When we arrange to meet at a studio in Hackney days after the
riots
left east London streets charred and blockaded, Christina
Novelli's
manager asks if we can lay on a cab for her. Is she worried
about
getting mugged on her way over or is it simply because it's an
early
start? I wonder if she's going to be a bit prima donna-ish but
when
we bump into each other on the driveway in the rain, she's nothing
of
the sort. In fact she's looking a little confused and feeling, as
it turns
out, somewhat delicate after a night out with her new BFF and
fellow
Candy Bar Girl, Danni Orsi.
Actually, she's staying with Orsi, as she does now when she
visits
London from Bournemouth, where she currently resides. "I
should
probably stay with other friends but it's so much fun with Danni,
she's
ace. I'm noticing now that every night I've been there I've
cooked,
but that's OK because I love cooking. And she brings me coffee
every
morning."
Sitting on the couch with a make-up artist poking about, she's
a
ball of excited - nervous? - energy. She says she can't stop
twitching
because she's on the verge of being signed to a major record label
and
the deal's being negotiated as we speak. Despite her hangover,
the
24-year-old is fizzing with energy and her excitement is
palpable.
The day before we met, she says, she was in the studio with
Dee
Adam, co-writer for Alexandra Burke, where they knocked up a
cracking,
achingly-beautiful pop ballad. I ask if we can hear it and she
leaps
to a nearby MacBook to play us Concrete Angel. Sarah, our
make-up
artist, stops dead, mid-eyelash. Our photographer, Diana, who's
been
rearranging lights, stands stock still. I'm uncharacteristically
silent: it's
got number one written all over it.
Read the rest of this feature in the October issue of
DIVA on sale now.
