Joss talks about money and idea of marriage

Posted March 25, 200817 yr

Devon soul star and new Cadbury's Flake girl Joss Stone talks about money, the idea of marriage and how she feels about her home county

The first surprise is her height: at just under six foot in her sneakers, she confounds the normal expectations, as most famous faces turn out in real life to be so much shorter than they appear on screen.

Then there is her appearance. The hair is clean, and a less-than-controversial shade of warm chestnut, but it hasn't seen a brush in a while. Wearing little or no make-up, she's dressed down today in a grey, zipped hooded top, pink T-shirt and jeans. Truly, were you to sit next to her on the bus, you wouldn't look twice.

And then she smiles that dazzling smile - all white teeth and sparkling eyes - and there's no mistaking Joss Stone.

The Devon girl - just out of her teens but with a soulful, husky voice that has already drawn comparisons with Dusty Springfield and Aretha Franklin - may have mastered the art of blending into a crowd but her extraordinary talent has propelled her to the top of the charts and of the Rich Lists.

Any desire for a bit more anonymity, though, is currently a forlorn hope, courtesy of her role in a major TV advertising campaign for Cadbury's Flake.

The second surprise is why she was chosen as the new Cadbury's Flake girl in the first place - the first celebrity face in the advert's 40-year history.

"Well, I think they wanted someone normal," says Joss, with a face-splitting grin, "not a model who blatantly doesn't eat Flakes. I blatantly do - and on a regular basis. I love chocolate.

"I'm not one of those stick-thin girls who survive on just lettuce leaves. I think it's much more beautiful to have a bit of flesh on you, and much more womanly, too."

Spend even a little time with Joss and it's difficult not to be won over by her openness crossed with a slice of sophistication as to the ways of the world borne out of her particular and peculiar experience.

Joscelyn Stoker, as she started life, was discovered at 14 when she won a TV talent show that resulted in her being flown to New York and recording her first platinum-selling album, 2003's The Soul Sessions. Two more chart-topping albums followed - she's particularly popular in America, no mean feat for a white, female, English singer - before the fairytale began to fray a little at the edges.

She may spend much of her time overseas, but Joss still has some treasured haunts around the British Isles, particularly Devon.

"I was born in Dover and lived there until I was eight, so that will always have a special place in my affections," she said. "I particularly remember eating the best knickerbocker glories ever in Dover.

"For many years, though, my heart has belonged to Devon. We lived in Uffculme and one of my favourite things to do was to walk up Corks Hill, sit down at the top and then look over the whole village."

With a life so different to that of most 20 year-olds, it's hard not to feel that Joss's premature fame has come at a price.

"Sometimes I feel that, too," says Joss. "On the other hand, if I'd remained at school and behaved just like a normal teenager, my life would have gone no- where. Anyway, I didn't like school. I'm slightly dyslexic and, although I never came across as dumb, I know the teachers either thought I was lazy or I was deliberately forgetting things.

"Did I have too much too soon? Who knows? What I do know is that, if I'd stayed on at school - unhappy and unfulfilled - I'd have ended up a bit of a waster.

"Of course, there have been times when I've been really miserable trying to survive in an adult world, times when I wanted to go back home and just be a kid again without all those grown-up worries of paying 25 people when you're out on the road and double- checking that everything is where it should be. There have been occasions when I've felt like everyone's mother - and yet they were all older than me."

But she wouldn't have swapped the experience for something humdrum.

During this baptism by fire, the marriage of Joss's parents fell apart and family life was never to be the same again.

She has an elder sister, Lucy, who wants to be a barrister and a 19-year-old younger brother, Harry.

There is also an older half-brother, Daniel, from a previous relationship of Joss's mother Wendy.

On the question of marriage, Joss said: "I'd like to be married spiritually one day, but contractually? I don't think so. I feel no need to sign a piece of paper, although I accept I might change my mind."

The trouble, says Joss, is that she never knows whether a new man is hitting on her because of who she is or how she is. Clearly, fame and fortune have a downside.

Ah yes, the money. "Now, can I set the record straight?" she asks.

"I see all these fancy sums attached to my name and, obviously, I have more money than most people my age.

"But it's nothing like the astronomical amounts printed in the papers. My record company gives me lots of money to make a new album but I have to spend most of it on musicians and studio hire and so on.

"The only time I make good money is when I'm on tour and, even then, I'm having to pay my band and the road crew."

Her single indulgence so far has been property. She bought a house for her grandmother and another for herself in Devon. Her brother Harry and two dogs - a miniature poodle called Dusty and a Rottweiler called Missy (after another major influence, Missy Elliott) - share it with her.

Joss says she likes little better than going to her mother's artist development and recording studio, Mama Stone's in nearby Wellington, which she co-owns with her second husband, Jonathan Joseph, and writing new songs.

This is a good time for Joss; she says so herself.

"I don't feel pressured right now and I'm happy. I'm spending quality time with my family, my mum, my dogs," she told me.

"I'm also thinking about new projects." Like what?

"At the moment, they're all musical but I certainly don't want to get to 60 and find I've only been a singer all my life. I'd like to go back to school one day. I'd like to train to be a midwife.

"I want to experience all aspects of life and visit every country in the world."

A touch idealistic? She widens her eyes.

"Well, why not? It's all out there for the taking."