ONE NIGHT IN TORONTO
(The big ‘Stripping for Freedom’ interview is in three parts – this is part one)
What follows is the transcript of an exclusive interview which took place on the evening of August 1st 2009 in celebration of Yorkshire day. This interview with Canadian celebrity, fashionista and style guru, Leonora Soculitherz was obtained after painstaking negotiations with her only authorised and official UK Literary Agent, Tony Robinson (aka Nord Baldrick - in Scandinavian countries). Ms Soculitherz has refused all visitors and interviews since returning to Canada after her latest, very stressful, investigative assignment in the UK. This assignment is described in her new, unputdownable, ultimate page turner – ‘Stripping for Freedom’. Ms Soculitherz insisted on an e-mail interview with her in Toronto and Mr Robinson in Scarborough, or further away from her if he could manage it.
TR: This was the first time you’ve been to the UK since working with me in your 2004 book ‘Buzzing with the Entrepreneurs’ – have you seen many changes in those five years?
LS: In London I was surprised at how invisible the self employed and small business owners are to government policy and how the fat cats and leading politicians are allowed to just get fatter, considering everything they touch turns to dust. Plus I noticed that there are even more people wearing fleeces in Scarborough. I never imagined that any of these things were possible.
TR: Why did it take you so long to come back to the UK?
LS: It wasn’t for a shortage of offers from my publisher to do another investigative assignment in the UK. It was really just down to the fact that I couldn’t face the prospect of working with you again.
TR: What changed your mind?
LS: I was told that you’d found God and were less bizarre. Also it was a well paid, challenging assignment. The assignment certainly proved challenging but the description of you was a total lie. You hadn’t found God but a D…O…G, called Shaggy, in a Rescue Centre.
TR: Not fair. It is a faith that Shaggy and I share in backwards looking – it makes what’s in front of you more unexpected and exciting. Anyway, lots of people find new beliefs in later life. You’re just turning the big 40 - hasn’t your value set changed?
LS: Gee thanks for telling everyone. Delete that - next question?
TR: In ‘Stripping for Freedom’ for the first time, in one of your books, there is a love interest. Yet at the end of the book it is unclear whether you and ‘Awake the Volcano Within’ motivational guru, Ant Cracie, are still an item. Are you?
LS: No comment. These questions are rubbish - next?
TR: My follow up question to your answer to that last question would have been ‘Did you cry yourself to sleep like Peter Andre did after he split with Katie Price?’
LS: It would have been another rubbish question - I’ve never heard of these people!!!
TR: Well Katie Price was better known as a celebrity glamour model called Jordan renowned for her enhanced breasts which she’s now had slightly un-enhanced… she presents TV programmes and allows cameras into her home to see her relationship with her celebrity singer husband, which is just off, sings but can’t sing and writes best selling novels by audio and plays Polo as the celebrity Katie Price now – it’s a bit complicated really…..
LS: Look – you’re my agent. Ask me questions about ‘Stripping for Freedom’!!!!
TR: OK but I thought they were damn interesting questions. I’ve got one about everyone’s new fave, Lady Gaga, and that she puts her success down to the fact that she realised when she was stripping that people took more notice of her - but I suppose your book isn’t really about proper stripping is it?
LS: Well the whole book is an expose (joke). You’re right. I use the notion of stripping for a living, as told to me by my friend K, as a metaphor for what you need to do and know in order to escape your sad, corporate cubicle and go it alone in your own enterprise?
TR: Why did you only interview entrepreneurs that no-one has ever heard of?
LS: In a word – authenticity.
TR: Oh. What would you like a question on next? I’ve got one here on your fashion advice on Spanx and tights and leggings or on the all powerful global leadership network - Tochen?
LS: Tochen.
TR: OK then. Would I be right in saying that you regard the secretive, not so secret now, secret global network – Tochen – as being responsible for many of the secrets we’ve yet to explain or uncover?
LS: What?! Have you read my book? It’s not secret just because they don’t have a building or a logo. Everyone knows that the richest and most powerful people in the world meet together - often before they even become famous or really influential. For example, they meet together in societies at university or in groups linked to their political or religious beliefs. Collecting personal data is one of the things that they all have in common. This is one of the reasons why so many confidential, public databases are left lying around for anyone to find - they’re probably duplicates that they haven’t been able to swap amongst themselves to complete their collection. All I uncover is just how pervasive the ‘daddy network of them all’ is – Tochen.
TR: That’s OK then. I liked your fashion advice and descriptions of Scarborough seagulls better anyway. Finally to close this first part of our interview – in a word - to what do you put down the cult of Soculitherz?
LS: As your government would say - transparency
_____ End of Part One__
