Blingski Korsakov

DANNY WALLACE ‘The mission is to send Lady Gaga into early retirement. I call it Project Kamaliya’ Mohammad Zahoor B L I N G S K I KORSAKOV Meet the Zahoors. Mohammad: super-rich husband and patron. Kamaliya: Ukraine’s Lady Gaga-in-the-making. His billions can buy champagne baths and his-and-her jets, but can cold cash really pay for pop superstardom? GQ hangs with the big personalities behind TV’s Meet The Russians for whom patience is not just a virtue, but a necessity STORY BY DANNY WALLACE PHOTOGRAPHS BY BRAN SYMONDSON Rich pickings: Mohammad Zahoor shares his home with his pop-star wife, Kamaliya, and their twin daughters, a litter of designer dogs and one well-behaved hawk MARCH 2014 G XX DANNY WALLACE “Well,” I say, pointing at a small plate in front of me. “This is nice cheese.” The man I’m with – Mohammad Zahoor – folds his arms and nods. There is a moment of silence. “In fact, it’s all nice cheese, isn’t it?” I say. Pet set (clockwise from top Zahoor doesn’t say anything this time, just left): En route to Odessa – stretches back in his chair and casts a glance to with menagerie – aboard one a grand staircase, in case his wife, the Ukrainian of the couple’s private jets; clear of knives, guns and pop star Kamaliya, is finally ready. grenades, Kamaliya makes I’ve been sitting here in this vast Kiev her entrance at a club in Kiev; Danny Wallace toasts the mansion for nearly three hours and there’s Zahoors under the watchful been no sign of Kamaliya. She’s upstairs getting eye of bodyguard Igor; in the dressed, they tell me. There’s a red-carpet media spotlight outside the club; one of their cats settles event she wants to take me to at eight o’clock. in to the twins’ pram It’s now quarter past nine. Still: paps will be there, so she needs to look her best. It’s been down to me and Zahoor to keep the conversation flowing, and it flowed well at first. We talked about my journey, about how much his wallpaper cost, about the hawk he keeps on a stand in his living room. And then we sat down and Zahoor focused largely on the Russian steel industry: 1972 to the present day, which was a topic on which I had little to contribute. “Does she normally keep you waiting this long?” I asked at one point. “Yes,” he sighed. “Three, four, five hours is perfectly normal...” So now here we are, praising cheese. Just then a dog wearing earrings walks past. “You have a lot of dogs,” I say, and at this, Zahoor’s face brightens. I point at another small dog which sits at my feet. “Who’s this one?” “That one?” he says. “That one is called Cliff.” Zahoor tells the airport we’re ten minutes away. In reality, Kamaliya is still choosing which dress to wear “Cliff?” I say. “Named after...?” “I dunno,” he says, shrugging, then points at “My father was auditor general of Pakistan,” old witnessed the black cloud of Chernobyl “And waiting for your wife to get ready?” up with a former Russian special-ops officer. They’ve realised they’re pretty late, and she another one. “That one is Bertie...” he says, jet-black hair masking his 58 years. taking over the sky above her. She’d spend sub- “That’s my new job.” He’s even called Igor. He showed me his gun still has the red carpet to rock, so now we’re He looks at another dog, can’t quite seem to “And I think probably one of the few people sequent months in hospital, fight off lymph- “And it’s also your mission?” I say – because and told me he used to look after Boris Yeltsin. travelling at 80mph, flashing lorries out of place it, moves on. All the while a fat cat with who didn’t take bribes. We were not wealthy, node cancer years later and thought she might Zahoor’s mission is the reason I’m here – and Now he protects the Zahoors from “intrud- our way and darting past vast, grey Soviet- a completely shaved body stares at us. It looks so we studied.” never have children. She worked hard, became he nods and glances up the stairs again. ers and hooligans”, but also takes pictures of era housing, before finally we screech up to like a tiny, furious lion. Zahoor points at a final “Were you a good student?” known for her folk singing, began to rise... Because when Kamaliya shouted she was them in social situations or perhaps carries the club. dog, sitting behind him on a velvet cushion. “I was 29th in Karachi.” Cut to 2008, and Zahoor has