Isabel Losada interview
copyright Victoria Mary Clarke, 2004

Isabel Losada wants to save the world.

'Not save the world!' she exclaims. 'Change it.'

Anyone who tells you they want to save the world, save the whale, save the rainforest, save the planet or whatever has got to have nerve. Because often those who set out to do grandiose things have got grandiose notions about themselves and they put the rest of the world off their perfectly worthwhile causes simply by...well simply by being themselves. Even the most saintly of persons, -I'm thinking Saint Bob, Saint Diana, -even these have been known to irritate at times. So even though I agree with Isabel in principle, that saving (sorry, changing) the world is a deed worth doing, I am prepared to be a tiny bit irritated, when we meet.

A couple of years ago, Isabel wrote a book called 'The Battersea Park Road to Enlightenment', in which she set out to discover happiness. In the course of trying to find happiness, Isabel tried a lot of things. She tried Tai Chi, re-birthing, colonic irrigation, getting naked, discovering her 'Inner Goddess,' and Tantric Sex, among other such stuff. Isabel is not faint-hearted.

'I am blessed with wanton curiosity,' she said, at the time. 'I want to find out how to be absurdly happy, every day.'

In order to have a dramatic life, in order to find oneself pursuing enormous goals (such as absurd happiness and saving the world), it is entirely necessary to have had a dramatic beginning. If you had an ordinary childhood, you would inevitably end up with ordinary pursuits, such as playing golf and getting the best fake tan. Like other extraordinary people, Isabel had a good start.

'I was the result of an affair in Paris,' she says, artfully. 'My father, apparently, was a Spanish diplomat, and now you know as much about him as I do. I like to think the Spanish blood gives me an air of exotic mystery!'

Mr Losada, it turned out, did not want to know about his baby daughter, so her mother took her to the North of England, to be raised by her grandmother. Who planted the seed that would one day turn into a determination to do great things.

'She let me know that the world spins with me at it's central axis, and that anything I want can be mine. By the time I was five, nobody had ever said 'no' to me!" Isabel says.
Being 'promisingly noisy', the little girl was sent to stage school. And she embarked upon a career in entertainment.

'Grinning on TV, singing and dancing in theatres, totally hopeless at adding and subtracting,' she admits.

Tragedy struck, when she was eighteen and she lost her mother, followed within a year by her grandmother. She had no relations. Her father, when she tracked him down, had died too. Isabel was entirely alone in the world.

'But I was invincible,' she says. 'Which was a good thing.'

Aged nineteen, she became a full time actress, met a good looking, sexy man and moved in with him. It didn't work out.

'I was rushing around like Tigger on ecstasy with some crazy scheme,' she says. 'The man at home just wanted a quiet life.'

In spite of their differences, they got married, and had a child. Within a couple of years, they had separated, leaving Isabel with a two year old girl. Which was where she found herself, when she started searching for happiness.

The writing career came about by accident.

' My husband left me to raise my two year old on my own, so I had to learn about survival pretty quick. So when somebody came along and said 'You are 100% responsible for your life,' I told them what to do with their New Age nonsense in language that you couldn't print!'

But a friend persuaded her to try the 'Change Your Life' seminar and this set her on the road to enlightenment that became her best-selling book.

She won't directly answer my question as to whether all of this led to happiness.
'Obviously bad things still happen to me. But I have learned to practice having a different attitude to life, so that when bad things happen I can say 'Okay, how can I turn this one around?"

Isabel shares details that most of us would not tell our diaries. Which makes for entertaining reading. And this time she's changing the world without, instead of the world within. They are linked, she insists.

'Absolutely. The 'Battersea Park Road to Enlightenment' is about changing yourself. And this one is about changing the world, it's a natural continuation!'
There are many reasons why people don't try and change the world, Isobel reckons. One is because they get overwhelmed by the hugeness of the task. And the second reason is because they have forgotten to.

' If people only took one hour a week and helped a child to learn to read, that could give them more joy than a lot of shopping.' I wonder if it has occurred to her that there may be a third reason, which is simply that some people do their bit to help others without seeing it as 'changing the world'. But sometimes a dramatic person might be exactly what is necessary for a job. And in the case of Tibet, it has always been essential to keep the issue in the spotlight.

