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SHE'S THE GIRL WHO SEEMS TO HAVE EVERYTHING – BUT LOVE HAS LEFT JOSS STONE FEELING BRUISED

Interview by Richard Barber

“You know what?” she confides. “I’d give up fame tomorrow for a solid relationship.”

The 20-year-old singer’s longing for love is easy to understand after her ill-fated first and only experience of romance – with American songwriter Beau Dozier.

 

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“Looking back now, I wonder if it really was love between Beau and me,” Joss admits.

“I think it may just have been deep infatuation based on lust.”

The pair met while they were writing tracks together for her second album. Beau was 25 and Joss was just 16.

“It would have been better if Beau and I had become friends first, but I fancied him rotten!” she explains.

“Then the bloom goes off the passion and you see things more clearly. The way he treated me broke my heart. "

But love, as Joss found out to her cost, is one area of her life that she can’t control. And she is used to being in control.

After finding huge success in her teens, she was just 18 when she took charge of her £10million fortune after firing her manager mother.

But the reasons for the professional split have never been made public. 

Finding her feet as an international businesswoman must seem like child’s play for Joss, compared with the complex world of dating.

Not that she’s against the idea of falling in love again – it’s just that she’s wary.

“I can’t trust men,” she says.

“Loss of trust is probably the biggest sacrifice I’ve suffered for being in the public eye.

"But I do trust my two dogs, my music and my mum.”

So what will she look for in a man? “He has to be nice to his mum,” says Joss.

“I know that sounds like a cliché, but I’ve discovered along the way that the guys who are mean to their mums are mean to you.”

Joss’ single status could change at any moment, and she knows it. So what kind of a girlfriend would she be?

“I think I’m a good girlfriend,” she says, with a broad grin.

“I like to look after my man. I like to cook and clean. I’m very loving, I hug a lot, and I like being loved.” 

For all that, Joss takes a cynical view of marriage.

Her parents, Wendy and Richard, split in 2004 after 20 years of marriage and three children.

“I feel no urge to be a married woman,” she says.

“But I do feel the urge to be in love, to be in a committed relationship and to have lots of children.

"I want to be in love spiritually. But contractually? I don’t think so."

Meeting The One is never easy, but fame makes it even harder, according to Joss.

“If someone’s nice to me, I can’t tell if they’re interested in me for who I am or how I am,” she admits.

“It’s made me a bit paranoid.”

When it comes to fashion, Joss’ ever-changing look has been criticised.

She’s done girlie, spiky, sexy and grungy, and has dyed her hair blue, purple and red in recent years.

“I don’t really have a ‘style’,” she explains, “and that’s the way I like it. I have one golden rule – never limit yourself to two colours.

"I have to be careful though, because I’m almost 6ft in my bare feet and sometimes, when I’m all dressed up, I think I look like a transvestite!” 

As image-conscious as Joss is, staying stick thin has never been a preoccupation.

For her latest project as the new Cadbury Flake girl, she reckons her curvy figure has been an asset.

“They chose me because I’m so normal!” she exclaims.

“I’m not one of those girls who survives on a lettuce leaf.

"I think it’s much more beautiful to have a bit of flesh on you.”

And so say all of us...

 

Joss is currently appearing in the new Flake advert. Visit www.cadburyflake.co.uk to find out more.

 

Photography: Mark Abrahams/Management & Artists, Capital Pictures

 

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