At one point in her son’s journey through the X Factor talent machine, Simon Cowell pointed out to Anne Twist that mums can be a bit biased when it comes to their children’s talents.
‘He said, “Mums don’t always know,” ’ Anne tells me, smiling. ‘But I always thought he had something.’
‘He’ is Harry Styles. The ‘something’ is a charisma that made him such a global superstar that he might easily be known by his Christian name alone – were it not for a certain royal prince.
The now solo artist and former member of One Direction has sold millions of records, become the first man to appear alone on the cover of American Vogue and has even kick-started a film career, making his acting debut in 2017’s critically acclaimed war epic Dunkirk.
He also has a fanbase as broad as it is international, featuring everyone from goggle-eyed teens to pensioners.
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Always Mamma’s boy: Harry Styles and mum Anne Twist in 2015 posing for a picture
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Harry, at just 19 and already a star with 1D, was best man at their wedding in Congleton, Cheshire. Pictured: Gemma, Harry and Anne at her wedding
Then there’s the roll call of gorgeous – and often older – superstar girlfriends. Harry has famously squired a roster of the world’s most beautiful women, Taylor Swift and supermodel Kendall Jenner among them. Recently he dated actress Olivia Wilde, 39, for two years, after they met on the set of 2022 film Don’t Worry Darling.
He has now added another supermodel to his romantic CV. Three weeks ago, he was spotted canoodling with Emily Ratajkowski, who appeared to confirm the relationship last week, after revealing on a podcast that she had started dating someone who was ‘kind of great’.
And all of this before Harry reaches his 30th birthday – that milestone comes next February.
Last year, he overtook Ed Sheeran as the richest British star under 30, with an estimated net worth of £116 million. He’s used the fortune to buy an impressive property portfolio around the world, with luxury homes in New York and London.
So yes, it’s clear that Harry has ‘something’. His mother’s instincts were spot on, although Anne, 55, or ‘Mama Twist’ – the endearing name she goes by on her Twitter feed – tries to not make a fuss about it.
‘He’s just the same as he has always been,’ she says. ‘As a very little boy, he was very much like he is now, just a smaller version.’
Like any good mother, though, Anne doesn’t favour either of her two children ahead of the other. Harry’s older sister Gemma, 32, is a writer and podcaster and herself has more than nine million Instagram followers.
‘I’m very proud of both Harry and his older sister Gemma and the adults they’ve become,’ she stresses. ‘They’re both really hard working, they’ve got good morals and they’re really kind people.
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Blossoming love: Harry is said to be dating model Emily Ratajkowski after being spotted together three weeks ago
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Like any good mother, though, Anne doesn’t favour either of her two children ahead of the other
‘I know it sounds like a dreadful cliche but as long as they’re happy, that’s the most important thing.’
What’s clear today is that behind the enormous star lies a tight-knit family. ‘Oh yes, we’re all close, it’s just geography,’ says Anne. ‘We all see each other when we can.’
Indeed, when they reunite at the family home in Holmes Chapel, Cheshire, Anne says Harry will walk in and ‘open the fridge’ immediately – a habit that will be familiar to parents everywhere
A former pub landlady, Anne was married to Harry and Gemma’s father, Desmond, until the couple divorced when Harry was seven. She subsequently remarried twice, first to businessman John Cox, then in 2013 to Robin Twist.
Harry, at just 19 and already a star with 1D, was best man at their wedding in Congleton, Cheshire. Security – and secrecy – had to be tight to prevent hordes of teenage girls besieging the day. Tragically, Robin died four years later from cancer, aged 57.
Harry has spoken in interviews of his happy childhood and today Anne – who for the last three years has had a new partner who she prefers not to name – recalls that her son’s outgoing, gregarious gene manifested itself early.
‘He always had a big smile,’ she recalls. ‘In comparison Gemma was always the slightly quieter, less extroverted one.’
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Harry Styles in a childhood photo with his mum Anne and step father Robin Twist
The performance gene was there early, too. Anne recalls Harry performing in school plays from a young age, and by secondary school, at Holmes Chapel Comprehensive, he was lead singer in a band called White Eskimo. But he was dreaming big.
In 2010, aged 16, he auditioned for The X Factor. When he failed to make it to the ‘bootcamp’ round, it looked like his brief flirtation with stardom might be over – until Simon Cowell, Louis Walsh and guest judge Nicole Scherzinger came up with the idea of a boyband.
They grouped Harry with fellow contestants Niall Horan, Liam Payne, Louis Tomlinson and Zayn Malik. It was the first time a group had been formed by the judges on the show. The rest is history: their band, One Direction, only made it to third place in the competition, but Simon Cowell gave the group a rumoured £2 million contract with his record label Syco.
By September 2011 their first single, What Makes You Beautiful, had hit number one. The band quickly amassed a devoted following, with Harry the breakout heart-throb. When did Anne realise that her son was a bona fide star? She didn’t, she says – in fact, she was just waiting for it all to go wrong.
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The solo artist and former member of One Direction sold millions of records, become the first man to appear alone on the cover of American Vogue and has even kick-started a film career
‘It was all such a new experience and I just went along with it,’ she tells me. ‘I always felt like I was just there until it stopped and then I would be there to pick up the pieces – that just didn’t happen.’
