Shakira's Body Politic ; One Minute She's Shaking Her Latino Hips, the Next She's Talking Education with World Leaders in Her Campaign to Change the Lives of South American Children... Liz Jones Discovers What Really Puts the Fire Into Shakira's Super-Taut Belly

Summary

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if you are blonde, pretty and a pop star, especially if you are a pop star who also knows how to belly dance, the chances are you're stupid. I went on tour with a very successful British girl band to Poland once and suggested, to help give my piece a bit of 'colour', that we spend the afternoon in Auschwitz. 'Are there any shops?' one of the popstrels asked hopefully. Shakira bucks that stereotype. On the day we meet, she had given a lecture about her charity work the night before (she spoke eloquently in English, not her first language, with no notes) to the union at Oxford University. I ask whether she was nervous, following in the footsteps of great minds such as Stephen Hawking and Winston Churchill.

'To be able to occupy the same stage which so many other relevant, historic, really exceptional people had occupied before me was quite a responsibility,' she says, in that scattergun way of talking that reminds me of Gisele, the Brazilian supermodel. 'And Oxford is quite cosy, too. The building I spoke in, it's amazing, really wonderful.'

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Shakira's Body Politic ; One Minute She's Shaking Her Latino Hips, the Next She's Talking Education with World Leaders in Her Campaign to Change the Lives of South American Children... Liz Jones Discovers What Really Puts the Fire Into Shakira's Super-Taut Belly

As soon as we sit down backstage at a prerecording of the Christmas Day Top of the Pops - she is dressed in black jeans, a black jacket with pointy shoulders by Rick Owens, a gold vest - Shakira gets straight to the point. Unlike other stars - and Shakira is a huge star, the fourth richest woman in pop with an estimated Pounds 26 million fortune - she doesn't want to talk about her new single or her new album, She Wolf, or her new v...

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