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Top Table
by Simon Mills Daily Mail 27 June 2005
Dines with Darius Danesh at the Chefs Restaurant, Rixos Hotel, in Belek, Turkey. Each week a celebrity joins our gastronome for an intimate lunch. How indiscrete will they be as the conversation flows ?
One minute I am enjoying a holiday in a 5 star hotel in southern Turkey and the next I realised I am standing next to Darius Danesh, all 6 ft 4 in. of him, Bollywood handsome in yellow trunks and Jackie O sunglasses so I ask him out for lunch. We choose the plush hotel's top end, school of Alain-Ducasse-esque chef's restaurant. As we sit down, Darius warns me that people may talk if they see us together.
"I only have to have a coffee with someone and the papers say I'm getting married," he said. "You have to laugh". So he never dated Geri Halliwell ? "No we're just friends. We meet occasionally - that's it. I'm dating Natasha Henstridge (star of Species and The Whole Nine Yards). We've been going out for a year and we're happy". Natasha and Darius couldn't be more different. He is dark and exotic, she is a peaches and cream, Daisy Duke type. He lives in London, she lives in Los Angeles. He grew up in posh Edinburgh with Doctors for parents, she was raised in a Canadian trailer park by her motorbiking Pop. He is 24, she is 31.
Does the age difference bother him ? "Not a bit. I'm just happy to have found someone who loves, respects and understands me. It costs me a fortune in mobile phone bills, though. Last year, my bill was obscene - what would amount to a half decent salary in some parts of the country."
The relationship survived a humiliating start. Darius had arranged a pool side first meeting with Natasha, who he'd picked to star in his video. Unfortunately, the singer Jay Kay was lying by the pool and promptly pushed Darius in the deep end, blowing his cool and dampening his pride. Luckily, Natasha saw the funny side.
We survey our surroundings. I am not into marble opulence, but Darius likes it. "I am half Scottish and half Persian," he explained in the laconic brogue of the Scots middle class. "The Persian bit of me loves a bit of over the top flamboyance but the Scottish side is more cautious."
"I am generous with other people, but can be a bit tight when it comes to spending money on myself." I assure him that lunch is on me.
You won't have heard much from Darius for a while because he's taken a year off. Not to plumb creative blockages or to take a series of holidays but because his father was dying. Dr Booth Danesh, a consultant gastroenterologist, was diagnosed with cancer of the lymph glands, which quickly spread to his bone marrow and to his spine. He was given only months to live. "Suddenly everything was put into perspective" says Darius. I took the decision to stop recording music so I could be with him. It was a very emotional time for us all" So Darius put his career on hold and tended to his deteriorating father. Despite an aggressive course of chemotherapy and complimentary treatment Booth's grave condition worsened. "My Dad died, basically" says Darius "his heart stopped for a period of time and I didn't think he was going to make it" then something miraculous and medically inexplicable happened. He got better.
"He clung on for a day, then a week" says Darius. "We had an amazing three months where we thought we were gifted with an extra helping of precious family life."
Booth is now in remission and is busy writing a book about his experience. "My Dad has a strong mind and simply convinced his body that he was going to get better".
The experience has had a profound effect on Darius. He tells me that any success is now "relative" and his proudest career achievement is not his first number one but reaching number six with Live Twice, a song he wrote for his Dad.
Darius has matured out of all recognition from the cocky, showbiz ninny who did the buttock clenchingly bad performance of Hit Me Baby One More Time on TV's Popstars.
These days, he's writing songs for a Hollywood movie, on dinner dating terms with Simon Cowell and can count Steve Lillywhite, the U2 producer, as part of his team.
As the aquatechnics of the hotel fountain kick in behind us, I tell him of my Father's Day - home made cards and breakfast in bed. He had headed up to Edinburgh.
"To be honest," he says, removing his Jackie O glasses, "I thought I'd seen my last Father's Day."
Darius ate roasted apricot stuffed with cream, white melon, cheese and pastrami.
Silence of the Lambs dorsal lamb slices, flavoured with cumin and garden green, grated cheese and mustard.
They both drank mineral water (it was too hot for wine !)