Indeed, it hasn’t. Five albums, four world tours and 70 million record sales later, the band called it a day in summer 2015 and Harry launched his solo career.
Ever since, it’s been a whirlwind of more global record sales and sell-out gigs at some of the world’s most famous stadiums, among them Madison Square Garden.
In February, Harry’s rise to the top of the music industry was cemented by two Grammy awards, including album of the year, ahead of the likes of Beyonce and Adele. It’s a rare man, of course, who can make the transition from boyband to solo Grammy award-winning global superstar. Apart from that clear ‘something’, what does Anne think is her son’s secret?
‘Music-wise, I think it’s because he’s very authentic to himself. He takes his influences from what he feels, what he’s listened to, what he likes. He’s not thinking, “Right, I need to make this song for this particular demographic.” He does what feels right to him – and it seems to be universally appreciated.’
But there is a sadness which casts a shadow over his success. Anne’s pride at her son is currently mingled with grief – one of the reasons she’s giving this interview.
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When they reunite at the family home in Holmes Chapel, Cheshire, Anne says Harry will walk in and ‘open the fridge’ immediately
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In August 2021, Harry’s grandfather Brian Selley (pictured with Anne) passed away from Parkinson’s, at the age of 86
In August 2021, Harry’s grandfather Brian Selley passed away from Parkinson’s, at the age of 86. Watching his transformation and struggle made Anne determined to bring awareness to the disease.
‘Seeing what Dad went through, and learning more about it, I just decided I wanted to help in some way,’ says Anne.
Brian, she tells me, was an outgoing soul who loved playing golf, fishing, and watching football. He was diagnosed with Parkinson’s after developing a tremor in his early 70s.
‘It started off slowly with what most people would think of as the most well-known symptoms, which are the tremors, the shaking and the freezing,’ Anne recalls.
‘I thought that’s what Parkinson’s was. I didn’t have any idea that there are actually more than 40 different symptoms.’
Initially Brian was able to manage his condition – but after he began to deteriorate, Anne and her brother Mike arranged the help of a carer at his home in Oldham, Hampshire.
‘The carer came in and gave him his medication on a daily basis. That worked well for about six months, but then his mobility decreased. He would fall, which invariably resulted in injury, so we arranged for a live-in carer.
‘One of the hardest things over the years was watching him slowly disappear,’ she says. ‘Gradually he couldn’t do the things he loved, and he almost didn’t understand why he couldn’t do them.’
Brian was Harry’s number one fan. At a One Direction concert at the O2 in 2013, when he was aged 77, he spoke to reporters about his pride for his grandson. ‘He’s still the same,’ Brian declared. ‘He always has a smile on his face and is very loving and caring. We’re all lucky to have him.
‘To me he’s just Harry. I don’t think of him as this well-known pop star like everyone else.’
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Harry’s rise to the top of the music industry was cemented by two Grammy awards
Today Anne admits to me that her father actually fell asleep during the concert. ‘How you manage to do that with that noise, I’ve no idea,’ she smiles. Equally hard, she tells me, was seeing his personality slip away. When she speaks of him, there are definite similarities between him and Harry.
‘My dad had an amazing sense of humour. In what I would call the early Parkinson’s years he retained that and I think that got him through a lot, but it definitely dwindled.
‘Occasionally, you’d get like a moment of lucidity and think, “Wow, there he is”. We just loved that as a family. We’d know he was still in there. And it’s quite sad because then he’d flip back to being not quite the man he was.’
In the final couple of years, Brian also developed Parkinson’s-related dementia. ‘There are hallucinations, paranoia, some obsessive compulsive behaviours,’ Anne says. ‘It’s incredibly distressing.’
She feels grateful that she was able to be at her father’s side when he finally passed away.
Condolences were sent to the family from all over the showbusiness world. While Harry kept his feelings private, Gemma spoke for both of them when she wrote her tribute on Instagram: ‘Rest easy Grandad, effortless comic and all around wonderful man.’
Today, 18 months on, Anne confides there are moments when grief still ‘hits you in the gut, full blast’.
Yet she remains determined to highlight awareness. ‘Every hour in the UK, two people are told they have Parkinson’s,’ she says.
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‘Music-wise, I think it’s because he’s very authentic to himself. He takes his influences from what he feels, what he’s listened to, what he likes’, says Anne
‘It affects about 145,000 people in the UK, which is around one in 350 of the adult population. There isn’t currently a cure and medication can only mask the symptoms.’
The day before we speak, she has returned from visiting the Parkinson’s UK Brain Bank in London, the world’s only brain bank solely dedicated to Parkinson’s research.
‘It’s the control brains, meaning the people that don’t have Parkinson’s, that they would like more of. A couple of years ago I actually signed up to be a brain donor and I was quite interested to see where my brain was to end up,’ she says.
‘One of the things that struck me was that the pathologists really treat their patients, as I call them, with complete respect.’
One imagines she will try and persuade Harry and Gemma, with their millions of followers, to do their bit too. Either way, she knows she won the motherhood lottery with both of them. ‘I’ve not done badly at all,’ she says.
