Weird Science: Angie Sinclair is electric

10 April 2012

When she arrives at All Star Lanes for the photo shoot and the team greet her as Lady Sinclair, she insists that they call her Angie. She's always been Angie – it says so on her birth certificate – never Angela. Angie Bowness: model. She's not used to being Lady Sinclair, which is her title since her marriage last April to Sir Clive Sinclair, the wealthy inventor and entrepreneur who was knighted in 1983. Although she adds, 'I am actually used to being called "Lady". My nickname since I was 17 has been "Lady Bowness", because I'm polite, say please and thank you, a little bit ladylike, I hope, and lots of people have called me "Lady Bowness". I think it's weird that I've ended up Lady Sinclair. It takes getting used to.'

Angie tells me that she is extremely happy with her elderly swain – 'probably the happiest I've ever been' – and doesn't think she 'could have found anyone else who would have made a better husband'. Sir Clive made a fortune from inventing the pocket calculator, then another from producing one of the first low-cost personal computers, although his reputation is permanently marked, for anyone who lived in the 1980s, by the Sinclair C5, an electric three-wheeler that, despite respectable sales, was mercilessly mocked by the media. Nonetheless, Angie has not found his energy wanting – Sir Clive has publicly shared the fact that he has no need for Viagra – while Angie has professed herself disappointed by younger men who have flitted across her dating radar, such as Robbie Williams, Vernon Kay and Prince Albert of Monaco.

She's been modelling since she was seven, when her mother entered her in a fancy-dress competition in Nottingham. Asked what she wanted to go as, Angie chose Miss World, which she had seen on television. 'My mum got me a feather boa and a sash and I was in a swimming costume. I wun it. [She retains the peculiar vowel sound of her native accent.]' A local model agency signed her up for a year, and she became the face of the high street children's clothing shop Tammy Girl (later changed to Tammy). She did fashion shows until she was about 11, when the work tailed off because 'I wasn't a child any more and didn't look like an adult,' she says. 'It all kicked off again when I entered a local beauty pageant at 17. I was at college doing A levels in French, German and sociology, and I was unhappy in the sixth form. It was just the get-out I needed.' Her mother came home with the local paper, which had an article about the competition for Miss Nottingham. 'As if at that point I wasn't really into make-up, I had curly hair, I wasn't glamorous. Then I had an argument with my boyfriend. I ran up the stairs in tears, looked down, and this newspaper article was staring me in the face. I thought, "What have I got to lose?" I got some snapshots sent off and forgot all about it until two months later when I got a phone call.

'I was Miss England and I was Miss Sheffield as well. I was there at the final having my picture taken with Barbara Windsor and this model agent from London said: "Are you modelling? When you move down to London, give me a call." I'd only been in London once before for a photo shoot for a calendar, with Jimmy White, the snooker player. I remember being driven round in a Rolls-Royce, and I was such an innocent. I was driven round Trafalgar Square and I remember seeing Nelson's Column for the first time. I thought, "I'd just love to live here." ' On that same visit, she had met and dated the fledgeling snooker star Ronnie O'Sullivan, although the friendship never blossomed because she disapproved of his lifestyle (too much vodka and marijuana).

Back in Nottingham, she told her mother, "'I have to go. Something's just calling me." My mum and dad had broken up and my mum raised me single-handed. She came from a really poor family in Nottingham, she worked so hard to put me into private school; started her own business: she was a nurse, she worked with children with disabilities, she ran the City Hospital in Nottingham, a few other hospitals, then she went into nursing homes for children with learning difficulties. Worked her way up.'

