The Lipster

The last time Mariah Carey teetered through London on her favourite five-inch Alexander McQueen heels, much as she was doing last week, she was staying at the Baglioni Hotel, a swish Italian “boutique” affair in Kensington. The British press, as ever, were gleeful as reports emerged of the demands she made for her 2am arrival: a red carpet festooned with two foot tall white candles illuminating her pathway to the hotel entrance. Tragically for the global sport known as Being Aghast At The Diva Demands Of The Buffoon Who Sings Like A Whale, the Baglioni issued a statement confessing it was they, as a highly effective publicity stunt, who fed the story to the tabloids. “You think I knew if there was a candle, a red carpet, a blue carpet or green?” Mariah scoffed the following day, “I just got off a plane from Germany and I’m ‘OK, where’s the bed?’ This whole thing is not real. Showbusiness is a façade. And if at this moment the story is I’m a diva who requires red carpets everywhere I go, tra la la .”

Mariah, naturally, does little to dismantle the façade: the high-maintenance persona her own mother calls “The Myth” has created tsunami-sized waves of global publicity year after year after year. Spend a few hours with Mariah Carey and you will find little “Joan Crawford-style” histrionics (as she has cackled herself), but rather an incorrigible New York Drag Queen with whom you’d be delighted to go down the pub. She has, certainly, a very big thing about filling her dressing room with humidifiers (a life-long aid to the yodel-pop), and, yes, she can veer alarmingly into God-thanking R&B Luvvie. But she is also profoundly versed in self-parody. Here, then, in a flagrant celebration of the dying breed of the preposterous cartoon superstar, are 10 reasons why Mariah Carey is Mad: In A Good Way from someone who has watched her paint the dream up close...

1. She has a chauffeur-driven dog. For years, Mariah sought permission to have her beloved Jack Russell terrier, Jack, fly alongside her in his own First Class aeroplane seat. Ever-refused, on the grounds that he’s not a famous dog (which Mariah refutes: “Please! He has two we-sites devoted to him!”, she now has him chauffer-driven several thousand miles at a time in her very own Mercedes Benz, by her personal chauffeur Tom. One day, she notes, Jack will have “his own private jet”. Which is a typical Mariah-flavoured joke.

2. At home in her three-story New York apartment she wears Hello Kitty slippers – and sleeps in Bambi and Thumper pyjamas.

3. Before a big performance, she must adhere to “vocal rest” – which means sleeping in a roomful of humidifiers for 15 hours at a time. “Bleak,” she notes, “but it works.”

4. She’s been known to call her out-fit/jewellery/shoe ensemble “The Decadence”.

5. She’s always on an olive/almond diet she calls The Morsel Diet. This is to counter her alcohol consumption. “Truthfully,” she opines, “if I wanna have a glass of wine that’s too many calories for me to have actual meals as well. And it’s easier when you’re dealing with make-up because a sandwich is all over your face and the make-up artist has a fit.”

6. At her wedding to Sony Entertainment boss Tommy Mottola in 1992, guests included Robert De Niro, Bruce Springsteen and Barbara Streisand. What's more, her wedding dress was based on Princess Diana’s, with a 27-foot long satin train. The happy couple then lived in a 12-bedroom mansion with a recording studio, ballroom, firing range, two swimming pools and a helicopter pad. Six years later, they divorced.

7. She gets up, most days, at 5pm. AShe goes to sleep at 7am.

8. Mariah does Do Stairs. “Guess what?” she has twinkled. “I prefer the stairs. I’ve had experiences being stuck in elevators to the point I’m afraid of elevators. And now it’s gonna be, Mariah says, ‘Build me some stairs dah-ling!’” Her other favourite word, apart from “dah-ling!”, is “hideosity”.

9. A few years back when she was dating someone, she had a bathroom built in her apartment for use by men only. “I just thought, ‘they ain’t using my bathroom’,” she avered, “there will never be a seat-leaving-up in my house!’” The Boys’ Bathroom features dark marble throughout and is “one tenth” the size of her own.

10. She once owned two Shih Tzu dogs “called Bing and Bong”. Which is definitely Mad: In A Good Way...