A real-life Cindarellie! How Ellie Goulding went from a Welsh borders council house to £20m pop princess about to marry her Prince Charming
For a girl who grew up in a council house in a rural village a stone’s throw from the Welsh borders, with barely two pennies to rub together, Ellie Goulding has come a long way.
Since leaving the village of Lyonshall (population: 750), just outside Hereford, dropping out of university in her final year, and being signed by record label Polydor, she has carved out the kind of stratospheric success most young singers can only dream of.
She’s had three platinum-selling albums clocking up more than three million sales around the world and ten Top Ten UK hits.
Currently penning her fourth album, she’s got an estimated fortune of £20 million, a sprawling home in South London, collects champagne as a hobby and has lucrative deals with Pantene and Range Rover.
But it was a black and white announcement in the Births, Marriages and Deaths section of The Times newspaper earlier this week that served to illustrate just what a remarkable journey Ellie Goulding, 31, has travelled.
Since leaving the village of Lyonshall, just outside Hereford, dropping out of university in her final year, and being signed by record label Polydor, Ellie Goulding has come a long way. Pictured: Ellie with her fiancé Caspar Jopling
But it was a black and white announcement in the Births, Marriages and Deaths section of The Times newspaper earlier this week that served to illustrate just what a remarkable journey she has travelled
It was headed Mr C.W.F Jopling and Miss E.J. Goulding and read: ‘The engagement is announced between Caspar, son of The Hon Nicholas Jopling of Yorkshire and Mrs Jayne Warde-Aldam of Yorkshire, and Elena, daughter of Mr Arthur Goulding of Herefordshire and Mrs Tracey Sumner of West Midlands.’
Elena, of course, is Ellie’s full name — she was born Elena Jane Goulding on December 30, 1986 — and the man who is now her fiancé is Eton-educated art dealer Caspar Jopling, a strapping 26-year-old who once rowed for the youth Team GB.
The couple are sharing an apartment in New York, where he works, and are thoroughly besotted with each other.
‘You’re the most wonderful person I’ve ever known, and I can’t wait to be your very giggly, in awe and loved up wife,’ Ellie pronounced to her Instagram followers on Thursday, alongside an artfully laidback black and white snap, reminiscent of Prince Harry and Meghan Markle’s engagement photographs.
He in turn told his 6,300 followers: ‘No one has ever made me feel more full of life, knowledge, happiness or love. . . There is no one I have ever been more complete with, and there is no one I will ever feel more complete with.’
His message was beside a picture of Elena, as he calls her, wearing a sparkling ring.
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The extraordinary part of this story is not that a talented young woman who grew up in a council house should catch the eye of a young aristocrat, nor that they should announce their engagement in The Times.
No, what is more surprising is how they are thought to have met — namely through shared friendship with royalty, in this case Princess Eugenie and her fiancé Jack Brooksbank.
Princess Eugenie and Ellie were seen cheering from the stands at a basketball game in New York together last year, along with their respective beaux.
Ellie has forged a friendship with both Eugenie and her sister Princess Beatrice and is almost certain to be among the guests at Eugenie’s upcoming wedding.
She has, of course, already got a far more prominent Royal wedding under her belt, having performed her cover version of Elton John’s Your Song (you may recall it from the John Lewis Christmas advert) for Prince William and Kate Middleton’s first dance.
She and Prince Harry are also old friends — so much so that they once reportedly canoodled under a blanket at the polo and she performed at his 30th birthday party.
So who is Ellie Goulding and how has she navigated a path from a childhood so tough her family didn’t know whether there would be enough money for the electricity meter — to a world where she slips easily from international chart success to royal society?
The man who is now her fiancé is Eton-educated art dealer Caspar Jopling, a strapping 26-year-old who once rowed for the youth Team GB. Pictured: Mr Jopling’s ‘chateau’
‘If you’ve ever been to Kington, where she grew up, you will understand a lot more about Ellie and how far she’s come,’ says a source who has watched her rise. ‘It’s very rural, right on the Welsh border, and if you are into music and fashion you stick out like a sore thumb. Ellie was always a fish out of water to a degree, always desperate to get away and prove herself.’
Small wonder the star was desperate to get away, by her own account her childhood left her damaged.
‘A lot of my childhood was based on survival,’ she says.
Her father Arthur Goulding, an undertaker, walked out when she was five and contact dwindled as she grew older, until by the age of 19 the pair were estranged.
A rapprochement only came in 2016 after they were reunited at the christening of her older sister Isabel’s daughter; a few months later he travelled to Cardiff to watch her perform for the first time. Back in Kington, Ellie loathed the tattooed lorry driver her mum Tracey Sumner went on to marry.
Tracey, a music fan who used to work for record companies, toiled, taking supermarket jobs, to raise Ellie, her two sisters and brother, and is now married to another man.
But back then finances were tight, it was beans and chips for tea and the occasional caravan holiday to Tenby.
The family relied on the kindness of Ellie’s grandmother for handouts, and once the bailiffs turned up to take away the family television.
‘I understood that I had a lot of friends who didn’t live in the same situation as me,’ Ellie recalled in an interview in 2016.
‘I knew my only way out of this was through education. I worked really hard in school. Really hard. I don’t think I was intelligent but I feel like I worked so hard I kind of made myself.’
One curious part of Ellie’s strategy was to change the way she spoke.
Nobody listening to the well-spoken star’s perfectly-rounded vowels would realise she once had a West Country burr. She shed it by listening to BBC newsreader Nicholas Witchell and watching period dramas.
‘I became fixated on speaking well. I felt like people just knew I was from a council house, and that I was poor, because of the way I spoke,’ she said.