Angie took a one-way ticket to London 'on a whim, with a couple of thousand pounds in my pocket' (her beauty pageant earnings), and after staying on friends' sofas for a week or so, she rented 'a really sweet little flat' in St John's Wood. 'It took a while for things to take off. I was up against girls who had already made a name for themselves.' She'd been to about 20 castings without getting any work, when her agent told her she'd won a BT commercial. 'The next day I was filming it with the EastEnders cast. It was a decent fee, but you have to wait three months for your cheque and I had rent to pay'

Thus her infamous sojourn at Stringfellows. Yes, she was a pole dancer, by the name of 'Paris', but it was only topless in those days, and there was definitely no touching. 'It's a bit annoying because Stringfellows has had so much publicity off the back of my getting married to Clive,' she remarks. 'I only worked there for two months. It was at private parties. I used to socialise at Stringfellows. It was only actually open three days a week as a pole-dancing club, the rest of the time was model nights and private parties. Clive was there on a private- party night. I wasn't dancing for him. We were at dinner, James Hewitt was there chatting to me, and me and Clive just got on really well. I was there for about two months until the modelling took off and the cheques began rolling in. I did a massive Pizza Hut commercial. I was on billboards. That paid really well. I was up against 200 models for that. I went out on my first date with Clive to The Savoy and we just got on well. The age difference never came into it.'

At around this time she had a passionate affair with a Porsche-driving computer sales executive, Mark Thornton, the father of her 12-year-old son Marcus. It lasted about a year, but they never married. What Angie omits to mention is that she and Sir Clive, on the other hand, did get engaged to be married at this point, a decade earlier than their second engagement and eventual marriage, while Thornton, in an interview, lambasted their autumn-spring relationship as 'sick' and characterised Sir Clive as old enough to be Angie's grandfather.

I kept seeing Clive platonically,' she explains. 'I told him all about Mark, he knew everything. I told him I was pregnant. The good thing about him is he knows everything about me. I've never hidden anything, I don't need to, and he's always listened to me if I needed to talk. I had my son when I was 21, and the relationship with his father broke down pretty badly. I dated, I suppose you could say, some of the most eligible bachelors in the world, but there's been a few not-so-famous guys I've been out with. Because I've raised my son single-handed I've tried to build myself a successful career. I never introduced anyone I've dated to my son, because I'm really protective. You cannot just bring someone into your house and say, "By the way, Marcus, this is my new boyfriend." He's probably only ever met two of my boyfriends in his life.

'If I introduced my son to a guy, that guy would have to be a good role model. I didn't want him to have a drinking problem, a drug problem, be a womaniser. It might shock you, but I'm actually quite an old-fashioned girl. On paper, it doesn't look good: a blonde ex-beauty queen, who worked at Stringfellows, married to a guy who's 36 years older than her. But I have really good morals and I'm very protective of my son. That's the thing in my life I'm most proud of, that I've raised him and he's such a brilliant child: grounded, funny, clever; plays violin, piano, trombone, guitar; has singing lessons, and speaks three languages – French, German, and he's doing Latin. To raise another human being on your own well, you're very protective of them.'

Those dates with elig-ible bachelors to which she alludes included a six-month relationship with Vernon Kay and a lost weekend with Robbie Williams in May 2004. After spending time with him in his Chelsea Harbour apartment and at a mock 18th-century castle he was renting in Sussex, she found him 'sweet and vulnerable, but I remember thinking, "I'm already the mother to one little boy, I really don't need another in my life."'

But what about the Debbie McGee question: 'So, what first attracted you to the millionaire Paul Daniels?' The implied undertone of most of the press reports about Sir Clive and Lady Sinclair is that she, too, was first attracted by his wealth. Interestingly, Sir Clive, in deprecating his own looks, has stated that Angie probably was first attracted to him because of his money. But she flatly denies this. 'It's insulting for people to think that Clive would have nothing else to offer me but money and that I would marry someone for money,' she says. 'If I was going to marry someone for money I'd have married him when I was 22. I don't need to marry somebody for money. Money does not make you a happier person. It helps, but I've got my own money anyway.'

Routinely described as a multimillionaire, Sir Clive's fortune is thought to be in the millions rather than the tens of millions. He was raised in Richmond and became editor of Practical Wireless magazine at 17. He moved into inventions, with mini-aturisation his main innovation. He has an IQ of 159 and became chairman of Mensa in 1980. He has never appeared on rich lists and he gave away much of his wealth to his three children by his first marriage in his 1985 divorce. A year later Sinclair Research made £5 million by selling the Sinclair trademark and computer business to Lord Sugar's Amstrad. Lady Sinclair divides her time between her Lincolnshire home and Sir Clive's two adjoining flats overlooking Trafalgar Square, the very landmark that so besotted her when she first visited the capital.

