‘Desperate for a bit of chocolate’: Twiggy recalls getting stuck in vending machine

With her famous nickname, you might think Twiggy is the perfect person to call on if your sweets get stuck in a vending machine.

But the supermodel has told how she once became stuck at Brighton railway station as she tried to retrieve a chocolate bar.

Speaking on Gyles Brandreth’s podcast, Rosebud, the sixties cultural icon recalled how she travelled to the Sussex coast on the Brighton Belle, the now-decommissioned named service between London and Brighton, with the film director Ken Russell.

Russell wanted to read the script to his 1971 musical The Boy Friend, which would star Twiggy in the lead role of Polly Browne, for which she would win two Golden Globe awards.

When she arrived back at Brighton railway station at the end of the day, Twiggy, now 74, told Brandreth, she was “desperate for a bit of chocolate”.

“So they were going to get on the train and I said I’ll join you. I got my sixpence out – that’s what they cost in those days – and it was one of those machines on a wall that you kind of put your money in and then pull a lever out,” she said.

Twiggy said she was wearing rings on every finger and as she pulled her hand out with the chocolate bar in her grip she became “jammed”.

“I couldn’t move,” she said. “I’m standing there and I didn’t know what to do … I was stuck in this machine on Brighton station for an hour and a half and we missed the train. There was steam coming out of Ken’s ears.”

She added: “A crowd was gathering – you know and I was very well recognised – and I was so embarrassed. I thought some journalist is going to have me stuck in a chocolate machine.

“And there was a crowd gathering and some little lady was saying ‘call the police’ and I said ‘please don’t call the police’ and someone said ‘call an ambulance’ and I said ‘please don’t call an ambulance’. And then a lady at the front called out ‘no, what she needs is a bar of soap’.”

Born Lesley Hornby, she was given the name “Twigs” by the hairdresser Nigel Davies, later known as Justin de Villeneuve, because of her thin frame, which evolved to Twiggy. She received a damehood in 2019.