Alexa Chung

Model & Actress (Fashion TV's Shoot Me!) Brown hair - Green eyes Measurements: (34-24-35) Height: 1m73 (5'8) Shoe: 39 EU/8 US/6 UK Born: November 5, 1983 (age 25) Hampshire, United Kingdom Home: Hampshire Education: 3 A levels Occupation: TV presenter Employer: Channel 4 BBC Being Alexa Chung: Television's hottest property She is the girl of the moment and one of TV's fastest-rising young stars. She's beautiful, she's talented and her boyfriend's an Arctic Monkey. But what makes Alexa Chung tick? She talks to Deborah Ross about style, celebrity and, er, the joy of reading Sophocles All I know about Alexa Chung before I meet her is that she is, in no particular order: 1) young; 2) beautiful; 3) a fashion icon; 4) talented; 5) the cool girlfriend of some cool boy from some cool band. Honestly? I do not like the sound of her one bit and, frankly, resent having to drag my old arse out the door to meet her. You try dragging my old arse somewhere it doesn't want to go. It's no joke. Still, with much cajoling and giddy-upping – "Look, old arse, we all have to do some things we don't want to do sometimes; let's at least be professional about it" – I eventually get it to the pub in Islington where we have arranged to meet. She has already arrived. She is 23, the pregnant dog, and is wearing over-the-knee socks, as you might if you had her long, long legs, but does this make her any less of a pregnant dog? I think not and my old arse thinks not. On this, we are agreed. Alexa used to be a model, but is now a TV presenter. She is one of the main anchors for Channel 4's youth slot, T4, presents the daily morning music show Freshly Squeezed and is about to present a new reality show, Vanity Lair. Her boyfriend, by the way, is Alex Turner of the Arctic Monkeys. Do you, I ask, do his laundry? "No," she says. Well, now that this Alex has been covered, I feel we can properly get on with it. It's true, she is very beautiful. And she is beautifully dressed. Aside from the over-knee-socks, which is just showing off, it's a smock dress "from PPQ" and black, patent heels by "Pedro Garcia". They are both very excellent labels, I say, as if I know. I then add: but if, Alexa, you had to – had to – buy all your clothes from one high-street fashion shop, which would it be? "Hennes," she says, "and Topshop." But that's two, I protest. "I can't have two?" she queries. OK, I say, you seem very nice, and not that pregnant dogy, so you can have two. "Thank you so much," she says. She is nice, actually. And warm and friendly and funny and who knows, maybe she'll work it for my teenage son to go see the Monkeys that are Arctic. He would like that a lot. I hope she realises I was only joshing when I said she was a pregnant dog; that I was only poking fun at my sad old self. If that doesn't cut it I'll just say what I always say: it was the arse that made me do it. She used to be a model, but not any more. How come? She says she just got totally fed up of it and, in the end, couldn't even stir herself sufficiently to attend castings. Go on, I urge her, tell some stories about how awful it is being a model. Everyone gets off on those. OK, she says, one time "I did a shoot for Now magazine in Finland and it was meant to be a sexy secretary story..." She pauses, then adds: "This is such a low ebb." All the better, I say, encouragingly. "I had to swap with the other model there," she continues, "because although she was meant to be the underwear model, she started crying because her boyfriend was unhappy with her doing it. So I said: '**** it, I'll do it. I don't give a ****.' They took us to a paper factory where I had to sit on top of what was basically a massive loo-roll, while al