While undoubtedly a grafter — she taught herself to play guitar aged 14, learned clarinet, writes her own music and is incredibly driven — as a teenager she was far from the stunning, confident woman she is today.
Ellie grew up in a council house (pictured) in a rural village a stone’s throw from the Welsh borders, with barely two pennies to rub together
Her hair was dyed-black, she had a lip piercing, was a ‘bit of a goth’, chubby and plagued by insecurities about her appearance.
Aged 12 she worked sweeping hair from the floor of a local hairdresser’s, later she cleaned toilets and worked in a pub.
One associate from those days recalls: ‘At school she was never regarded as a beauty. She was more of a tomboy, good at sport and generally a bit of an outsider. Definitely not the girl everyone wanted to date.’
Music though was Ellie’s passion. One villager the Mail spoke to recalled a small wedding at the village hall; as the reception rolled on, a woman guest went to the wedding party and asked if her daughter could sing a song — the girl, five or six at the time, was Ellie Goulding.
It’s surprising to learn that Ellie failed her music A-Level. She was bright enough for university though — writing a letter to earn her a place at the University of Kent to study English and drama, because she couldn’t afford to travel to an interview.
She was the first member of her family to go to university and for the first time in her life she didn’t have to share a bedroom. She was on the cusp of having a collection of poetry published, but both it and her degree were jettisoned when she won a university talent contest singing cover songs. The man who would become her manager, Jamie Lilywhite, was in the audience.
She signed with Polydor in 2009 and a year later her first album Lights was tipped for success before it was even released.
Her unique voice fused with an electro-pop backing proved an instant success on both sides of the Atlantic. In the U.S she’s a big star, having performed for the Obamas (at the White House, no less) and counting Taylor Swift and Katy Perry among her celebrity pals.
Mainstream success came when the singer covered Your Song and it was used by John Lewis. Love Me Like You Do, from the film Fifty Shades Of Grey, spent four weeks at number one.
Her Instagram account has 13.9 million followers, although she has a second one she keeps private.
Fame has not been without its traumas, at first she was crippled by self-doubt.
‘I hated my nose, my chin, even my eyebrows, and I got into this awful cycle of panic attacks,’ she has said of the early days. One panic attack was so intense she found herself in A&E and as a result ended up having therapy and wearing a heart-rate monitor for reassurance.
She does, in fact, have a small heart murmur, discovered after a flight to the U.S.
Her hair has changed colour several times but is now a luscious golden mane and she’s ditched her folksy attire in favour of more body-conscious garb.
Not that she’s afraid to be seen without her stage glamour: on Instagram she shares videos of herself lifting weights and boxing, red-faced, sweaty and with not a scrap of make-up.
She is an exercise junkie, working out six times a week. ‘Better than crack,’ she says.
Health conscious, she’s a vegan who swears by a charcoal-infused juice to ‘soak up the poison’ if she’s over-indulged.
A record industry source says: ‘Working out is a huge part of her life. It’s like a religion to her. I remember in the early days of her success, she was over in Miami running on the beach every single day. She was obviously new to fame — her skin was so pale and she hadn’t had any of the beauty treatments which she’s used to having these days.
‘But as time’s gone on her confidence has grown.’
The star’s love life has been chequered. There have been relationships with Radio 1 DJ Greg James, DJ and producer Skrillex, real name Sonny Moore, as well as actor Jermey Irvine and flings with singer Ed Sheeran and One Direction’s Niall Horan.
Then there was a long relationship with McFly’s bassist Dougie Poynter, a relationship so serious that at one stage she talked about marriage. ‘We want to have children, but I think realistically it won’t happen for a while,’ she said in 2015.
In a grand gesture she once hired the Natural History Museum for a midnight date.
And then, having struggled with hectic schedules, in 2016, it was over.
‘You’re the most wonderful person I’ve ever known, and I can’t wait to be your very giggly, in awe and loved up wife,’ Ellie pronounced to her Instagram followers on Thursday
She then shared this message on her Instagram story, revealing that fans didn’t quite have the reaction she was looking for
‘There’s something about her which draws men in, as plenty of blokes will tell you,’ says the industry insider.
‘Ellie has always said she wants to find love but there are very few men who can live up to her standards. If she has the worst crashing hangover she will still do a massive workout, because if she says she’s going to do something, she does it. Always.
‘Nothing’s gone wrong for her so far. Everything she touches turns to gold.
‘Touring brings in millions. She’s mates with every cool musician out there. Her house is massive —her personal gym is better than most places you pay £1,000 a year to be a member of. She holidays on massive yachts. It’s the stuff of dreams.
‘So it’s hardly surprising she’s found most men to be a little bit uninspiring.’
Caspar, it seems, is the man who breaks the mould. Quite how she met him is unknown — she has bemoaned the fact that it’s hard to meet people outside her industry.
But a clue may lie in the fact he is the nephew of art dealer Jay Jopling, a big investor in the online auction platform Paddle8, where Princess Eugenie used to work.
Caspar went from Eton to Harvard, where he studied history of art and architecture and now works at Sotheby’s New York.
He’s also rowed for Team GB in the Youth Olympics, as well as Harvard, which means he might just be able to keep up with her.
‘What Ellie needs is a man who can hold his own and keep her on her toes,’ says the insider. ‘Caspar ticks all those boxes. He has the iron-clad confidence of a proper posh boy from London society.’
In the past Ellie has spoken about the loneliness of touring, and the fact that at home ‘everyone has got kids and is married — except me’.
She has also spoken of moments when she is on stage and feels a wave of impostor syndrome.
‘Sometimes the response I get makes me think: “Oh — they’ve figured it out. They’ve figured out that I’m nothing special.” ’
Perhaps in Caspar Jopling she has found the man who finally lays those last seeds of self-doubt to rest.
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