There’s also a great jazz festival that takes place in nearby Juan-les-Pins. A couple of years ago, I went with some friends, and Chuck Berry was performing. At the end of his set, he asked if anyone wanted to get up on the stage and dance. It didn’t take much encouragement to get me up there, and it was one of those fantastic holiday moments — dancing with Chuck Berry on a warm evening in beautiful surroundings.
My family comes from Ireland and when I was growing up, every holiday was to Lahinch, in Co Clare. It’s a seaside resort with a fabulous mile-long beach and the area is extraordinarily wild and rugged as a whole. We’d rent a little cottage and spend the days meeting up with family and friends, going to the beach or pony-trekking.
My most enduring memory of those holidays is of me and my brother running as fast as we could across a field above the beach, pursued by a pack of greyhounds. When they caught up with us, we’d throw ourselves down on the ground and cover our faces so they didn’t bite us. It sounds like a weird dream, but, in fact, it was how we spent many happy days, as we had friends who bred greyhounds for racing and we loved going to help exercise them.
The most exotic place I have ever been is Hermanus in South Africa, which, strangely, reminded me a lot of the west coast of Ireland. It’s a sleepy coastal town on the shores of Walker Bay, near the southernmost tip of Africa. It’s reputed to have the best land-based whale-watching in the world. Initially, though, I found whale-spotting rather like Where’s Wally? — someone would say they’d seen a whale and we’d all look, but nobody else would be able to see it. Then, eventually, we too would catch sight of a black line in the distance and have to feign amazement. But when they actually came in close to the shore and we could see them rolling and flipping and fanning their fins, it really was a very awe-inspiring sight.
I love Paris and have had lots of wonderful holidays there — and also the worst one ever. When I was 15, my brother and I went with our parents, grandmother and uncle. My grandmother was in a wheelchair, as was my dad, who was suffering badly from epilepsy, and my mother, whose ME was particularly bad. We went in August, when everyone else had left because of the heat, and my brother, uncle and I spent the days pushing wheelchairs along the Champs Elysées in temperatures that exceeded those in Delhi, and having equally heated arguments — largely because we were so physically uncomfortable.
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The one highlight of the trip was finding a beautiful vintage top in a flea market, which I bought for the equivalent of about £10 and is worth about £200. I’ve worn it for a couple of shoots, so it turned out to be a great investment, unlike some of my other holiday purchases. There’s nothing I like better than pottering around the local markets, and I always come back with twice the luggage I left with. I’ve found some wonderful clothes in Paris and from the market at Forte dei Marmi in Italy, but I’ve also come home with some hideous mistakes, like a pair of rubber earrings from South Africa. When I bought them I thought they were quite edgy, but when I unpacked them they were simply hideous.
Siobhan Hewlett talked to Lizzie Enfield