his own steel ready, she wasn’t actually quite ready. Kamaliya’s handbag when she needs to meet Kamaliya’s people get her out of the Bentley. “And that one is Gay Ritchie.” “Out of how many?” business, with plants all over the world. He’s Zahoor just shrugs and raises his eyebrows, a dignitary. Because Kiev is Kamaliya’s town. She checks her reflection. “Oh,” I say. “’Gay Ritchie?’” “Today there are 20 million people in Karachi.” an industry leader, but he’s ready to move on. like a hapless husband in a sitcom, then tops She’s a pop star (five albums) and a TV star I look around. “Gay Ritchie,” he says. “Like the film director.” He went to engineering college around the He sells just before the financial crash. up our wine. (Coffee With Kamaliya in Ukraine and the Fox The place is deserted. And then, finally, from the top of the stairs: time Pakistan was building a steel mill with the “I sold everything at its peak,” he says. reality show Meet The Russians in the UK, plus It’s just a car park. “I’m ready!” Soviet Union. Sixty-three thousand Pakistanis “For an undisclosed sum?” One hour later I’m in the back of a white she’s just finished filming a Russian sitcom All the paps have given up and gone. applied for a scholarship to go and work there, “Yes.” Range Rover tailing a blue Bentley through called Fathers & Sons “in which she plays the Zahoor and Kamaliya walk arm-in-arm to the Zahoor Mohammad is a billionaire. he says, and he was one of only 43 who got in. “Of a billion dollars?” the streets of Kiev. lead”, though I doubt it’s a father or son). She’s doors, maintaining a dignified silence until the Not a millionaire. A billionaire. Soon, he was assigned to Ukraine. “Ha,” he says, smiling, but that smile also I have already met their main bodyguard, a a former Miss South Ukraine (2003), and is, of red carpet comes to an end. He doesn’t like to talk about it, but I think His wife, meanwhile, was a military kid, born says yes, it was a billion dollars. “So here I am. former Russian special-ops officer. He’s what course, Mrs World 2008. And I haven’t really Igor walks slowly behind them carrying he quite likes you to know. in a district of eastern Siberia, who at eight years Semi-retired. Doing things here and there.” Pixar would come up with if they had to come been able to speak to her yet. a giant orchid. XX G MARCH 2014 MARCH 2014 G XX DANNY WALLACE “So tell me about the mission,” I say. who apparently immediately dropped to one an operatic career for which she has neither “Is it the hope,” I ask, “that you could maybe hear it in songs like “Butterflies”, or “Got The Close to midnight, in a quiet restaurant “I call it ‘Project Kamaliya’,” Zahoor answers knee. “I always liked Sarah Brightman, but now the talent nor the ambition. buy part of, say, a Tom Cruise movie?” Groove”, or 2010’s “Don’t Lick Your Car”. downtown, the Zahoors order me chicken proudly. “The mission is to send Lady Gaga into I said to Kamaliya – you are my new icon now. No one here lacks ambition. “Well,” he says, “there have been some “But the producers in the UK, they see her as a Kiev with foie gras and Ukrainian borscht with early retirement.” And I said to her, ‘What the hell are you doing “How much have you invested so far in offers. But Tom Cruise movies are quite expen- dance act. They say, once she has a fanbase, she tongue, while Kamaliya smokes a pocket shisha That’s a bold stage one. You have to wonder here? You should be out there!’” Kamaliya’s career?” I ask twice-married Zahoor, sive, and a lot of marketing is required.” can do what she likes. And the advice worked. that belches out an incredible fog of smoke. It’s what stage two could be. But Kamaliya was nervous. who owns the Kyiv Post newspaper. “So who’s the perfect film star right now to First came the gay community and then slowly like a tiny dry-ice machine in the world’s small- All heads turned when Kamaliya walked into “In my country,” she says, wide-eyed, like- “About $20m (£12.2m),” he says, nodding. team up with?” the mainstream community came along.” est music video. this club. Photographers got excited and people able, in broken English, “every door open (The Kyiv Post recently named its owner “All the A-class actors whose peak has been “How does that sit with Russia..

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