Interview: Charlie Dimmock - Why on earth does everyone keep on about

Sunday Mirror, May 28, 2000 by CAROLE MALONE

CHARLIE Dimmock is wearing a T-shirt that has Truth and Lies emblazoned across her unfettered bosoms. Which seems appropriate, because LIKING the woman who has been hailed as "horticultural Viagra" and BELIEVING what she says she's all about are two entirely different concepts.

It's impossible not to like the woman who emerges from a posh London restaurant wearing a tatty old T-shirt, a mile-wide smile and clutching a large glass of white wine.

The ruddy face is bereft of make-up, save for a lick of mascara, the strawberry blonde mane, which hasn't been cut (or brushed by the look of it) for two years, is floating seductively on warm summer air and the curvaceous bum is encased in jeans that have seen better days.

Yet this is the woman whose jiggling bosoms have armies of middle- aged men praying for rain and a continuous cold front.

One lovesick writer recently eulogised that at a dinner party every one of the assembled males said they'd rather go to bed with Charlie Dimmock than Caprice because she looked like a "half pint of scrumpy and a come upstairs and see my rubber plants" kinda gal.

Yet confront Dimmock with her sexy image and she'll feign simultaneous shock and surprise. " I've never been sexy in my life," she says. "I was the girl at school and college that no-one wanted to go out with."

I say that's hard to believe. Even as we sit in the gardens of the restaurant (Charlie has been entertaining the media as the new face of Wedgwood China) men's heads are swivelling dangerously.

Charlie dismisses their attentions with her big hearty laugh, claiming that hardly anyone ever recognises her.

"Why on earth would anyone think I'm sexy?" she asks incredulously. I tell her it could be because her nipples have become a national institution, and because she seems to like being photo- graphed in various states of undress.

First she posed for a photograph as Botticelli's Venus, where just a few tiny pieces of ivy covered her blushes. Then there was one where she lay draped across a bed in stilettos and very little else and another where she lay naked (almost) in a bath of popcorn.

"It was all very professional," Charlie says defensively, insisting that she had no idea the pictures, which appeared on the front cover of the Radio Times, were going to cause such a furore. "They didn't tell me I was going to be the cover," says Charlie. "I just thought it was going to be a little story inside."

And this is where Dimmock lets herself down. She's been on TV for too long to play the "naivete". This is a woman who was catapulted into the Big League the moment her boobs became the subject of national debate. But still Charlie refuses to acknowledge the helping hand sex has given her career.

"I am bored with people talking about my boobs," she says. "It was funny at first but it just keeps going round and round and round again."

I tell her she could stop it going round if she started wearing a bra. "I have worn a bra on Ground Force lots of times and people haven't noticed," she says.

"If I'm doing physical work they do ride up."

So get one made that doesn't..."Then you're into sports bras and they're incredibly tight."

Although she'd never admit it, Charlie knows her naughty image is a ratings winner. And there's nothing wrong with that - except when you try to pretend it's not.

"I think it's very sad that it took a story about me being bra- less to raise my profile." she says. "I thought people were just interested in my gardening."

Dimmock seems worried I'm accusing her of cashing in on her fame. I tell her that it's not a crime, it's what famous people do.

So what does her partner of the last 10 years, pond wholesale supplier John Muchet, think about his woman being lusted after by a nation of trowellers and mulchers?

She thinks for a few moments and then chooses her words carefully. "He knows that's not who I am. He understands it's just a shot for a magazine. He knows it isn't me."

John and Charlie live in a rented ramshackle cottage in Romsey, Hampshire. The girl who once aspired to being a forensic scientist (until she realised she'd have to study physics and chemistry) drives a battered old second-hand car, and is considering buying a house but thinks "everything is way too expensive".

She says the most expensive thing she's bought with her new-found wealth is a pair of gold leather sandals which cost pounds 200 and of which she moans: "There's nothing to them either."

So, does the fact she now earns so much money (there are rumours of a pounds 500,000 book contract and lucrative sponsorship deals) create any problems between her and John?

"Absolutely not," she says. "Anyway it's not as if we do anything different. The things we used to spend our money on before were holidays and eating out.

"The only difference now is that we go out twice a week instead of just once. And anyway I squirrel most of my money away for a rainy day. I like to know it's there if times get tough."

Charlie is reluctant to talk too much about John, one suspects because John wouldn't like it. But she does say he's not particularly enamoured with the fame game.