WHO: CAROLYN DONOVAN
WHAT: AUTHOR ‘CHOOKS IN STILETTOS’
WHERE: BRISBANE, AUSTRALIA
VISIT: www.carolyndonovan.com
FFF LOVES… Her uber-glammy looks, spunky attitude and hysterical humour. She is the package!
Breakfast, Brunch, Lunch or Dinner?
I will readily admit…I LOVE EATING. I love everything about it: whether shopping for food or scanning a restaurant menu. The expectancy aroused by the sight and smell of the different combinations. The fabulous company and conversation that simply being around food attracts … I could go on and on. So after a long ponder, I have chosen breakfast, lunch AND dinner!
Where will you be dining?
Breakfast: with my entire family — all 20 of us — when all the girls (the boys are too slow and get in the way) make a huge mess in the kitchen as we produce a massive feast of bacon, poached eggs, mushroom, tomato and wilted spinach; and freshly squeezed orange juice. What a perfect start to the day.
Lunch: would be with favourite girlfriends at Bistro C in Noosa on a hot summer day.
Dinner: with my husband and close friends. Still in Noosa. Most probably at Rickys on the river.
What music are you listening to?
We don’t usually have music at breakfast, but there is often the sound of Dora the Explorer — or some other morning television character — drifting in from another room.
Lunch: I would need to borrow my neighbour’s iPod as he has the best mix of I have ever heard. (We can have a five hour dining experience with him, not hear the same song twice, and sing along to every single one!). It has every song I have ever loved from the 70s right through to now.
Dinner: I love live music.
What are you wearing?
Breakfast: Unashamedly make-up and accessory free, pony-tailed, baggy Peter Alexander PJ pants and a favourite t-shirt.
Lunch: A long strapless black cotton dress, metallic sandals — perfect for sitting around on a sweltering day, but simple and elegant enough to not feel like a melted mess — finished off with slicked back hair, and massive hoop earrings (with swimmers ready to go for when we need a quick ocean dip later in the afternoon).
Dinner: The white Halston dress Carrie wore in the opening of Sex in the City 2, with a sky high nude shoe, gold clutch … and a light bronze tan (fake of course!)
What are you going to eat?
Breakfast: As above.
Lunch: A platter of Spanish style dips, olives, and mezze inspired entrées, char-grilled baby octopus and deliciously light salt and pepper squid. And any salad that involves mango, coriander and lime in the dressing.
Dinner: I always get the steak … and then drive my husband nuts by picking off his plate, because he always orders seafood … which I then want too! I love to share. That’s what the perfect dining experience is all about for me. (Even at home, when we eat together, the table is as beautiful as we can make it — even a palm frond in a vase can work — and we each have to SHARE the best thing that happened to us that day!)
About Carolyn and Chooks in Stilettos:
In an industry synonymous for having the shelf life of a banana, Carolyn Donovan has already scored a major coup by beating the odds and remaining in high demand as a model for over two decades.
With more than her fair share of bad hair days, major wardrobe malfunctions and decidedly un-yummy mummy moments, Ms Donovan has written a book called “Chooks in Stilettos” smashing any illusions we may have of models sipping champagne with celebrities swathed in designer gowns that cover a cellulite, pimple free body seven days a week. Instead, Carolyn pulls back the VIP curtains and allows us into a world of laughter, challenges and sheer hard work. She treats us to stories of the three boob dress, telling Elvis jokes to Priscilla Presley, and how to make a pimple a work of art.
Mixing motherhood and modelling has brought its own kind of special madness. Bridging the gap between the make believe world of modelling and the day to day realities of a model’s life, Carolyn Donovan writes like “Kathy Lette meets Chicken Soup for the Soul.”
“Donovan is to the Australian modelling industry what Mia Freedman is to magazines,” writes Cosmopolitan’s book reviewer, Erica Bartle. “She is so utterly likable, so refreshingly real and fun and honest, that you will not want her book to end. Ever.”
“Glamazon Carolyn Donovan exposes the wacky world of the modelling industry; this time as an author. A darned funny author as it turns out,” says fellow author Michael Jacobson.
She shares laugh till you snort moments: how morning sickness can actually enhance a romantic ocean shoot, extra special parenting moments you won’t read in a manual, and of course, running through the mud in stilettos while rescuing her chooks.
WHO: JAMES RICHARDS
