Is it time for you to have a Countess Luann summer?

Or: why the only way forward is to crash through the cringe barrier.

Hot Girl Summer. Barefoot Boy Summer. Feral Rat Girl Summer (now that one sounded fun). Forget them all, for one woman is here to declare - nay, show us - that in 2024, this season belongs to one Girl only. Brace yourself for a Countess Luann Summer.

Countess Lu, Countess who, some of you might ask? How rude. And yet, sadly, not everyone has yet had their existence enlivened by her presence.

Photo: @MightyHoopla / Instagram

For those of you not familiar, Luann de Lesseps is the reality star-turned-unlikely cabaret supremo who made her name on the Real Housewives of New York (that cast line-up was the stuff of TV legend) and is now making her way through the UK and beyond on yes - check notes - the festival circuit. Right now! Thrilling.

She is, by any measure, born to be a camp icon: a nurse from Connecticut who married an French count by way of a stint in Italian gameshow, she’s over the top, theatrically inclined, and has been through the mill - as she put it in one memorable TV scene: “I’ve been travelling, I’ve been to prison.” And that was just the few weeks prior.

Yet she’s bounced back from her lows, doing something unexpected in the process - getting much more approachable and down to earth (OK, it’s all relative), even as she relaunched herself as a cabaret star. Nowadays, with Lu in relatable mode, owning her mistakes, it’s a far cry from the days when, then a stickler for appearances, she horrified her costar by saying she shouldn’t give their driver her first name (far too familiar), and spent much of her early years on the show attempting to enforce etiquette on baffled New Yorkers. And yet: she is not all changed, no - the Countess is not entirely humbled (she once took a break from a cast trip to visit her own concert poster) - and who would want her to be? That’s all part of the fun.

Chic, C’est La Vie

Which is why, the other weekend, I found myself horrified to be ticketless having discovered she was THAT VERY DAY playing in my local park, overtaken by one of London’s biggest festivals, the Mighty Hoopla. What would Lu do? I headed off to sunbathe outside the festival fences to the soundtrack of the Countess’ cabaret anthems - the picnickers around me strangely undaunted by the cultural weight of the moment upon us - and listened to the crowd inside roar as she tackled her hits such as Money Can’t Buy You Class, Chic, C’est La Vie and - even, yes - Fleetwood Mac’s Dreams, dispensing anecdote and wisdom throughout.

It was of course fairly ridiculous, not entirely tongue in cheek (which would ruin it all, if it was too knowing) and not entirely in tune either (not for nothing did the Countess’ castmate Carole Radziwill famously once announce: “I was awoken in the middle of the night by two male voices. One was Luann's.”) But it was entirely joyous.

Since then, Luann has been busy sharing her glam secrets with Vogue, continued her tour to Scotland and Ireland, and is, to the seeming surprise of many in the comments on social media, regularly selling out her concerts to uproarious crowds.

To which I say: we should all be a bit more Countess Luann. Honestly.

We may not be able (or want to) to wow the cabaret crowds in such style, but there’s something fabulous about her resilience, and her commitment to doing what she wants to do, despite the naysayers, which I genuinely think is quite inspiring.

Particularly despite the naysayers - even if it’s just the threat of them. Once, interviewing a psychologist for an article, I was shocked to hear her say the biggest obstacle to her clients doing what they wanted to do in life - whether that was launching a business or launching themselves on social media - was their fear of their friends’ reactions. Which, on reflection, rang true. Isn’t that, at heart, what’s stopping a lot of us? That trying in public, people we know maybe seeing us getting it wrong, makes us cringe.

So what’s the answer? Acknowledge that doing the thing you want to do is maybe awkward, or embarrassing at times, and do it anyway. For me, that’s writing. The more I write, the more I think it’s the only way to do it: crash through the cringe barrier, fluff a line, hit a few duff notes, but remember that’s all part of it. The show must go on.

This summer, whether it be sunshine or clouds (more likely), perhaps we should all make sure we find a stage of our own, in whatever form it takes. To take the Countess in her own words: Just be cool. Don’t be all, like, uncool. And get ready to soak up the applause.

Thanks for reading! I’ll be writing weekly, but with extras like this for fun.