Claire Black: Sleeping Delevingne | Wonga | Leith

FALLING asleep on the job? Been there, got the T-shirt, writes Claire Black
Always in the snooze: Cara Delevingnes naps are to be envied. Picture: RexAlways in the snooze: Cara Delevingnes naps are to be envied. Picture: Rex
Always in the snooze: Cara Delevingnes naps are to be envied. Picture: Rex

CAN everyone just cut Cara Delevingne some slack? So the girl likes a kip so much she apparently fell asleep twice while being interviewed by US Vogue. It’s not that she was in the middle of being asked one of the magazine’s more probing questions (“So, which lipgloss is it that you just could not live without?”) when she started to doze, more that she arrived late having slept in and then fell asleep during a massage.

I hold Vogue responsible for this second sleeping transgression since offering an interviewee a massage while they are being interviewed is only asking for trouble. Where do they put the Dictaphone – underneath that little hole in the table where your face pops through?

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As things stand, Delevingne has reacted furiously to the magazine’s slander about her sleepiness. She often falls asleep because she works so hard, don’t they know – “I apologise for being so ambitious,” she added, sounding like a petulant 14-year-old who’s turned up late for double maths.

She has also been photographed wearing a T-shirt emblazoned with the statement “I am not a morning person”, and once admitted: “Someone recently asked if they could publish a book of pictures of me sleeping because there are so many.”

As for the unsubstantiated rumour that she had once slept for seven hours during a photoshoot for Mulberry, all I can say is nice work if you can get it. I used to think it was supermodels’ rates of pay that were to be envied, now I’m seeing a whole new world of possibilities.

Maybe the reason I’m so Team Delevingne is that I am cream crackered. If I could sleep for seven hours during a photoshoot, or even just at night, I’d be ecstatic. All I need for this to happen is for someone to explain to my ten-month-old son that 5.26am isn’t any kind of time to be getting up unless you are flying somewhere. And although it is cute he can now sit up from his sleeping position, doing so at 2.37am and ending up disoriented in his cot and therefore inconsolable isn’t helping any of us manage our sleep deficit.

The other option is that I get myself a wardrobe of T-shirts which state: “I haven’t had a decent night’s sleep for nearly a year.” Imagine how useful this would be. Tricky meeting with your boss at work? Just wear the T-shirt. In any queue where you must use an automated device which requires both memory and dexterity (cash dispenser, car park payment machine, cinema ticket dispenser), just turn it round so it’s on the back for the impatient people waiting behind to read. In one chest-height statement, I’d have covered why I often have toothpaste on my chin, why I am regularly to be seen walking up and down the same supermarket aisle at least four times because I know I need something I just have no idea what that something is, and why my emotional state is so parlous I regularly weep at the adverts.

I’m with Cara all the way.

Wonga merits more police interest

THE real jaw-dropper about the recently revealed Wonga scandal – the company, “Britain’s best known payday lender”, for years sent threatening legal letters to customers in arrears, which it transpires were entirely fictitious – is that it’s managed to make a company that charges an interest rate of 5,853 per cent seem even scummier than it already did. That is quite an achievement.

What is perhaps less impressive is that criminal charges have not yet been brought. The Law Society has asked police to reopen their investigations, and this weekend it’s been revealed that the constabulary are now on the case, so perhaps Wonga may yet get its just desserts. What’s most repulsive about what Wonga did is the glee which is discernible in the details – it made up names for the bogus law firms, Chainey, D’Amato & Shannon and Barker & Lowe, using the names of employees. It sent 45,000 letters, even adding administration fees for sending them. I’m not sure you can get much lower.

As for the flat-rate £50 settlement for all customers to whom letters were sent, I’m not sure that touches the sides in terms of distress caused. Does Wonga realise how scary it is to be sent a lawyer’s letter? To think that, given you’ve got no money – the clue is in having got tangled up with Wonga in the first place – the next step might be the bailiffs? Fifty quid? And the rest.

Long live Leith

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HOME of the origins of golf, the place where Mary, Queen of Scots landed when she arrived in Scotland and the location of the magnificent, unique Port O’ Leith pub, Leith is special.

If you live there, as I do, the idea that the area should have its own museum doesn’t just seem right, it seems utterly absurd that it doesn’t already have such a thing.

So now the Leith Custom House, which has been used for years for storage by the National Museums Scotland, is to become available next year, it seems the perfect opportunity to create one.

Discussions are taking place, but they’ll only be aided by a show of positivity. So perhaps we might all follow @MuseumforLeith and tweet our support? «