'I respect marriage. I'd never do that to another woman': Katherine Jenkins on those false David Beckham Twitter rumours
By DAN DAVIES
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Rather than quashing the rumour, the classic music star appeared to succeed only in drawing attention to it. So why did she decide to go public?
'I wanted to stand up for myself, because I was getting abuse and harassment for several months on Twitter,' said Katherine Jenkins
In late August this year, Katherine Jenkins, the Welsh mezzo-soprano and best-selling classical artist, began writing a series of tweets addressed to her 224,000-plus followers.
‘Dear Twitter friends,’ she began, ‘I’ve read some horrible rumours on here & want u 2 know I absolutely deny I’ve had an affair with David Beckham.’
Within seconds, the Twittersphere, which up to that point had been largely ignorant of any suggestion that the stunning blonde from Neath was being romantically linked with the married former England captain, went into hyperdrive.
‘The rumours are very hurtful, untrue & my lawyers tell me actionable,’ added Jenkins moments later, as the rumour began trending on the microblogging site used regularly by 500 million people worldwide.
Then: ‘I’ve only met David twice: once at the Military Awards in 2010 & on a night out in the West End in Feb 2012.’
'I am a girl's girl and I would never do that with a married man,' said Katherine
Her fourth tweet explained, ‘We were out in a group of friends & it was just a normal fun evening out’, before she signed off with, ‘Just so we are clear I have never been on my own with him and never arranged to meet up.’
Rather than quashing the rumour, she appeared to succeed only in drawing attention to it. So why did she decide to go public?
‘I wanted to stand up for myself, because I was getting abuse and harassment for several months on Twitter,’ says the 32-year-old.
‘It was getting out of hand, and for the sake of everybody involved I wanted to make sure that people knew it wasn’t true.
'I am a girl’s girl and I would never do that with a married man, so that’s why I had to stand up for myself.’
The rumours started after Jenkins, single since her 2011 split with TV presenter Gethin Jones, enjoyed a ‘pretty random night out’ with Beckham, Prince Harry and others at the Arts Club in Mayfair.
‘In the beginning you assume it’s people putting two and two together and coming up with five. It was very, very sporadic.’
What happened on Twitter in the six months that followed, she says, was an experience she describes as ‘real-life Chinese whispers’.
By the time she issued her statement she claims tens of thousands of people had commented on the rumour.
‘It was something that was gathering speed, and it just wasn’t true and I couldn’t understand it.’
She says she felt increasingly powerless, especially when some of the malicious messages ended with ‘#fact’.
Jenkins, who certainly seems sincere, expresses surprise when I remark that, like many others, I was unaware of the gossip until she took matters into her own hands.
‘I read things that said I was doing it for attention, but I don’t need to go out and get attention like that,’ she insists.
‘That isn’t something I enjoy as part of my job, but, you know, I was fielding it constantly and it was really, really upsetting me.’
'I wanted to stand up for myself and everybody involved. I respect marriage and I respect women, so I wouldn't do that to another woman,' said Katherine
Was there any communication with Beckham before the tweets were posted or afterwards – especially given the reports that Victoria Beckham was far from impressed?
‘I think everybody spoke,’ she says, preferring not to reveal whether she spoke to Beckham directly.
The line from Beckham’s spokesman at the time was that ‘this type of nonsense on Twitter’ was something they had to deal with constantly: ‘One minute David is dead, then more scurrilous rumours – there is not one jot of truth to any of it.’
‘I wanted to stand up for myself and everybody involved,’ reiterates Jenkins.
‘I respect marriage and I respect women, so I wouldn’t do that to another woman.’
As she says this, her gaze doesn’t falter.
It’s not the first time Jenkins has decided to set the record straight. In 2008, she did a magazine interview with Piers Morgan, in which he asked whether she’d ever taken drugs.
She denied it, then a few weeks later rang Morgan to confess to having taken them several times in her early twenties.
‘It didn’t sit well with me,’ she says of her desire to conceal the truth.
‘I wasn’t prepared for the question… I had a panic and thought, “I don’t know what the right answer is here”, because if I say yes, I’m influencing a load of young people who might look up to me.
'And if I say no, that isn’t the truth. I went home that night and I couldn’t sleep. Eventually, I decided to call Piers to put it right.’
