The ballad of the billionaire

Gavanndra Hodge10 April 2012

Kirsty Bertarelli is an intriguing conundrum. The 38-year-old Staffordshire-born former Miss UK is, according to the Sunday Times Rich List, the richest woman in the country. She is married to Ernesto Bertarelli, a Swiss pharmaceuticals entrepreneur, and together their fortune is estimated at £5.95 billion. They live between Geneva, Knightsbridge and Gstaad, are very active philanthropists and have three young children. And yet here I am, at Edinburgh Castle, waiting for Kirsty to begin her set as the support act for Simply Red frontman Mick Hucknall. She soon appears, brightening the drizzly evening in a one-shouldered silver minidress with matching shiny ankle boots. 'I am so happy to be here!' she shouts, before breaking into the title track from her new album

Elusive

By rights Kirsty should be on a superyacht cruising exclusive turquoise waters, but instead she is shimmying about the stage with a guitarist in a kilt. When she sings 'Black Coffee', the song she wrote after first meeting Ernesto, which All Saints recorded and which went on to become a number one hit, she beams with delight as the audience wave their hands in time to the melody. Among them is her husband, sitting near the stage in a crisp blue shirt and cargo trousers, taking photos on his phone and punching his fist in the air.

Money can buy many things, but it cannot buy a good voice, natural exuberance or charisma. Kirsty has all three. Her voice is strong, big for her petite frame, although it can also be breathy and intimate. She writes good solid pop music. But still, one can't help but wonder, why is she doing all this?

'When you have a passion for something, when you are very creative, you can't just let go of it, it is always there,' she explains over a Caesar salad and Coke earlier that day. Her accent is a melange of Euro VIP and Chelsea girl. She is tanned and fit, in faded jeans and a cream vest. Her twinkly blue eyes have a hint of mischief to them and she laughs easily. She is neither grand nor distant, although a Swiss PR man called Paco does sit with us, silently, for the duration of the interview.

Kirsty Roper, as she was then, was born in Oulton, Staffordshire. The youngest of three children, her father ran the family ceramics firm Churchill China. 'I had a very rural childhood, with a beautiful home and loving parents. We had a tennis court and played tennis all the time. We all had horses, although I wasn't as good at riding as my sister.' Kirsty's passion was for music and performing; her mother is musical, and together they would do amateur operatics. After O levels at Howells boarding school in North Wales, Kirsty decided to pursue a career as a singer-songwriter, dabbling in modelling to pay her way. She was as surprised as anyone when, after her agent entered her for Miss UK aged 17, she won the competition and went on to come third in Miss World in 1988. 'I'm quite proud of it, but I quickly realised being a beauty queen wasn't something I wanted to do,' she later said.

Armed with her victory tiara, she moved to London, to a bachelor-girl mansion flat off Park Walk in Chelsea, bought for her by her parents. She had a busy King's Road social life, a BMW convertible, and a habit, upon making new friends, of reading their future in their palms and writing poems about them, which she would then present to them. 'I was always very creative, I always kept diaries. I was interested in writing down people's stories when I met them. I used to love writing those little poems. It is just an interest in people, a sort of a connection really.'

Kirsty sees this as the genesis of her songwriting urge, and while she still did a bit of modelling on the side, her energies were devoted to making music. 'I was going round different studios, not particularly nice ones, just desperately trying to get a contract, to make a success of myself. I was always writing lyrics on anything I could find: napkins, bits of paper, cigarette packets.' By the time she was 24 her father's company had gone public, and Kirsty was bought a house in South Kensington and given a £3 million trust fund. Still, she pursued her chosen career and began working with the DJ Gary Davies, recording in a makeshift studio – a bedroom with mattresses pushed against the walls. A recording deal with Warner was in the offing, but then something happened that both kick-started and stalled her recording career. Kirsty met Ernesto Bertarelli.

Ernesto's family firm, Serono, was founded in 1906 by an Italian, Cesare Serono. The pharmaceuticals company was initially run, and later bought, by Ernesto's grandfather Pietro and subsequently taken over by his father Fabio. Ernesto was born in Rome, raised in Switzerland and gained an MBA at Harvard Business School. His father died prematurely, of cancer, in 1998, leaving Ernesto, aged 32, as owner of the company (he had been made CEO in 1996) and he spent the following decade capitalising on his father's legacy, turning Serono into one of the world's most successful biotechnology companies, doubling the yearly revenues to over $2 billion.

