VivaLifestyle.co.uk – 24th April, 2015

By Tereza Pevna.

Hollywood actor and now a perfume designer Richard E. Grant unveiled his second perfume Jack Covent Garden, hoping it will achieve the same success as his first fragrance Jack, which was a bestseller. We caught up with Richard at Selfridges, just moments before his meeting with fans and talked about the perfume, his secret to success and why he’s never been to Manchester before…

We’ve heard this is your first time in Manchester. How come?

Because I don’t know anybody here and I’ve never filmed here. I’ve been to Bolton and Bradford and Blackpool, Liverpool and Birmingham. I don’t know why, I’ve just never been in Manchester. The weather is stunning, it looks like South of France and I’ve been told I arrived on a very good day.

So you think you will be returning then?

I will, I will move here!

You’ve just launched your second perfume Jack Covent Garden, what’s the story behind it?

I was working as a waiter when I arrived as an immigrant from Swaziland in 1982, 33 years ago, Covent garden is a centre of theatre district and it was a scene for My Fair Lady with Audrey Hepburn, it was the food and flower, vegetable market. I read that Niall Quinn was a prostitute, who sold oranges in the theatres and she then became the mistress of Charles II. Before she had two children and she was the first woman to be a legal actor in England. Until then both parts were played by men or boys so I thought she’s struck out for women’s league before we even heard the concept. On the first night in the Opera of the theatre or the theatre or the ballet performers were always given fruit and flowers and actors and singers used ginger to clear their throats, so when I was making a second perfume I thought I wanted to have a history and personal attachment to it as well. So when I was a waiter I learnt Annie Lennox’s ‘Sweet Dreams are made of this’ it was a big hit in 1982, I listened to it on my, it was a walkman those days and that inspired me and I thought the combination of those things the first night in the theatre, Covent garden and history so I thought of orange, ginger and rose as the three key ingredients to start experiment with oils, which I bought in Grass in South of France and added musk and lime, which are the two ingredients, which are in Jack as well, so there was a continuity between them, signature. I wanted it to be unisex and have a kind of wow quality to it, I then worked with Amose in Paris and she added carrot oil, which I thought was a genius idea and that’s how it happened.

What type of person would wear the perfume?

Somebody I will always be indebted to for taking the chance on essentially an amateur perfume. I’ve done it for the love of doing it rather than because I image I will be making millions out of it. The same way I started out as an actor It’s something I felt compelled to do and the fact I make living as an actor is a surprise especially for people who said I would never make it. And same with the perfume, when I launched it at Liberty a year ago, the original one, I was told If you self finance you will never succeed, you will loose all your money, there’s 1100 released every year, so the competition is strong. But I’ve done it and it’s great!

If you could choose a celebrity ambassador for the perfume, who would it be and why?

Annie Lennox, who has became a really good friend, ironically, as I said I listened to her song. She’s been one of my best customers for Jack Perfume and she’s been saying: ‘When can I get my hands on Covent Garden?’

What made you want to do a unisex perfume?

I grew up in the 70’s and everything was unisex in that point and I found it very old fashion idea that something is a masculine perfume or a feminine perfume, because I always mix whatever I had bought before and mix them together.

How’s the perfume different from others, why should people buy it?

Because it is entirely a one man brand and I’m not the front for somebody else I’ve put my money where my nose is, if you like, I’ve not tried to copy something what already exists, my intention was to create visually and iconic looking British brand. Jack is my signature. I know what the ingredients are, where they come from. It’s not animal tested, it’s not filled with synthetics, you pay for what you get. I’ve had many people tell me, that the scent really last’s on their skin, so I stand for what is in there and the quality of perfume.

What is your secret to success?

The majority of people tell you, when you say you want to be an actor that you can’t. So once you accept that people are going to say no as though they have NO invisibly tattooed on their heads and If you are like ‘I’m still gonna try this then in a sense you armour yourself because you expect people to say no,and the nature of being an actor is that you are being rejected for a job far more often than you are accepted for a job and I suppose it really prepared me for going for business because the majority of people say you can’t do this and If you just stubbornly stick doing it because you believe in it that gets you a long way. I never give up like an old donkey unless it’s obvious it’s costing too much money or fails.

Jack Covent Garden is available at Selfridges

Getty Images – 24th April, 2015

Here are some pictures of Richard’s arrival at the Late Late Show, Dublin.

All above images © Phillip Massey & Getty Images.

Below are some pics from the actual show.

