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How We Met: Honey Bowdrey & Jasmine Guinness

'We love awful things such as fake dog poo and we're both huge fans of Dennis the Menace'

Interviews,Rhiannon Harries
Sunday 10 August 2008 00:00 BST
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Jasmine Guinness, 31, is a model, designer and co-owner of a toy shop, Honeyjam. She lives in west London with her husband and two sons

I was too tiny to remember the first time I met Honey, but one of my earliest memories is of her and her sister coming to play at my step-grandmother's house near Dublin. I must have been about five.

Honey's mother was an old family friend, so when they came from Northumberland in the holidays we had a lot of play dates arranged for us. It was an idyllic place; when I look back on those times it all melds rosily into one long summer's day, with us tearing around the countryside and playing on the beach together.

Honey is five years older than me, which is nothing now but was a big gap when we were growing up. I remember spending a summer at her grandfather's house in Tuscany when I was 10 and she was 15 and being in awe of how impossibly glamorous and cool she was. She and her friend hung out by the pool being very grown-up and listening to their Walkmans while we ran around being kids, dive-bombing them in the pool and playing tennis.

Our worlds are so connected through mutual friends that it might seem inevitable we would be friends, but it was only much later on that we became as close as we are now. We used to bump into each other at parties, but it was our children who eventually brought us back together. I'd been modelling in New York for a few years and I was back in London, pregnant with my first son, when I ran into Honey. It was brilliant; she'd already had two children, and like most first-time mothers I didn't have a clue what was going on and was in desperate need of advice, which she kindly dispensed in bucketloads.

We've since spent a lot of time hanging out in parks, going to the zoo – the things you do when you have little children. The main thing we have in common is we both really enjoy our kids, probably because we are still big kids ourselves. I suppose the fact that we opened our own toy shop together says a lot about us. Our sense of humour is pretty silly. We love awful things such as the fake dog poo we sell, and we're both huge fans of Dennis the Menace.

We've worked together almost every day for a few years now and never had an argument. She's the brains and I'm a very good shelf-stacker. I think it's rare these days for people to have the same friends all their life, which is why what Honey and I have is so special. It's just lovely to have that kind of shared history with someone.

Honey Bowdrey, 36, co-owns Honeyjam with Jasmine. She lives in with her husband and three children in Willesden, north-west London

I've known Jasmine longer than she has known me. When I first met her she was a tiny baby with those massive, blue eyes that she still has. We used to go and stay in Ireland in the summer as her grandmother and my mother were good friends. There was a group of about six of us kids and we treated Jasmine like our doll.

It sounds sickening but we really did have a fairy-tale childhood there. We used to play hide and seek in these huge, poppy-filled cornfields and every year, on my birthday, we'd take a pony and trap to a field and have a big campfire under the stars.

Later on, Jasmine's modelling career really took off so our paths diverged but we occasionally met around town. I had a boyfriend who was in a band and she would often pop up at parties or backstage at gigs. By then she was this very cool girl and I was always dumbstruck by how beautiful she had become.

Even now when I go to premieres and parties with her I am amazed by her professional, red-carpet self – she stands there looking so composed while all the photographers shout her name. At the same time, the fame hasn't changed her – it is very telling that most of her friends are the people she grew up with.

I remember the occasion that really rekindled our friendship very clearly. It was about six years ago and I saw Jasmine at her husband's birthday party. She was hugely pregnant with her first son and I was thinking, "Good on her, I wouldn't be out in that state!" I had two children of my own by then and knew how lonely it could be at home with a baby, so when Elwood was born, I went to see her and we began getting together regularly again.

A lot of our friendship since then has been about trying to recreate the amazing childhood we had for our own children. I often wonder if that isn't why we are so obsessed with toys. We spend a worrying amount of time road-testing the stock.

Our differences make us a good team. I like doing the boring paperwork while she makes the shop look beautiful. And Jasmine isn't scared of anything, which is great, as I'm terrified of everything – her boldness encourages me to be less shy.

I have so many friends who I have known since childhood that people must wonder whether I have met anyone new since the age of 10, but it's amazing to be able to say "Remember when..." and have someone there who has been involved in all your memories. It's lovely to think that maybe the same will happen for our children.

The Oli Fusion fashion collection by Jasmine Guinness is available at www.oli.co.uk. Honeyjam toy shop is at 267 Portobello Road, London W11, tel: 020 7243 0449

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