She received many positive comments after coming clean.
‘In some ways, maybe people realised I’m like them,’ she says. ‘I think this whole classical-musical thing can mean you’re put on a pedestal and can be perceived as quite saintly, and really I’m not.’
Katherine performing in Nashville, Tennessee earlier this month. She refuses to talk for 36 hours before a performance. 'I won't speak; not one word,' she said
So, does she still believe that going public on Twitter about the Beckham rumours was the right thing to do?
‘Yes. I do, because it was only going to get bigger. I wish people could have seen my (Twitter) timeline. It was gathering speed like you wouldn’t believe.’
It’s been an emotional 12 months for the former Royal Academy of Music scholar and comprehensive-school teacher who was plucked from obscurity at 23 and handed the biggest ever record deal in UK classical music.
Looking back on the year, she says it’s been ‘one of the best ever’, but it didn’t start out that way.
‘I started the year in a very different place,’ she says, referring to her break-up with Gethin Jones, whom she began dating in 2007 when he was a contestant on Strictly Come Dancing.
‘I was distraught and didn’t know what was going to happen next.’
What did happen next was that as she was nearing the end of a tour, she received an unexpected invitation from America to compete in Dancing with the Stars, the U.S. version of Strictly Come Dancing.
‘I thought this was the right time. I felt as if it were a gift that came into my life to cheer me up, do you know what I mean? It put a smile back on my face and I had the best time doing it.’
Largely unknown across the Atlantic when she joined the show, Jenkins finished in second place and found her profile transformed.
On competing in Dancing with the Stars, the U.S. version of Strictly Come Dancing: 'I thought this was the right time. I felt as if it were a gift that came into my life to cheer me up'
‘I really felt like the Americans took me to their hearts and made me feel so welcome. I wasn’t really expecting that. About 20 million people a week watch the show, and suddenly you’re walking down the street and everybody knows you and wants to talk about the dancing.’
She describes taking part in the show, which saw her lose her trademark curves due to all the dance training, as ‘the hardest thing emotionally, mentally, physically that I’ve ever done in my life’.
But she refutes any suggestion that it was part of any grand plan to crack America.
‘I think every artist wants to make it in America,’ she says, ‘but I do think sometimes it’s exaggerated that I have this thing about global domination.’
She admits to being wounded after the break-up – which both she and Jones announced on Twitter – by portrayals of her as a single-minded diva prepared to elbow aside everything for her career.
‘It was hurtful in January to read that,’ she says.
Katherine with Dancing With The Stars' Derek Hough and Maria Menounos
‘It couldn’t have been further from the truth.
'I did Dancing With The Stars as something to try and get me back on my feet, to try and make me happy again.
'I read that I did it because I’m so desperate to crack America, and as a result that’s what happened with my relationship.’
Her voice trails off and she dabs her eyes.
She readily admits she’s had to make sacrifices to get where she is, and to protect and maintain a voice that saw her win multiple Choirgirl of the Year contests as a child, smash a chandelier with a high note when she was 18 and has since made her a multimillionaire with Classical Brit Awards and eight best-selling albums to her name.
Perhaps the most radical is her refusal to talk for 36 hours before a performance.
‘I won’t speak; not one word,’ she smiles.
‘When you think about it, the voice is a muscle and it needs to be rested completely in order to recover. Even whispering is out, as it vibrates the vocal cords. It’s like walking on a sprained ankle – it’s much better to rest it completely.’
I ask her whether this is a help or a hindrance when it comes to boyfriends.
‘I think they love it,’ she laughs. ‘I can’t argue back!’
She carries a notepad or sends texts on her mobile, but after ten years of this strict regime those closest to her have learnt how to lip-read.
She also eschews alcohol, dairy products and spicy foods in the build-up to a performance.
‘It’s all about being strong and healthy. I’ve been doing it so long it becomes just like remembering to clean your teeth.’
It’s clearly paid off, because Jenkins has performed in most of the iconic concert venues across the world, met and sung for royalty and even given a private performance for Barbra Streisand.
‘I’d just got to LA and got a phone call out of the blue from (producer) David Foster inviting me to her birthday party.