Below is a short clip from the show in which Richard is asked why he cast Gabriel Byrne as his father for the film ‘Wah-Wah’.

RTE.ie – 24th April, 2015

Richard will appear as one of the guests on Ryan Tubridy’s Late Late Show on RTÉ One on Friday night. Ryan will also be chatting to Irish acting legend Gabriel Byrne, while Christine Bleakley will tell all about her recent trip on the lovely Wild Atlantic Way. Love/Hate stars Peter Coonan and Killian Scott will be on the show discussing their new movie Get Up and Go.

Richard is in Dublin this weekend to launch his second unisex fragrance, Jack Covent Garden. In a past interview he has said that if he was ever looking for Gabriel Byrne on set, he’d find him among a group of women.

The pair worked together in 2004 when Byrne played Grant’s father in Wah-Wah – a movie based on Grant’s childhood in Swaziland during the last days of the British Empire in Africa in the 1960s.

“He was extraordinary, other than Jude Law who I’ve worked with, if you ever wanted to know where Gabriel was at any point of the day, you’d just need to look where there was a group of women clustered and in the middle of them would be Gabriel Byrne – that tells you about the man’s charisma”.

The Late Late Show is on RTÉ One on Friday at 9:35pm.

For those interested, fans have the opportunity to meet him at Brown Thomas from 1.30pm on Saturday afternoon.

In other news, Richard will be hosting the 2015 International Opera Awards. The event will showcase live performances by singers including Aleksandra Kurzak, Ildebrando d’Arcangelo and Justina Gringyte, and will be held at the Savoy Theatre on Sunday April 26, at 7pm.

ManchestersFinest.com – 23rd April, 2015

Entering the Personal Shopping area of Selfridges Exchange Square it was hard not to feel a little nervous at who I was there to meet. As a drama student at college I had spent many an evening watching my VHS copy of Withnail & I and now here I was about to come face to face with one its iconic stars, Richard E. Grant.

Of course since then Richard has become, not only an actor but a director, author, screenwriter and most recently a fragrance creator. It is for the latter that I got to bag 10 minutes with him for Manchester’s Finest.

MF: So Richard, you have created not one but two fragrances now – Jack and Jack Covent Garden, which you are here for today. How did it all come about?

R: When I was 11 and ¾’s I had an enormous crush on an American girl, who were few and far between in Swaziland where I grew up. Her name was Betsy Clapp and she was only in Swaziland for 6 months, I’ve since tried to track her down on facebook, I don’t know if she’s back in America or even if she’s alive.

At the time I wanted to give her a gift and on the pocket money I had saved I couldn’t afford to buy her perfume. I then raided all the rose and gardenia petals in my parents garden (to the fury of my Mother) and boiled it up in sugar water, which I thought would do the trick, in jam jars believing that in two weeks they would miraculously transform into perfume. Of course they just turned into stink bombs!

I’d always compulsively sniffed and smelt everything in sight, which I realise from what people have told me – including my parents- is not what other people do. I still don’t fully understand though because animals always do…but my Mother would say ‘You’re not an animal’! Anyway, fast forward four and a half decades and I was on holiday in the Caribbean when a fellow house guest Anya Hindmarch, the handbag designer, took me aside because she saw me smelling everything in sight and she said ‘Are you going to do something about this?’ and I said ‘What…psychiatrically?’ and she said ‘No no no…are you serious about doing this? ’ and I said ‘Yes’ and she gave me a list of people to go and see about creating a fragrance and then it went on from there.

Following the success of his first fragrance JACK, which instantly became a best seller when it launched last April, Grant set about creating a second scent.

Jack Covent Garden is a unisex perfume exclusive to Selfridges Manchester for a year. It’s clear this is something he is passionate about and refreshingly Grant is heavily involved in the fragrance every step of the way, unlike a lot of celebrities who just put their name to a scent.

Jack–Covent-Garden-bag

MF: So what is the inspiration behind Jack Covent Garden?

R: I had worked as a waiter in Covent Garden many years ago when I arrived in England as an immigrant and, because of My Fair Lady it was iconically linked with the fruit and veg market there till1973 so the notes I had in my head were orange, rose and ginger. On a first night actors are always given fruit, flowers and often use ginger to clear their throats.

I was also inspired by Nell Gwyn, the mistress of Charles the II, who lived in Covent Garden and was an orange seller and an actress. It was because of her relationship with the King that he agreed to legalise women to become actors (as previously all the theatre roles had been played by men, even the womens’ parts). Nell struck out for women’s lib even before we heard the term.

