Nicola Formby | |
|---|---|
| Born | Nicola Elizabeth Formby 22 April 1965 South Africa |
| Occupation(s) | Journalist, food consultant |
| Years active | 1983–present |
| Partner | |
| Children | 2 |
Nicola Elizabeth Formby (born 22 April 1965) is a South African journalist, company director and food consultant, and a former model and actress.
Born in South Africa in 1965, [1] Formby has recalled that while she was growing up there "dogs lived in kennels outside and never ever came into the house with their muddy paws". [2] She came to England and was educated at Wellington College, Berkshire. In her teens, David Bailey photographed her for a magazine cover and said she reminded him of Julie Christie. This led to modelling work for Clairol and Wella and to TV commercials in Germany. [3]
From modelling, Formby went on to appear in the Ben Elton comedy The Man from Auntie (1990). She played the leading role of Diana, Princess of Wales, in the three-hour television movie The Women of Windsor (1992), about the lives of Diana and Sarah Ferguson. [4] [5] She also appeared in the television series Bugs and The All New Alexei Sayle Show (1995). Moving into journalism, Formby became editor-at-large of Tatler [6] and is also a food consultant for Pret a Manger and Itsu. [7]
From 1995 until his death in 2016, Formby was the partner of A. A. Gill, author and restaurant critic of The Sunday Times , who left his wife Amber Rudd for her and in his columns called her "The Blonde". [6] [3] [8] They had twins together, a boy and a girl, born in 2007. [9] Michael Bywater wrote of them "He and Nicola Formby are a Power Couple, which we hate, don't we?" [6]
A feud between Gill and Piers Morgan may have originated when Morgan described Formby as a "sex kitten on whom the mists of time had taken their toll" [10] and claimed she had shown him "porn shots" of herself. Gill said Morgan had made this up and called him a "pretty objectionable self-publicist". [11]