Apart from her modelling income, she has traded property successfully. She continues to own her first flat, in Belsize Park, and was able to pay cash for her Lincolnshire country home, close to where her son goes to school. Nonetheless, she has fond memories of Sir Clive taking her to New York on Concorde, a year before the service ended. Their favourite destination is Las Vegas, where they were married. They like the entertainment, shows, shopping, but most of all the people-watching. 'There's such an eclectic mix of people,' she notes. 'We don't gamble at all. Clive does play poker, but never in Vegas.'

Soon after the Sinclairs were married, the Daily Mail ran a feature saying that Sir Clive had dumped his frequent companion and business associate Elaine Millar, who's 53 and had apparently entertained the notion he would one day marry her, in order to make way for Angie. Angie finds this ridiculous. 'Elaine and Clive dated in about 1986. I don't know exactly, because I wasn't around, but it was in the 1980s. They had a relationship and she started working for him. It fizzled out and then they just had a working relationship, and she was his PA. The article was just terrible, so untrue – so untrue. I've met her many times' Do they get on? Angie fixes me with a low-intensity glare. 'I think that look says it all,' she elaborates. 'I don't even want to speak about her.' Angie insists she knows the truth about Sir Clive's relationship with Elaine, 'because there's not been a time in my life, except when I lived in South Africa, when I've not seen Clive. I used to go for Sunday dinner with him every week, with his friends, who I'm friends with. Elaine knew I was always around, then she retired and left the company. Elaine does bits and bobs for him now. When I moved in it was six months later, so the story was quite shocking. They painted me as a scarlet woman.'

For now, when not modelling, she, like Elaine before her, is content to work for Sir Clive's company, Sinclair Research, on marketing, or 'just organising things', as she puts it. 'We're about to launch the new car bike, a sort of C5 mark II, called the X1, only this one's weather-proof as it's got a roof. Also, it has two wheels so you can go on bike paths as well as roads. People say the C5 was a flop, but it actually sold 20,000 units, so that's hardly a big flop. We have actually seen articles from editors saying how wrong they were because it was way ahead of its time. It's a shame that we don't support British inventors and entrepreneurs more, but I think the tide's turning.'

With Sir Clive's encouragement, she has developed a range of miniature make-up products, which a chain is currently testing. She is in negotiations with Sky about presenting a fitness show (her own favoured methods are uphill walking on a treadmill, Pilates at Beautcamp in Bayswater, and Spinning classes). A keen rider since she was five, she has been learning to play polo with Miss England 2008 Laura Coleman, who has stables in Leicestershire, and she is due to join her for an intensive training weekend in Argentina shortly. When I suggest that she might be interested in creating her own clothing range, the word 'bikinis' leaps from her mouth, closely followed by 'that would be a dream'.

While conventional society may sneer at their age gap, Lady Sinclair is adamant that Sir Clive has sufficient energy to be her husband. 'I actually don't know where he gets it from,' she reflects with a smile. 'He runs marathons, goes running every day at eight o'clock in the morning. You would never believe he was 70. He will never be a prisoner of his age. It doesn't really come into it, age. Maybe I'm just open-minded.

'I never actually thought I'd get married, because my relationship with Marcus's father broke down so badly. The most important thing for me, throughout my twenties, was worrying about my son's future. He had to have a routine, he had to be stable. I never thought, "When will I get married?" But then Clive asked me and I thought, "Why not?" because I'd known him for so long. I knew that if I was going to get married I'd have to know someone a long, long time, have to trust that they would look after me, and I don't mean in a financial way. To be supportive, to be my friend. That's hard to find. Clive is that person. He's so non-judgemental. Does he have a sense of fun? You can say that again. He's deemed strait-laced, but he's got a wicked sense of humour and he's always playing tricks on me. People might think from looking at us that he would be sensible and I would be the crazy party girl, but in fact I'm the sensible one.'

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Weird Science: Angie Sinclair is electric

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