<<< Miscellaneous Interview

Wherever you go, it’s hard to avoid Travis Fimmel. Plucked from obscurity to front a multi-million pound advertising campaign for Calvin Klein underwear, the blond, blue-eyed Australian has been wooing the country with 8ft-tall posters of his half-naked, athletic, rippled body on every bus shelter and billboard.

But it’s not just the pants that have whetted the public’s curiosity. As the ads all too graphically show, Travis boasts a lunchbox to make women swoon and men feel collectively insecure.

Size does matter when it comes to selling pants and- going by the posters- Travis certainly fills his. But what is Australian’s hottest supermodel like in the flesh? It was a quest I wasn’t alone in pursuing. During a personal appearance at London’s Selfridges department store, hundreds of red-blooded women had converged to check out the 22-year-old model for themselves.

Wearing faded denim jeans and a white cotton t-shirt, the larger-than-life Adonis on the billboards had shrunk to a mere mortal, albeit a pretty one. Guarded by more security than at a Madonna concert, he sat alone on a stage, chewing gum, tucking his golden locks behind his ears and smiling politely as ever-hopeful women pushed their phone numbers into his hand and leaned over for a kiss.

While they queued for a signed photo, I contemplated how my private one-to-one with Mr. Fimmel would turn out. Could an intimate chat lead to drinks, dinner and the chance discovery whether that really was a canoe in his CK’s or the real thing?

But in the press room things weren’t going as smoothly as they were on the shop floor. Travis didn’t want to talk about the campaign any more and he was distinctly uncomfortable talking about the ad’s sexual image.

He’s already been rapped for telling one journalist that he does use socks, but only Calvin Klein ones. A good joke but one not appreciated by his entourage, who now insisted on baby-sitting him through the entire interview.

“Just talk to him about his home life,” barked his PA, as his US campaign manager rasped loudly down his mobile phone, drowning out anything Travis had to say. My “intimate chat” wasn’t exactly going to plan. So I tried the softly-softly approach and started at the beginning.

Born in Echuca in Victoria, Travis was brought up on his parents’ cattle farm with his two older brothers.

“I’m a real outdoor farm boy,” he says. “Our closest neighbors were five miles away, but it was the best upbringing I could have had. I got my first motorbike when I was four and was driving when I was eight. When you’ve got 1,400 cows to look after, there’s always so much to do. You never get bored.”

His natural good looks were discovered when he was 18 while working out in a Melbourne gym. But after a couple of modeling jobs, he set his sights on London, working in a pub before heading to LA with only $60 in his pocket. “I chanced it. I walked into an agency with no shoes on and just said, ‘Hey!’ They picked me up straight away, got me a flat, rented me a car and really looked after me,” he says.

Soon enough Travis was playing the love interest in video clips for Jennifer Lopez and Janet Jackson, but when the Calvin Klein contract came up he says he didn’t want it.

“I don’t enjoy people taking photos of me. I don’t know what Calvin saw in me. I’m a little runt compared to some models, but they liked that. They don’t want me to work out, they want my body to stay the same. What made me change my mind was that it would be selfish not to do it. My parents, Jenny and Chris, would love to have the money to do things.”

Travis’s only extravagance has been a big TV for his LA flat. But spending his money hasn’t been the problem- its dealing with all the attention. His short-lived relationship with former All Saints singer Nicole Appleton finished when she dumped him, but he denies ever calling Nicole “boring”, insisting, “She’s great, we were just different.”

He refuses to say how he copes with all the female attention now, so I asked him if he’s put the record straight on another rumor- his dinner date with Meg Ryan.

“It’s been front page news back home, but the funniest thing is I’ve never met her in my life,” he grins. So does Travis have a girlfriend now? “No girlfriend,” he says. “If I meet someone I like, I’m happy to get into a relationship but I’m happy being single. I’m definitely not after celebrities. I’m looking for someone who enjoys life. I don’t want to hang around with someone who’s always stressed out or pissed off.”

So now that we’re bonding and sharing personal information, surely its time to talk about that eye-grabbing ad? But before the words “sock” and “stuffing” are out of my mouth, his manager is out of his seat and insisting I stop my line of questioning.

Travis looks relieved, but he can’t help whispering, “Believe nothing you read and only half of what you see.”

It seems like this one is going to run and run…