In 1997 Ernesto was holidaying off the coast of Sardinia, staying on his 128ft yacht Vava. At a dinner with friends, he was introduced to Kirsty, who was then in her late twenties and single after a two-year relationship with the conservationist Damian Aspinall. It was, she says, love at first sight. 'You know when you fall for someone, when you talk to them and you start to go red. I became very bashful and he had the same response to me. We only had eyes for each other.' Kirsty returned to London and spent two weeks staring at her phone. 'I was hoping he would call and thank God he did.'

Falling in love with Ernesto inspired Kirsty to write 'Black Coffee', the lyrics charting the narrative of their romance: Night swimming/Beach walking/Always silent/Never talking/Then you call my name/And I know inside I love you – and then later – Daydreaming/Chain-smoking/Always laughing/Always joking/I remain the same/Did I tell you that I love you? And while it must have been galling for Kirsty to see her words and melody turned into a vehicle for All Saints, she got her man. They married in 2000, in a marquee in Geneva, and in front of their 250 guests Kirsty sang 'Black Coffee'. 'I was elated that my song had been so successful, but it was a double-edged sword, and by singing it at our wedding I felt like I reclaimed it for myself.'

This would surely have been the time to forge a music career, to build on the international success of 'Black Coffee', but although Kirsty continued to write songs for herself and to put on impromptu performances for friends (Frank Sinatra tunes are a favourite), babies, and later boat racing, took over the Bertarellis' lives. The couple had three children in rapid succession, a girl and two boys. 'When you have a child you just want to devote yourself to them, all your energy and creativity gets poured into them. I was overwhelmed with my love for my children,' she says. And then there was the America's Cup, a highly competitive, wildly expensive yacht race that Ernesto's team, Alinghi, won in 2003 and 2007. He was the boat's navigator in 2003 and its afterguard runner in 2007, as well as heading up the team, and for three months in 2007 Kirsty and their family lived on Vava in Valencia. The project took up nearly ten years of their lives and the current hiatus is only because Ernesto is waiting for the 2010 champions, the BMW Oracle Racing team (backed by the American computer tycoon Larry Ellison), to dictate where and when the next race will happen.

Ernesto is an impressive proposition. At 44, he is one of the most handsome men on the Rich List, but he is also dedicated and hard-working. 'Ernesto is a workaholic, he always wants to be doing something, whether it is working or sports. He always gives everything 100 per cent,' says Kirsty. They are both sporty: skiing, scuba diving, biking and playing golf to a high level. Soon after they met, Ernesto took Kirsty heliskiing in Verbier. She had only been skiing twice, but nonetheless followed him down a terrifyingly steep off-piste slope. 'I pulled all the muscles in my neck, I fell over so much.' As a family they go for walks in the Swiss mountains, and there are frequent camping trips. 'Just the five of us and a little gas stove, believe it or not. Ernesto and the kids love it.'

These shared interests mean that they spend a good deal of time together as a family, even more so since Ernesto sold Serono to the German pharmaceuticals giant Merck for £4.6 billion in 2006. 'My father worked hard, but that is all he did,' Ernesto once said. 'I realised early on that that has limitations. You miss life. I don't want to be like that. I knew my father through work alone. I don't want to be like that with my children.' Of course, that is not to say that Ernesto is not busy. He has interests in various capital investment companies and heads up the Bertarelli Foundation, whose projects include a new marine reserve in the Indian Ocean where all fishing will be prohibited, and which will, when established, be the largest reserve in the world. The Bertarellis also take a more ad hoc approach to philanthropy. After a family trip to South Africa in 2008, they felt compelled to donate money to the Henna Pre-School, financing a new classroom and a medical centre. 'One in four children there have AIDS, it's just horrific,' says Kirsty. 'We took our children there and they played with the kids. Afterwards they said, "Mummy, Mummy, we want to give those children all our toys." It is important to make your children aware of different situations and how lucky they are, to not take anything for granted.'

