yourself.
For now, back to the luxury timepiece emporium, where Tuesday afternoon saw Spencer in store to pick up what he describes as a “vintage piece”. All of a sudden, a commotion ensues. We will cross to Spencer’s account, mindful that he is using a tense sometimes known as the football continuous. Though it appears to suggest that events happening then are still happening now and will somehow continue to happen, it is thought that they in fact have been brought to a conclusion. Anyway: “These guys drive a scooter through the glass and start battering the shop with hammers, big huge hammers, wearing helmets. We’re in the back of the shop looking at them, sprint downstairs, hide in the vault until all the noise passes. Come upstairs and the place is just battered. All the watches gone.”
A very thorough job. But what of Spencer’s “vintage piece”? “We were looking around and I’m just thinking fucking hell, the thing that I’ve been waiting for has obviously just been nicked, so I’m going to have to go and get another one.” Totally. If you don’t immediately shop your way out of the problem then the terrorists have already won.
But stay! For there is a horological twist. “Lo and behold we look around and on the floor amongst all the rubble and the glass and stuff there’s one watch in the entire shop and it’s mine. Now if that’s not luck, I don’t know what is.”
Luck indeed. The only other possibility is that the luxury watch/chronometer/chronograph/armclock was judged too unpleasant to steal – but perhaps we shall learn more in any upcoming trial. Police say they have arrested three men in connection with the incident.
Either way, this is quite the most alarming incident involving a reality star within striking distance of London’s Oxford Street since 2017, when Olly Murs ordered an evacuation of Selfridges department store on the basis of what would turn out to be faulty intelligence. In fact, could that not be the next format to be graced with Spencer’s presence? Murs & Matthews team up to tackle the capital’s violent crime problems? True Crime With Matthews & Murs? Surely ITV2 should be considering something along these lines, and we must await the announcement at its very earliest convenience.
Ed Sheeran’s song without praise
To the world of musical collaboration, next, where it turns out that Ed Sheeran has suggestions easily as problematic as the various home improvements that have fallen foul of planners at his Suffolk home.
Back in April, you may recall, we looked at how Ed’s local council has turned down his applications to build a 24-seat chapel, then required him to take down a sauna hut and a five-metre-long sign for the private pub in his garden. It also seems doubtful that the “wildlife pond” it granted him permission for is really a wildlife pond at all, on the basis that it is kidney-shaped, lined with pale blue mosaic tiles, and has handrails and steps leading down into it.
But are any of these schemes really as troubling as the musical one Ed has just revealed: to wit, a Lady Marmalade-style single featuring himself, Bruno Mars and Justin Bieber? “I had an idea of doing that,” he explains of the genus of his forthcoming musical collaborations album. “Like you could get Bruno, Bieber and me on a record, how fun would that be?”
Not enormously, perhaps – a fact it seems was instinctively grasped by Bruno when Ed suggested it to him. “The first person I rung was Bruno,” Ed recalls, “and he was just like, ‘let’s just do a song together, just us’.” Hard lines on Bieber, of course – but the luckiest of escapes for so many others, and a reminder that you can’t simply stick up an earsore at will, and expect not to meet trenchant objections.
Bradley puts a spoke in a culture Q&A
Cultural interview of the week, finally, comes courtesy of a Times chat with former champion cyclist Bradley Wiggins. Given that this particular Q&A slot is called My Culture Fix, either Bradley or his people, or both, should arguably have known what he was getting into. Then again, perhaps they did, and thought it worth the exposure.
Either way, the tone is set from the first of the standard questions, in which Bradley is asked for his favourite author or book. “I’m not really a reader,” comes the reply. “I haven’t got the attention span. Skip the books.” Got it. On to the next question, then, which asks for his favourite play or playwright. Here, the answer is clearer. “No.”
A little later, we turn to the matter of which box set Wiggins is currently hooked on. “I don’t switch the telly on much these days,” he replies. “I find it quite vacuous. I only watch things like First Dates – things that are real and about normal people interacting. Most people on TV are cunts …”
There were various other gems – “apparently Ringo Starr is a shit drummer” – though we returned to a familiarly barren furrow on the question of painting. “I’m not really into art. It’s not my bag.” As for his fantasy dinner party, it’s a bijou affair. “Maybe I’d bring John Lennon and Bobby Moore,” decides Wiggins. “Just those two. I’d leave them to it, though. I wouldn’t want to bother them.”
Very considerate, in the circumstances.
