Tamara Ecclestone: bread, breast-feeding and big hair

Nine months after giving birth the only thing big about Tamara Ecclestone is her hair. “Good hair makes an outfit,” the daughter of Formula One chief executive, Bernie Ecclestone says. “It doesn’t matter if you’re wearing tracksuit bottoms, just run a brush through your hair and you’ll look great.”

Needless to say that sitting in front of me, Tamara is not wearing tracksuit bottoms. She’s wearing a leopard-print pencil skirt, a slinky black top, and huge fluttering eyes. She’s in Ireland to promote the Show hair care express blow dry bar in Harvey Nichols but is much more interested in talking about her newest venture: being a mum. As her nine-month-old, Sophia, sleeps next door, the heiress describes how she is “obsessed” with her daughter. “Something has just taken over me. It’s like I’m sick, I’m the most adoring mother in the world.”

As she is still breast-feeding she brings Sophia everywhere she goes. “She’s a little jet-lagged and confused at the moment,” she explains. “Luckily she’s at an age where I can take her everywhere; Hong Kong, Canada, San Francisco, New York, she’s already collecting those air miles.”

The billionaire heiress got back to work just five weeks after giving birth, modelling for Show in Morrocco. As clichéd a statement as it is, she looks fantastic in the photos. She claims that balancing a job and motherhood is “totally doable”. “Just because you have a baby, it doesn’t mean you can’t have a career. You just have to get used to being tired,” she says.

As the daughter of the glamorous Croatian model Slavica Ecclestone, Tamara loved watching her mother getting ready to go out, and couldn’t wait for the time when she could be a part of that world. Now however, she admits to enjoying “slobbing out” just as much. “From day to day, when I’m not meeting people or I’m just with Sophia I’m a real slob. Tracksuit bottoms all the way. I’m quite extreme like that.”

She says that to keep herself feeling healthy she drinks lots of water and eats well, but has a cheat day once a week where she allows herself to “eat crap”. Her cheat food of choice is pizza; she has margarita, her husband has pepperoni with extra garlic dipping sauce. “Lucky me, I know,” she says “but he has to deal with cracked nipples so I tend not to complain too much about the sauce.”

When talking about Jay and Sophia’s relationship, Tamara explains that Jay “doesn’t actually do anything useful, but he’s great playing with her. I’m definitely the bad cop, the one who does the nappy changes and the vitamin drops. Then Jay comes home from work and gets to play fun dad. It’s so much easier for the dads, isn’t it?”

She says that Jay, who owns a training consultancy firm, “works very hard, so I get up in the night with Sophia. There’s no point in us both bring tired. I think I inherited the trait from my mum. When I was born she moved out of the bedroom with my dad in it, so he could get a good night’s sleep.”

The formula one heiress and her husband filmed a fly-on-the-wall reality TV series Seven Days With: Tamara Ecclestone when Sophia was only four-months old. "It was a big decision," Tamara explains, "letting a film crew into your life at any point isn't easy. But watching it back now and seeing how much she has changed in five months, makes us realise how amazing it's going to be to watch it when she's grown up. I'm looking at it like a very special home video."

During one episode of the show, Tamara was filmed having a discussion with her husband. Like a normal family on a Sunday morning they were making bacon sandwiches, when Tamara became confused as to the meaning of toast.

“Apparently toast is only toast when it’s toasted, that is what Jay says,” and sets off to google it. So has Tamara had any bread vs toast revelations since filming? “I still think I’m right,” she explains, “I went to a restaurant to the other day and asked for untoasted toast for breakfast, and she came with bread.”

Show hair care express blow dry bar is now open in Harvey Nichols with prices starting from €20. See showbeauty.com for more