These photos of David Gandy are from a week ago. I’m sorry I missed them! You know how I love all things David Gandy. I love his little lisp. I love his haughtiness. I love that he compares himself to Gisele. But mostly I just love his eyes and his hair and his body. These pics are from the Chelsea Flower Show last week – David was looking particularly yummy. I don’t think he has an official girlfriend these days either. Huh. Somebody (me?) should get on that.

Anyway, since it’s the day after a holiday, I just thought we’d check in with David and see what he’s up to. He’s given some recent interviews which I found interesting, including a cover interview for Shortlist. Here are some highlights from the Shortlist piece:

Gandy on 16-year-old Gandy: “I was nothing to write home about. I was a bit chubby and had no idea about fashion. I was playing every sport under the sun, so I just dressed in a utilitarian way. Cricket gear, football gear or a tracksuit; there was no time for fashion… I was very shy as a 16-year-old. I still am. Puberty is a horrid time. I was slightly bigger because I had puppy fat, then I shot up to 6ft 3 and got skinny, then I got broad. It was a weird development.”

His first car: “When I was 17 I had a Ford Fiesta 1.1 Ghia. ‘The Beast’, as we called it. The guy who owned it before me put aftermarket electric windows in, so you had to press the button and bang the door to get the window to fall down. I was on a date once and the passenger door was broken, so my date had to climb across me to get out, but then the other door broke. She climbed out of the window. I thought, “This isn’t happening.” I told my dad he was ruining my chances of ever getting laid.”

Becoming a model: “I had just graduated with a degree in marketing when I won the modelling competition on This Morning. My friends said they’d sent my pictures in – I thought they were joking. Modelling wasn’t seen as an aspirational thing back then. It wasn’t a manly job. Fashion is kept very elitist – most people’s only tangible link to male modelling is Zoolander. The preconception that it’s all up its own arse. There are plenty of those people, but my motto has always been work hard and be persistent. Nowadays, people don’t seem to want to work from the bottom up. I came from university and did five or six years of catalogues.”

Modeling: “Modeling is like acting. The photographer knows what they want, and you have to portray that. But you can’t use voices like an actor can – you have to do it with a look. One look.”

His famous Dolce & Gabbana’s Light Blue ads: “I didn’t want to be known as ‘The White Pants Guy’ forever, because that would drive me round the bend, so I started thinking about how I could make my name outside of it. But I’m hugely grateful to Dolce & Gabbana because, before the Light Blue campaign, male models were skinny and androgynous. I adopted a ‘go big or go home’ mentality and decided to bring back a sense of masculinity.”

Male style icons: “I love Paul Newman. There is an element of me that thinks, “What has happened to men?” Someone emailed me this great thing the other day: a picture of a young kid from a boy band: 16 years old, hair flipped over. And beneath that a picture of Sean Connery as Bond, cigarette hanging out of his mouth. And it said in big letters, ‘Men: what happened?’ When I look at Paul Newman, Steve McQueen, James Dean and Sean Connery, it’s a question I ask myself.”

His parents: “Mum and Dad are retired, but they’re still the hardest working people I know. Everyone in my family is self-employed, which probably says something about the family mentality; that control thing. They’re proud, but in a subdued way. I’m in the only industry where women are more powerful than men – and earn about five times as much. My dad still finds that hilarious.”

When fans go too far: “A girl superimposed my head on to her family portrait and came to my agency saying I was her long-lost brother. It was during Men’s Fashion Week, so she could get the timetable and know where I was going to be. Luckily my driver was ex-Scotland Yard and dealt with it.”

Why he doesn’t have a Twitter: “I don’t understand that world of ‘Look at the restaurant I’m in’, ‘look at my car’, ‘look at the beach I’m on.’ And why do high-profile people complain about press intrusion, then tweet where they are and complain about being papped? But then, the biggest stars often don’t tweet. Daniel Radcliffe said, “Why would anyone want me to tweet? I haven’t got anything interesting to say.” Straight away, I liked him.”

His other passion: “I love cars. I’m having a classic Mercedes 190SL restored and fitted with a bespoke, five-piece leather luggage set. I also ski. But these days I look at a double black run that I flew down at 24 and think, “Nah, I’ll have a bit of lunch.” Self-preservation kicks in at 27 and you realise you’re going to hurt yourself. It just hasn’t happened with my driving yet.”

[From Shortlist]

Gandy has another interview in Scotland-on-Sunday from last week too, which you can read here. It’s a decent piece, and he’s mostly talking about branding and how his life really isn’t that glamorous and how he works to raise the profile of male models in an industry where women hold most of the power. I do like him, and I think he’s an intelligent, interesting guy. But I also think he’s probably high-strung and anal in real life. Tightly wound, if you will. Which means he and I would probably not work out in the long run. We would just nit-pick each other to death. Mm. I would nit-pick him all night long. Sorry, what?

Photos courtesy of WENN, PR Photos.