Elle Macpherson has been on a book tour this week to promote her autobiography. The $50 hardback, simply titled Elle, was published by Penguin Books on Tuesday this week.
The key plank of the publicity tour so far has been appearances on key radio shows. Macpherson was in Australia earlier this year where she appeared on a number of TV shows.
Elle on air with Wippa at Nova 969
Her radio roadshow started with Nova 969 on Monday with an appearance on Fitzy, Wippa and Kate Ritchie. She was on the phone with the Sydney show, but in person at SCA in Melbourne.
She later appeared on the networked Hit drive show Carrie & Tommy. Elle stayed with SCA for a Tuesday morning appearance with Fifi, Fev and Nick at Fox in Melbourne.
Elle with Carrie and Tommy
In addition to the radio stops, Elle was featured on the cover of Are Media’s The Australian Women’s Weekly which carried an interview conducted by editor Sophie Tedmanson.
Highlights from the interview with Fitzy, Wippa and Kate included:
Burning her wedding dress
Wippa: Also you share the idea of burning a wedding dress, Elle, which I think a lot of people would have liked to have done in time! What did you burn?
Fitzy: That would’ve been expensive!
Elle: It was an Azzedine Alaïa dress, which was made for me and by one of the greatest couturiers of the world. The embarrassing thing was, many years later, the Azzedine museum asked me for the dress…but I couldn’t tell them it was stuck to the bar on the brownstone that I was living on Ninth Street New York City, like only nylon would stick to a bar!
Elle and sobriety
Wippa: We’ve spoken about this before…the 21 years of sobriety, which is sensational, but there was a point too where you revealed how your relationship with alcohol became a little bit too much, and you had to look after yourself
Elle: To tell you the truth…I just wanted a break and it was a fantastic time for me to address a lot of things that I hadn’t had the time to examine. It’s been amazing getting sober and staying sober.. it has been the foundation of all my of all my life, really, because without being sober, I wouldn’t be here to be sharing this book with you. Yesterday I went to a meeting, and it was really funny, because one of the guys was talking about how he was embarrassed about going to AA meetings in the beginning but he wasn’t embarrassed about falling out of a nightclub or pissing his pants…we have such preconceived ideas about how horrible life is going to be without alcohol, and I’m living proof that life can be so joyous and so free and so powerful!
Kate: What was the biggest thing you learned about yourself when you became sober Elle? What had been hidden by the use of alcohol?
Elle: I think it was the fear of being my true self.
Battle with breast cancer
Wippa: You share also, which is extremely personal, your battle with breast cancer, which I’m not sure anybody was aware of at the time, but you know, the learnings and the teachings that came from that experience too. There’s a lot of people that have gone down that path, and I think everybody knows somebody within their family that have shared in that challenging time.
Elle: It wasn’t really a battle. I mean, the battle was coming to terms with everybody else’s fear, because, you know, cancer is a subject that we’re so many people are afraid of…so my recovery from breast cancer, and I’m happy to say that I’m seven years in clinical remission, as they would say. You know, the hardest part was coming to the decision, first of all, the diagnosis, but the next part was, well, what do I do about it? And, and I was very, very, you know, it was such a magnificent story of rebirth for me.
Listen to Elle with Fitzy, Wippa with Kate Ritchie
Listen to Elle on Carrie and Tommy