She remembered that, four years earlier, she had met Mark Cowne, Bob Geldof’s manager, and that they had bonded over their love of elephants. The more Cher discovered about Kaavan, the more determined she became to rescue him. You never saw a more depressed-looking pachyderm. He would stand in his tiny shed with his head facing the wall. There was no roof on the shed, no water in his pool and he had no toys to play with. It was Cher’s Twitter followers who first told her about Kaavan, a 36-year-old Asian bull elephant living in dreadful conditions at the zoo in Islamabad. In a matter of minutes, he completely changed. “If you saw Kaavan before we took him to this sanctuary, he was a different animal. She says he is eating well, readjusting happily, and has already got a couple of girlfriends. Cher is just back from visiting him in Cambodia. We move to more positive territory – the liberation of Kaavan the elephant. But the one thing I know is he loves America and Trump doesn’t.” I pretty much disliked Bush when he started those wars, and I could say for a minute it was touch and go for hate. Have you hated anybody like this before? “No, in my whole life, never. When she talks about Trump she sounds traumatised. I think he’s fighting so hard because he’s going to be prosecuted when he gets out of the White House.” Could he end up in prison? “Oh, I hope so. He’s the most vindictive person I’ve ever witnessed. He’s trying to block Joe at every moment. “I said if Trump can’t be in the White House, he’s going to burn it down. “Well, yes, I think he loves it, too.” She pauses. I tell her I love it and ask if Biden has said anything to her about it. In October, Cher recorded a song for Joe Biden’s presidential campaign, Happiness Is Just a Thing Called Joe, a reworked version of a number from the 1940s musical Cabin in the Sky. I hate to even call him a president because all he does is watch TV.” “People who just disagreed with each other before are now enemies. How has Donald Trump changed the culture of the United States? “It’s toxic,” she says. He doesn’t think he has any responsibility to help us.” And in my country the president doesn’t believe it has anything to do with him. “How am I taking it? There are no words that describe it. It’s such a strange world we’re living in, I say – how are you coping? And she is straight off into a turbo-charged rant. She is masked, I am masked, and we sit at opposite ends of the room. We meet in a London hotel, close to the BBC’s Broadcasting House, where she has been eulogising elephants. Cherilyn Sarkisian, aged 74, has never been predictable. She is not in London to promote a record ( 100m sold and counting) or a film (she won the best actress Oscar in 1988 for Moonstruck) she is here to talk about rescuing the world’s loneliest elephant from a zoo in Pakistan and flying him to a sanctuary in Cambodia. She looks the ultimate in revolutionary chic – Cher Guevara. Two-tone black-and-white beret, matching jacket, skinny jeans, black boots, black mask, and an elephant-shaped knuckle-duster.
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