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| Harry wears Gucci |
The prettiest prince-of-pop, since, well, Prince, slipped into Queenstown on Saturday in his Gulf Stream 550. Harry Styles, the charming Gucci clad kid from Redditch, now 26, and worth a cool sixty-three million quid, is here to film the music video for his latest single.
“Psychedelic Mushroom Pie”, penned during quarantine, in his London pad after a meditative tequila massage is already No. One on UK pop charts, and destined to make this popular solo artist a whole lot more doh-ray-me.
Harry has rocked up in the adventure-playground-for-the-bored-and-famous with a heady-sized entourage of fifteen. This includes hip hop dancers, film crew, sound techs, eyebrow stylist, Gucci stylist (also named Harry.) Plus the ironer of his bellbottom trouser collection, and his Siamese cat, Sweetcorn.
The postponement of his European summer tour can only be a boost to New Zealand’s current domestic tourism drive, which is taking off very slowly in the picturesque lakeside mountain town. On Wednesday morning at 11 am, the only visitors in Queenstown Bay were one hundred mallard ducks escaping duck shooting while searching for breadcrumbs. Along with one lone female in a grey hoodie skulling a bottle of wine.
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| fuck a duck where is everyone? |
Janice Bloomfield (niece of NZ’s newest GQ coverboy Ashley) was lucky enough to catch up with the gorgeous Harry. While it was hard for her twenty-seven-year-old-soul not to see unicorns and rainbow sprinkles every time Harry opened his pretty mouth, her fifty-six- year-old-self kept it together (just) enough to ask a few deep and meaningful questions.
JB: Harry! Our borders are closed! How did you get in? Are you featuring in a new Air New Zealand video or something? Do tell.
HS: Nah. Spoiler alert. I’m the new face of your domestic tourism campaign - ‘You Cannot Leave! Please See The Country!’ Naw, but seriously I sold my Hollywood mansion earlier this year. I was cool to pay your government's boa-constrictor-sized International Visitor levy. No worries mate! Kamate! Kamate! Kia Ora!
JB: Hey Harry you know a bit of Te Reo. How come?
HES: After refuelling Gulfy GHES in Auckland, we picked up Cindy and Neve. Cute kid. Then we zipped into to rotten-roo-ah (laughs) sorry, I mean Rotorua. Cindy had hooked up a famil for us at the Te Puia Cultural centre. OMG. I loved it. I wanted to hongi everyone but you know, Covid. My hip hop dancers learned to spin pois. I bought this greenstone tiki.
Harry pulls the tiki, attached to a Gucci gold chain from his beneath his pale pink v-low-v-neck cashmere jumper. JB notices he has no chest hairs, but a very pretty tattoo of a butterfly just below his, urm, pecs. His nails are painted alternately pink and purple.
JB: Beautiful! Harry!
HS: When I heard that tikis are symbols of fertility I bought one. Apparently, I’ve tried to have a baby with a kiwi before now, you might have heard. A Victoria Secret model. Called G... Georgia. I wrote a song about it. It’s weird how lyrics and poems just come to you sometimes when you’re not really thinking about anything. I called the song “Kiwi”.
JB: (I bet a lot of kiwis women (and men) would want to have your baby, Harry.)
It’s a great rock song. ‘I’m having a baby, it’s none of your business.’ Ha ha. Did you see a kiwi? The bird kiwi? Feathery. Short. Long beak. Shuffly. Snuffly.
HES: Yeah! Wee, little fluffballs. Way sexier than the lil British robin red-breast, our national bird. But we legged it to Queenstown (such a great name!) from Rotorua after we’d done the ad campaign biz. With Cindy.
JB: Now with your domestic tourism job out of the way, you’re down here to film the music video for your new hit single. “Psychedelic Mushroom Pie”? Interesting title. Tell me about it.
HES: (Laughs) Yeah, well, ahem, it’s old news that I like to nibble a handful of magic mushrooms occasionally. Hell, it’s been written about in Rolling Stone magazine! There is nothing like a spot of psilocybin shrooming to get the creative juices flowing. Really. And my sources tell me there used to be a bountiful supply at the head of lake Wha-kah-tee-poo. Blue meanies. Gold tops. Or do you call them gold caps?
JB: Crikey dick, I wouldn’t know. I’m your mum’s age. Past, urm, shrooming. How is your mum, Anne? Did she come on this trip?
HES: No, she stayed home. We detoured to Broome, Australia to buy her a present. I’ve always wanted to buy Paspaley pearls, The Most Beautiful Pearls in The World direct from the source. I got a string for me and one for me Mum. (Harry beamed, showing his trademark dimple. Now the most asked for cosmetic procedure in the US. Source The Sun.)
JB: I dropped my notes. I didn’t know what question to ask next. I felt like I was chairing an interview for a live audience. And not very well. I wished I could give darling Harry some help re forests-of-psilocybe-cubensis, when his eyebrow-stylist popped his head in and said:
ES: Harry me old guv. Times up sorry, luv. Gotta get these badgers waxed and trimmed before the shoot. Your convoy of Landrovers arrive in half . The dancers look brill in those crocheted romper suits you chose, Haz. We’ve peroxided their hair. Gonna look wild when they’re running through the dark fairy forest in the vid.
At that point, Harry is taking off his cashmere jumper, while I’m stashing my dictaphone. All he had on underneath was a mesh bodysuit with Stevie Nicks’ face stencilled on.
HS: ‘Janice it’s been so nice meeting you. A local. Here take my jumper. I always give my interviewers something. And you can’t have my tiki. It’s new! You and my mum would get along great. Hey, maybe we could have a cup of tea when I get back to town. We’re going to stay at a rug bay … no Blanket Bay for a few days. Some sort of resort with horse trekking and degustation grub and wine pairing and that.
I was clutching his jumper, still warm and reeking of the unisex scent, which he is the signature face of - Gucci’s Mémoire d’une Odeur, speechless, when Harry-2, his Gucci stylist walked in singing “Old Town Road.”
H2: Mate! Let’s throw on your new pearls with this 70’s crocheted, multi-coloured, bell-bottomed onesie. White Gucci snakeskin boots. You’ll be matchy matchy with the dancers. (Hums) Psychedelic Mushroom high! (H2’s pupils were the size of a Clydesdale’s hooves.) You can add a velvet beret or a corduroy cheese cutter. Plus a fur stole. It’s going to be cold and damp up there our scout, Neil, tells me. Choff these down and you’ll be toastie as a crumpet. (H2 hands HS a small pouch.)
I took that as my queue to leave. I was dying to ask for a backstage pass for Harry’s NZ tour. Harry Styles plays Auckland’s Spark Arena Monday 23rd November, 2020. (Source: Ticketmaster.) I opened the door to leave. The Harry’s waved. Smiling. They both had dimples.
HS: Janice! This guy told me in the pub last night that there is this gigantic eagle here that you can take on a scenic flight to Milford Sound. Where do I book?
I had to break it to him that no trekking operator had managed to tame an extinct Haast eagle and get a saddle on it. But that adventure tourism operators were having to get really creative to urn a crust. I guess it’s as likely as that rumoured 2020 One Direction reunion, taking place in Queenstown later in the year.
As they say in the movie biz – watch this space.
Or better still, watch Harry eating watermelon!
Janice xo
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