For over forty years, Tibet has been occupied by the Chinese. His Holiness the Dalai Lama, the Tibetan Head of State- and, according to Tibetan Buddhists a living incarnation of the Buddha of Compassion-has been living as a refugee in India. It is forbidden to even have a picture of him, back in Tibet. If found with one, you can be imprisoned and tortured. Since the Chinese 'liberated' Tibet in 1949, more than 1.2 million Tibetans have been executed, or have died in prison under Chinese rule. And yet the Dalai Lama has always opposed violence as a means to regain his country and having become an international ambassador for peace, has been awarded the Nobel Peace Prize.

The purpose of writing the book, Isobel says, was to explore the possibility that one person can change the world. The reason she chose the Tibetans to be the beneficiaries of her experiment was because she had read the Dalai Lama's autobiography, and was moved by his people's plight, and also by his compassion.
'I was horrified. It was like discovering the holocaust. The unique Tibetan Buddhist culture is being destroyed, and I didn't really know about it.'
People have been talking about it for a long time, I point out. Richard Gere, Brad Pitt...to name a couple.

'The penny hadn't really dropped as to what exactly is going on,' she says. 'But one of the things that the book is about is the way we see the news every day and sometimes we have to do something.....'

One of the things that is irritating about Isobel is also the very thing that is admirable about her. It is her total lack of intellectual arrogance. Like the Dalai Lama himself, who is absolutely always photographed looking like a teddy bear, Isobel appears to be a friendly, well meaning, but ditzy blonde. And one suspects that like HH there may be more to the smiling than meets the eye.

Having decided which cause she was going to dedicate her determination to Isabel dived into it, headfirst. And tried out absolutely everything that a person could possibly do, to help the Dalai Lama. She scoured the internet for information about political campaigns, protested outside the Chinese embassy, rode around London with a banner on her bicycle and interviewed a variety of experts. She even wangled a meeting with the Chinese Ambassador. During the course of the meeting, she tried extremely hard to persuade him to see the error of his ways, but he wouldn't budge.

Having got nowhere with him, Isabel knew she needed to do something more dramatic. She considered getting her tits out, but instead hired a parachutist to base jump off Nelson's Column with a banner saying 'Reward the Dalai Lama'.

Her stunt was not ignored. It was front page news, around the world and she received an invitation to meet His Holiness. In the meantime, she travelled to Tibet, almost died, and became romantic with a Tibetan monk. When she finally got to meet the Dalai Lama, she worried about what to wear.

'For Tibet' is a deeply, deeply introspective book, but also a very brave one because at no stage does she attempt to come off as cool. And to be fair to her, it was an extremely courageous mission to attempt, to help the Tibetans, especially when you consider how many have been tortured and imprisoned for far less public displays of support. I congratulated her on her bravery.

'The Dalai Lama has watched the destruction of his people and everything he stands for, but he radiates joy,' she says, beaming.
A chocolate cake arrives. Representing immediate happiness. Isabel laughs, a deeply sensual laugh. And proceeds to pull faces for the photographer.

'The purpose of this exercise was to see what one person can do to make a difference to a huge issue,' she says.

And did it work? I ask.

'I got an email from someone who had read the book and was inspired to sponsor a Tibetan child in India,' she says. 'That's only one person, but even if it only helps one person, it's worked. And it's been an enormous privilege, to have been involved. As I sit here, I am being paid by my publishers to be an advocate for His Holiness the Dalai Lama. Which is a magnificent position to be in!'

Isabel is dressed entirely appropriately for the part, in a Tibetan costume. I tell her that it could be seen as a bit 'Ab Fab', deciding to dress up in Tibetan gear and save Tibet. After all, even Joanna Lumley has interviewed the Dalai Lama.

'Yes, I know. And she wrote a lovely recommendation of my book,' Isobel says. 'But I wasn't aware of the fashion aspect, truly I wasn't. I must have missed all that!"
Suddenly, I am disarmed. It occurs to me that this is an entirely genuine and generous person simply doing her bit to help where help is needed. I am ashamed. Because I know that many of who sit on our arses, questioning the motives of others do little to help anyone but ourselves. And surely it is better to try to do something to help others, however grand the goal and whatever your motives might be?

'For Tibet With Love,' is published by Bloomsbury, 12.15 euros. For more info see www.actfortibet.org