So, off I went to Grasse in the South of France and got all these miniature bottles of oil and mixed them together. I worked with Alienor Massenet in Paris who then added pimento and carrot oil, which absolutely fits with the Covent Garden theme.

MF: You have many talents Richard but the one most people associate you with is the role of Withnail in Withnail & I. If he was to create a fragrance, what would it smell of?

R: Oh I guess I’d have to say patchouli oil, marijuana, Petrus wine, Deep Heat and, of course, lighter fuel!

MF: Withnail & I came out in 1987 so will soon be celebrating its 30th anniversary. Any plans for a sequel?

R: I’m afraid there won’t be because Richard Griffiths, who played the fabulous Uncle Monty, has now passed away. And yes Withnail was alive at the end but the man the film is based on originally, died of throat cancer when he was 48 so we can’t really do that as I’m now 10 years older than him. So no plans, well, not that I know of.

MF: What was it like filming Hotel Secrets where you take a look at some of the most remarkable hotels in the world? And can we look forward to a third series?

R: It was a real privilege to do, my favourite hotel had to be the Ballyfin in Ireland, it was unbelievable. They’ve changed the commissioning editor at Sky Atlantic though and they are not doing another series so they have just endlessly repeated the first and second series. They are not doing any more which is a real shame.

MF: You have been to many places around the world but is this your first trip to Manchester?

R: I thought it was but this morning someone tweeted a picture of me at a book signing at Waterstones in Manchester 20 years ago. I was on a book tour around England so I never spent a night in Manchester. To my shame didn’t remember it. I tell you what is extraordinary, in comparison to London, people here speak to you…in the shops, in the Hotel, in the street.

MF: We heard that you never miss putting pen to paper and keep a daily diary. Are then any plans to publish it at some point?

R: Maybe, who knows? Never say never as Bond says!

MF: Finally, what’s the next project you are working on?

R: I’m doing a 10 part series of Jekyll and Hyde, playing the Head of the Secret Service. It’s being done by ITV at the moment and filmed all around London, set in the 1930s. It centres around the grandson of Jeykll and they have rebooted the format just like they did to the latest Sherlock with Benedict Cumberbatch.

JACK COVENT GARDEN, comes in an 100ml bottle and is ‘sleeved’ inside a vintage style Union Jack calico drawstring bag with a luggage label attached to personalise once opened. It is exclusive to Selfridges.

www.selfridges.com

CarouselPR – 22nd April, 2015

From the seminal Withnail & I to the classic Gosford Park, US TV show Girls to Spiceworld: The Movie, Richard E. Grant is – by any standard – a genuine A-lister. On Saturday, he visited Selfridges Exchange to launch his second unisex fragrance, JACK COVENT GARDEN.

JACK COVENT GARDEN is no celebrity perfume – fragrance is a lifelong passion for Grant and his first release, JACK (with lime, mandarin and marijuana!) became a best seller when it launched last year.

Taking inspiration from his early days as a waiter working in the area, JACK COVENT GARDEN features oranges, roses and ginger – “the three key ingredients I thought of, because on opening nights actors are very often given fruit and flowers and will use ginger to clear their throats” – and is exclusive to Selfridges.

Our role was to manage this exciting press launch – booking and overseeing interviews and photography with key North West media such as the Manchester Evening News, Living Edge, Manchester Confidential Manchester’s Finest, Viva, Foxley Docket and bloggers.

NOTE: The above is from a press release from Carousel PR.

REG To Interview Elaine Paige After Farewell Performance.

The tiny first lady of the West End will light up the screen in a special farewell, one-night-only performance from the Albert Hall, to mark the end of her 50-year live touring career.

Featuring her much-loved signature tunes from Evita, Cats and Chess among others, the 94-minute performance is followed by an interview – filmed live – by the mischievous Richard E Grant, most recently seen in Downton Abbey and on his Sky TV series on luxurious hotels.

“I’ve known Richard for a while – he has a good sense of humour,” she says cheerily. “He does that hotel programme and I saw him presenting one from that wonderful Ballyfin Hotel in Ireland, so I’m going there later in the year for a week’s break.”

Live screenings tomorrow at Belfast Odeon, tickets £15/£12.50 concession, and Omniplex Dundonald, tickets £12 adult, £9 student/pensioner and £8 for a child. Both start at 7.15pm.