Katherine and Gethin Jones broke up this year. They had been dating since 2007
'I love Barbra Streisand, but before I knew it I was put on the spot. I hadn’t warmed up, I’d just come off a long flight feeling completely jet-lagged and I certainly didn’t expect to sing.
‘Everybody was there, and I mean everybody – Sidney Poitier, Hugh Jackman, Warren Beatty – and right in the middle was Barbra. She looked like a Bond villain just by the way she was looking at me. It was like, “OK, impress me.”
'Luckily I managed to find my voice, and we talked afterwards. She seemed quite shocked that I was into her music, but she was lovely.’
Her first meeting with the Queen, meanwhile, began with her looking straight at the monarch’s feet.
‘I was invited to a lunch with the Duke of Edinburgh and Her Majesty and they put the guests in a holding room to have a couple of drinks while we waited for them to arrive.
'The corgis came in before they did, so I was on the floor, going “Gosh, how cute are you?”, when suddenly I saw them and thought, “Right, I’d better stand up.”’
This year Jenkins sang the national anthem in front of the Queen at the start of the Jubilee celebrations, and returned to the Palace for another rendition at the climax of the Olympians’ parade, when she met Mo Farah.
‘I was totally star-struck,’ she says.
‘I got really nervous walking out in front of 800 of our athletes, because I was in awe of these people; they were amazing.’
Although she now regularly finds herself in such company, the girl from Neath, who grew up on a council estate and was a self-described ‘straight-A geek’ at school, has never forgotten her roots. She’s banked millions, but claims to have never contemplated moving abroad for tax reasons.
‘For me, it really is about being where my loved ones are.’
Just two weeks before taking her GCSEs, she lost her father, who was 70, and she admits now that it took some time before she was able to properly grieve.
‘It was maybe six months afterwards. I started having terrible nightmares about him and went to see a grief councillor. It was the best thing I could have done.’
The weekend before this interview, she ran a half-marathon to raise funds for Grief Encounter, a charity for children who have lost a parent or sibling.
With a Christmas album about to hit the shelves, her thoughts are already turning to being back in the bosom of her family.
The line from David Beckham's spokesman at the time was that 'this type of nonsense on Twitter' was something they had to deal with constantly
‘Me and my sister will go to the pub, bump into old school friends and then go to midnight Mass in the church where we grew up and I was a chorister. We sing all the carols and the descants.’
But will she stay silent for 36 hours beforehand? Jenkins smiles and admits she tones down her singing when she’s at home.
Other than Christmas shopping and recording her 75-minute Christmas special for ITV – ‘It’s a big song-and-dance production that harks back to the Golden Age of Hollywood’ – the other thing occupying Jenkins in the countdown to the festive season will be the climax of this year’s Strictly Come Dancing contest.
‘After everything I’ve been through on Dancing with the Stars, I’m watching Strictly with new eyes and a new-found respect,’ she says. She sympathises with those, like Victoria Pendleton, who discover ‘the pressure can do strange things to your brain’.
Given the intensity of the relationships and the physical intimacy, what are her thoughts on the potential for romance that seems to exist between celebrities and dance partners?
‘I was very lucky that I hit it off with Mark (Ballas), my partner,’ she says.
‘All the way through the show he had a girlfriend, so we were just friends. It couldn’t have been a better scenario. I’d just come out of my situation and we just laughed a lot. You have to get on, because it’s one of the most intimate things you can do.’
Contrary to what people might say about her, she insists she can’t wait to settle down.
‘When I’m ready to have a family – and I hope to God I’m lucky enough to have a family – then I really want to enjoy that. I don’t want to be on the road like I am.
'When everything clicks into place, I’ll take time out to be a mum and enjoy it.’
As it stands, though, Jenkins is still single and fancy-free: ‘I’m still looking for Mr Right,’ she grins.
When she finds him, or he finds her, let’s just hope she thinks twice about sharing the news on Twitter.
‘This Is Christmas’ is out tomorrow. For concert dates, visit katherinejenkins.co.uk. ‘Steppin’ Out with Katherine Jenkins’ is on ITV1, 9pm, December 2
Read more: http://www.dailymail.co.uk/home/moslive/article-2236851/Katherine-Jenkins-false-David-Beckham-Twitter-rumours.html#ixzz2E2HfhYsz
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