David Gandy covers SID Magazine #3 (Fall/Winter) (Interview Update)

I suggest he might auction off his tiny white briefs that made him famous in the Dolce Gabbana Light Blue advert; he’s not totally against the idea, but confesses “it would be hard to part with them, it’s like my gold suit that I wore for the Olympics. I have them hidden away.”

I push him on how he feels about that advert, he tells me “it was a career highlight, obviously … It was the feeling that after six years in the industry that I was on the brink of something big. You could definitely feel there was something special about this advert and then it turned out there was. It was iconic. It changed the industry, before, it was all about those androgynous skinny guys - and there’s still a place for them – but after we filmed Light Blue, the fashion industry followed. Calvin Klein brought back their famous image of men in underwear, David Beckham did the underwear campaign for Emporio Armani.”

When I ask him what else he would describe as a career highlight, he immediately thinks of the Olympics, “to be representing Britain was an incredible feeling. I think it was great they got models involved.” He remembers being very anxious before hand, when he was in the trailer backstage, "Jourdan (Dunn) asked me what I was doing, I kept checking my flies were done up, I was totally preoccupied they might be undone!”

You thin David might have had enough on his plate this year, but in March, Davis was announced as the first ever ambassador for Battersea Dogs Home. He tells me he was always loved animals, particularly dogs – We could see that during the shoot, the way he interacted with Kiki, our loveable “Chug” (Chihuahua-Pug) would have verged on nauseating had it not been David Gandy. I ask him now he came to be the ambassador for Battersea Dogs Home, apparently when he was sixteen he was volunteering in an animal rescue shelter in his hometown of Billericay, Essex and “when Margherita Taylor – the DJ – sponsored a kennel in my name, I went in and spoke with the guys, I offered to help in any way they needed. And then they invited me to be their first ambassador.” It costs £36000 a day to keep the pace operating. He even has his parents involved apparently, for “those dogs that are particularly affected by the kennels are sent off to my parents’ house in the Essex-Suffolk border and stay there for five weeks. It’s a respite.”

It seems that David must have very little time for himself, so I ask him how he finds any time to relax; he assures me does “sometimes”, giving the example that he recently got his car racing license, I have to remind him that’s not a usual form of relaxation. Instead I ask him if he has any time for holidays – “not really I travel a lot, but only for work – but I am going to Botswana at Christmas to trek with Orangutans” … so no sunbathing then?