Michael Peschardt interviewing
Vanessa-Mae for
Peschardt's People for BBC World Service

Michael Peschardt interviewed 6 successful women that matter in the pacific Asian region last year in 2006. Vanessa-Mae was one of them, yet as only person not actually residing in the region but merely selected as an interesting person since she has her roots in the region being born in Singapore as only child of mixed Tai and Chinese parentage. The series of interviews was already broadcasted in the Asian Pacific region last summer, but now the edition with Vanessa-Mae was shown in Europe for obvious reasons of relevance.

Vanessa-Mae was introduced by Michael Peschardt as follows:

'Vanessa-Mae revolutionized popular perception of the violin. As a child prodigy, she branched out and gave the violin a huge glamorous image.'

For the interviews in these series, Michael Peschardt spent 2 days with each of his guests in a more or less private and informal settlement. For his conversation with Vanessa-Mae, he travelled to London to meet up with her in her favourite Kensington. The interview as it was actually filmed took place in a hotel room and lounge and on the back seat of a car driving through London, see the series of screen captures shown below.

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Vanessa-Mae was very relaxed, laughing a lot during the conversation and she used her hands often to support her arguments. She was quite informally dressed in dark blue jeans, a white T-shirt underneath a short white jacket, walking on black flat shoes with pointed noses. Vanessa-Mae's make-up looked fantastic in all its simplicity rendering her quite natural looks due to a fine covering foundation crème to give her perfectly smooth skin an even more impeccable complexion, a minimum amount of some dark eye shadow and liner, yet a lot of black mascara and  pronounced soft red colour that nicely accentuated the fullness of her huge lips. Vanessa-Mae's hair was perfectly combed, hanging loose on her back and over her shoulders. The only jewelleries Vanessa-Mae had were large silver ear rings that emerged from underneath her long black hair nicely from time to time when she had her head backwards or when she brushed her hair out of her face with her fingertips. Again, as in other occasions so often, I noticed that Vanessa-Mae carefully avoided touching or rubbing her face as she always appeared consciously aware in maintaining her make-up in perfect shape.

Anyway, Vanessa-Mae was gorgeous and a very sympathetic and willing in answering all Michael Peschardt's questions. What struck me is that she is always very positive in all aspects off her life, not complaining about anything she has power over. The only two things Vanessa-Mae showed being annoyed about was the negative approach critics show towards her  - there is more to why they hate me - and the issue of being stalked. And even towards her critics, Vanessa-Mae showed no remorse and she tried to reason their attitude with, as she called it, 'my armature psychology.' Towards the stalker, she replied whitewashing his harassments with the words that she had alarmed the police because he and she needed help and that she hoped that he would respect the restraining order made by court to stay away from her.  

Part of all the interviews in this series was the question to what respect the celebrity had encountered racism in his or hers life and how this affected their careers. To this question, Vanessa-Mae answered that she had never personally encountered racism, at least that she had not noticed it. She then joked and told a story of how her father had taken her and her mother to a show on West End one day when she was still a little girl. Before the entrance of the venue was a demonstration against racism with collecting money for the goals. Vanessa-Mae's British father Graham refused to spent money with the words 'I am really wasted effort.' The demonstrators yelled at him not recognising the joke since he walked with an oriental woman and little girl, that made that he couldn't possible be a racist.

Talking about her parents, Vanessa-Mae described that they are now divorced and that her father now lived in a young funky neighbourhood whereas she resided in Kensington close to her family home, in a area where 'people are older and can be cramped sometimes.' She also told that she felt responsibility and often pressure because especially her mother spent so much time in helping her with her career.

Interesting is also in particular Vanessa-Mae's answer to the question whether she sees her talent as a blessing or as a curse, Vanessa-Mae explained ' I think it is a blessing, everyone is born with some kind of talent and you have to thank your parents and teachers for nursing that.' And then she says: 'It is great to have an amount of talent to be born with, but in the end it all comes to dedication and practising'

Are you lonely in these hotel rooms?  Vanessa-Mae: 'I have a lot of visitors in my hotel rooms, my make-up artist, my p.a, sometimes my boyfriend comes, or my very rock and roll grandmother. I was lonely as a child being 12 when I didn't control my life waiting in my room to be picked up for rehearsals or practising. Now at 27, I control my life and realise very well that all other crew members are also in their rooms holding thumbs up, now it is not lonely anymore. 

Noteworthy are Vanessa-Mae's words towards the critics and to the issue whether her good looks resulted in being seen less seriously in classical music circles when she answered: 'That probable would be an easy excuse for me to use. That can't be the only reason why they hate me so much (laughs). I've learnt over the past 10 years or so that when critics come to face something they can't quite explain in words, threatens them and they tend to write negatively. When your shows are more entertaining than the average show then they have something to pick on. They want to keep what they know safe in a little box.'  

All in all, the interview of Michael Peschardt with Vanessa-Mae was very nice. It is of course always great to see Vanessa-Mae on television and to have the opportunity to tape it - now for the first time on a hard disc recorder with DVD quality. But the interview didn't provide anything really new, it contained no information about Vanessa-Mae that was not known actually already. Perhaps, Vanessa-Mae wanted to be reserved since she is planning to publish the story of her life in her forthcoming autobiography. Issues that weren't dealt with in the conversation were like the split with her mother and their current communication and her relation with Lionel. With these unattended subjects, Michael Peschardt left interesting material to talk about unused, or perhaps Vanessa-Mae simply refused to speak about them on forehand. Moreover, a 30 minutes conversation is definitely too short to really deal in depth with the complexity and multi-faceted childhood of Vanessa-Mae. In conclusion after seeing this interview, fans of Vanessa-Mae really have a lot to look forward to awaiting the release of the autobiography.

Direct quotes of Vanessa-Mae on various topics from the interview!

On what glamour means to her:
Vanessa-Mae: 'Being a girl, people think of me as always busy with dressing up and putting on make-up, but I can't be bothered when I am home, walking my dog, on holiday, I am not wearing make-up and heels.

On adapting to the glamour coming from a sheltered life:
Vanessa-Mae: 'There was a year in between signing to the record company and the actual release, so I had time to grow into my role.  

On her image: 
Vanessa-Mae: 'There was a side of me already experimenting with clothes. I enjoy being slightly different from others, whether that is a good or bad thing, I am not sure. The real why my debut pop album received so much attention is that nobody had seen a classical violinist in a pop video, seeing me doing the things I did.

On being approached with racism herself:
Vanessa-Mae: 'To tell you the truth, I don't see it myself. I know it is there from tv, images and articles.

On her desire to be a role model for others:
Vanessa-Mae: 'Yeah, I would like to see myself as a role model. I hate it to see when people stick together in their own group. I like cross-pollination, for musicians of all natures, ages and cultures to work together, to help being less xenophobic. and for children of course who want to learn a musical instrument and to attract attention form their parents.

On seeing talents as blessing or as a curse:
Vanessa-Mae: 'I think it is a blessing. Everybody is born with a talent for something. I was a lazy child, I was not like let me practise, I needed a push every now and then. It is great to have  a certain amount of talents to be born with, but in the end it is all about dedication and practising. It is a blessing since from the age of about 12, yeah 12, I knew what I wanted to be in life, professionally.

On who she is:
Vanessa-Mae: 'My full name is actually Vanessa-Mae, with the hyphen because it is one name, Vanakorn Nicholson. Vanessa-Mae Vanakorn, that is my natural Tai father's name, Nicholson, that is the name of my British father.