Wretched humiliation of Caprice

Bad year: Caprice
The Weekender

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At this time of year Highbury Corner Magistrates' Court is witness to the crimes and misdemeanours of the festive season. Inside the Sixties glass and concrete block on Holloway Road, those who have had one too many at a Christmas or New Year's party and have ended up on the wrong side of the law parade through the dock. It is the last place you would expect to find a selfstyled supermodel, actress, singer and entrepreneur.

But tomorrow Caprice Bourret is due in the dock, having been arrested and charged with drink-driving just before Christmas. She was pulled over in her Mercedes as she was driving home from a Christmas party in the West End and was held in police cells for several hours after she allegedly argued with officers who ordered her to take a breath test. "Do you know who I am?" she is said to have protested.

Caprice's arrest and court hearing are a fitting end to the worst year of her personal and professional life. "Just when she thought it could not get much worse, it has," says one former colleague. "She is very down."

It has been a wretched 12 months for Caprice. The woman whose face adorned almost every glossy magazine and who had her own TV show has struggled to maintain her profile and her business success. She appeared on the much-criticised Celebrity Big Brother and got a small part in 3 Crosses, a low-budget Irish gangster flick with a dubious cast, including Gail Porter and Uri Geller.

The model who once had lucrative contracts to promote cosmetics is now "The Face of Paradise Poker", an online betting company. Most humiliating of all, a few months ago she was forced to pay back libel damages to a Sunday newspaper which she had successfully sued over claims that she was a "gold-digger". She handed back the money when it emerged she had used a forged letter to win her case.

The decline in Caprice's professional life has been mirrored in her personal life. After her two-week fling with England Ashes hero Kevin Pietersen last year, the 34-year-old is single again and no nearer to settling down and achieving her dream of having a family. She lives alone in a mansion in Surrey with only her chihuahua, Stinker, for company.

Key friends and advisers have walked away from her. She currently has no agent and no public relations adviser. Her last agent, Vic Murray of RDF, and her PR adviser, Alison Griffin, quit three months ago. The pair will not discuss the split but observers blame Caprice's "unreasonable demands". One said: "She never listens to advice and when things goes wrong she blames those whose advice she has ignored. It's hopeless."

Recently filed accounts for her company - Caprice Enterprises Ltd - reveal that her income has fallen from £306,000 in 1999 to £208,000 in 2004. Her business interests, which once spanned high-profile magazines, television, singing and acting, now consist mainly of a hair-care and lingerie company run from a private home she owns in Camden Town. In a sign that she is contemplating life after "being Caprice", she recently dramatically increased contributions to her pension fund. She has poured almost £150,000 into the fund.

Caprice is due to fly back into Britain for her court hearing. She spent Christmas in her home town of Los Angeles being comforted by her mother, Valerie, followed by a winter sunshine break in the Caribbean where she was photographed last week learning to surf. Friends in the US say she is complaining that she feels isolated and betrayed. "She thinks she is losing her money-making profile," one reveals. "She says she has few friends left inside or outside the [modelling and entertainment] industry."

Where did it go wrong? After all, Caprice had a shrewdly calculated blueprint for success, built on ambition, fuelled by a healthy desire for money and helped along the way by a liberal dose of American opportunism.

Caprice burst - literally - into public consciousness in 1996 when she appeared as a Wonderbra model. She was dubbed the "Hottest Blonde on the Planet". There was a documentary, Caprice: The Making of a Supermodel. Barely one year into her UK career, she was famous enough to be known by only her first name.

But she was no Madonna. As one former associate puts it: "Caprice liked to dream big, but that is what her ideas were - dreams, fantasies. She was very pushy but she did not have the talent or the guile to get as far as she wanted. Her ambition has alienated friends, lovers, not to mention people - such as agents - who should be supporting her."

Observers say the problem with Caprice was that there was always less to her than met the eye. When she arrived in London she played the celebrity "It" girl. In a documentary series, Filthy Rich: Daddy's Girls, she claimed to come from a moneyed family who lived in a security-screened Hollywood mansion. In fact, she was raised - mainly by her single mother - in a three-bedroom bungalow in a shabby suburb of Los Angeles called Whittier. Her father was a used-car salesman who split from her mother when Caprice was five.

Caprice always claimed that her natural beauty was just that - natural. But she never managed to shake off persistent rumours that she had had her breasts enlarged, her nose altered and her lips injected with collagen. Her first modelling agent and a TV producer claimed she had gone under the knife. Caprice hotly denies the charge.

She always insisted that she was seeking emotional security and professed her love for English men. But some former associates say the kind of security she was after was more financial than spiritual. "She plans everything - even down to the men she goes out with," one former friend told the Standard.

The men she has dated have certainly been conspicuously wealthy. She has appeared on the arm of multi-millionaire London-based property developer Robert Tchenguiz, former Arsenal captain Tony Adams, the late George Best's son, Calum, and latterly, cricketer Kevin Pietersen.

Her final fling was the most embarrassing of all. "Pietersen won the Ashes and the next thing you knew Caprice was on his arm while he was on tour in Melbourne," one male friend told the Standard. "I tried to stop her but she never listens to advice. It was such an obvious publicity stunt to raise her profile and it backfired because when Kevin dumped her he said the whole relationship had been a terrible mistake. She even lost money because she cancelled lucrative contracts to be with Kevin."

Ten years after she arrived in Britain, Caprice has achieved few of the goals she set herself. She is not a supermodel, nor a successful actress, nor a singer. Friends say the woman who was once a regular on the party scene now spends most of her time in her Surrey home. "Since her arrest she's hardly been seen. She went to one party I can recall but she spent most of her time in the VIP room sipping water and chatting on her phone." Now she is facing the public humiliation of a driving ban, a hefty fine and a criminal record.

How is she feeling? The Standard tried to contact her. Without an agent or a PR adviser, she is hard to get hold of. We finally tracked down Gemma Thomas, her personal assistant, who also helps to run Caprice Lingerie. Thomas refused to answer questions about her boss but said Caprice would respond to an email inquiry. She did not.

At Highbury Corner Magistrates' Court, Caprice will doubtless reflect on what remains of her career - not to mention the cold, unpalatable irony of her situation. She left the US to escape the kind of financial problems that afflicted her mother. A few years ago, penniless Valerie Bourret was arrested on charges of credit-card theft. She had hatched a plot to defraud retailers with a young male accomplice and was given three years' probation. This week it is Caprice, the one-time golden girl, who finds herself in court, facing the prospect of public ignominy.

You never know, it might just turn out to be the high-profile appearance that will resurrect her stalled career.

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