Of all the places you’d expect to spot Pamela Anderson, the grounds of one of London’s oldest and most prestigious Inns of Court may not be top of the list. Yet, here we are, on a quiet, overcast day in pre-lockdown London, in the middle of Gray’s Inn Square, Holborn, watching Pamela Anderson fly past us on an electric scooter.
But for Anderson, living up to the unexpected has become something of a trademark modus operandi. On the one hand, she’s known as the woman most likely to be seen on on a teenage boy’s bedroom wall throughout the Nineties. On the other, she’s an activist trailblazer who’s as at home on the climate change frontline with Vivienne Westwood as she is the mouthpiece for WikiLeaks founder Julian Assange.
And, a couple of baffled barristers notwithstanding, our day with Pamela Anderson is equally enlightening. While we all know her for that swimsuit from that television series, she has since spent her career using her celebrity status to raise awareness for the causes she believes in, including campaigning against animal abuse, exposing human trafficking and halting rainforest deforestation. Imbued with Anderson’s permanent happy-go-lucky air, her activism feels genuine without being too preachy. “Nobody’s perfect,” she tells us. “And, at the end of the day, if you can say, ‘I did more good than bad’, that’s a good thing.”