It was through Kirsty's own charitable interests – she works with Smiling Children, a foundation that helps the underprivileged access education – that her music career was revived. After singing at a fundraiser, her friends asked if there was a CD. A compilation was duly made and Smiling Children asked if it could be sold through its website, with the money going to good causes. 'All the CDs sold, so I felt that was a good indication of how my music would be received,' she says. Universal heard the record and a deal was struck, resulting in the album Elusive, which entered the Swiss top 20 in the first week of its release. 'Some of the songs I had written recently, like 'Elusive'. Others, like 'Don't Say' [about a tempestuous relationship], were written when I was living in London. 'Arizona' was about a road trip that Ernesto and I took, which was just an immense feeling of freedom. There are also songs about everyday experiences, that anyone can relate to.' She does not play an instrument. 'I'd love to be able to. But I think it allows me to be more free, more instinctive.' And Annie Lennox is a hero. 'She has an amazing voice. For me it is all about the words and about how someone projects emotion.' Ernesto prefers the Red Hot Chili Peppers, but recently he has been mainly listening to her oeuvre, as have the children, who have all taken up instruments, Kirsty's daughter learning the piano and the boys strumming guitars.

But although Kirsty has been writing songs for most of her life, the Edinburgh concert is only her fourth time playing live. Her first gigs were in Switzerland, one of which was at the Montreux Jazz Festival, the night after Phil Collins. 'In my wildest dreams I never thought I would be singing in Montreux, and in my wildest dreams I never thought I would be opening for Mick Hucknall. I don't have a big plan. I have just been concentrating on my music, believing in my music, loving singing, whether it is just to a group of friends or to a wider audience. I just want to make a connection and hope that people enjoy it. I'm not doing this for financial reasons. This is what I have always done. This is what Ernesto has always loved me for, what my friends know me as doing. I stay the way that I was, I still do what I love to do. There is an urge to express yourself, to feel free.'

Freedom is something that Kirsty talks about a lot. For although wealth is freedom, wealth on the Bertarelli scale can be a shackle. It creates distance, it demands privacy and high walls, security and lawyers. It can breed distrust and paranoia, but Kirsty is a vivacious person whose natural instinct is to connect to those around her. She still reads people's palms, but probably not as much as she once did. 'We are quite insular and private, we don't see that many people, or go to big events. It's bizarre, but you have to know what is important in life. We focus on our children, we have a pretty normal life. I take the kids to school in the morning, and then to riding afterwards, and to tennis. I am never in London for long enough, and when I am I just tend to see my sister Julie and have dinner parties with friends. We see more people in the winter, when we are at our chalet in Gstaad, but we don't have people to stay.'

Everyone I talk to who has dealt with Kirsty says how open and friendly she is, how down-to-earth, as if this should be such a surprising thing for someone so rich. Kirsty doesn't like to talk about the money, she insists that it is not hers. I ask if she ever pinches herself, if it ever doesn't feel real: £5.95 billion just seems such an incomprehensible amount. She is quiet for a moment, staring at me, her half-eaten salad before her. 'I am lucky,' she begins. 'But I am lucky because I am in love, and I am lucky because of my children. I have a lovely life, that's true. And now I have been given this incredible opportunity, which is so special and such a blessing. So many people would just go off on their lovely yacht and spend their life drinking champagne, but that is not me. You should grasp life and take opportunities. Having money is not about keeping behind your high walls. Singing is something that has been inside me my whole life and I can't not do it.'

And with that it is time for the richest woman in the UK to go to her sound check, to prepare to sing in front of 6,000 Mick Hucknall fans. 'I am so happy to be here,' she shouts out to the crowd. And I believe her.

kirsty-music.com

Create a FREE account to continue reading

eros

Registration is a free and easy way to support our journalism.

Join our community where you can: comment on stories; sign up to newsletters; enter competitions and access content on our app.

Your email address

Must be at least 6 characters, include an upper and lower case character and a number

You must be at least 18 years old to create an account

* Required fields

Already have an account? SIGN IN

By clicking Create Account you confirm that your data has been entered correctly and you have read and agree to our Terms of use , Cookie policy and Privacy policy .

This site is protected by reCAPTCHA and the Google Privacy Policy and Terms of Service apply.

Thank you for registering

Please refresh the page or navigate to another page on the site to be automatically logged in