Lovely by name, lovely by nature

Carmen Lovely, Mullingar's very own "It Girl" is as charming in person as she is pretty - and stylish to boot! And if the measure of one's popularity is the number of friends you have, then Carmen's right at the top of the pile..Her Facebook listing shows her to have over a thousand friends, while most of us are lucky if we have twenty!"I think that people really know me from Mojos where I worked in the ticket booth for five years. I know a lot of faces and a lot of people know me. I worked in the booth with a friend of mine and I loved it, it was the best fun ever."But before fun times at Mojos and long before her children Aaron and Jasmine and her partner Colin came along, Carmen had a very serious job indeed - as a trainee director at RTE.After she trained as a broadcast journalist in Dublin she found that her initial desire to become a TV star had waned and that working behind the scenes held a much greater attraction.Carmen worked on shows like Live at Three and the travel quiz show Where in the World before leaving to answer the call of motherhood. Her dream job is still to direct a film; "I can't imagine that I would get back to where I was now and the whole thing is so cut throat and anyway I have BED to keep me occupied. But if I could do my dream job it would be to direct a movie.""BED" is Carmen's latest "baby" - her new nightclub, set to open in Spin in Mount Street."Come to BED with us, I'll see you in BED," she laughed."It's my very own project and that's what I like about it: I get to decide the look and feel."The look and feel of BED will be something that Carmen calls 'Bordello Chic': the club will be a lounge, low lights and low key with a dancefloor for anyone who wants to get up and strut their stuff."It's for everybody. I like to party and if you want to then you are more than welcome to come along. There'll be no grand opening with a guest list, the club will just open and there'll be a glass of bubbly and a french fancy for everyone."Running a house and a club can't be easy but living in Mullingar close to her native Clonkill allows Carmen a certain amount of freedom, thanks to her mum. "She has always insisted that they go there for the weekend since they were tiny which is fantastic for them and for me," she laughed. "It's a blessing to have all of that so close by and of course it means guilt-free going out."The stylish surroundings of BED will be a far cry from the goth and hippie haunts favoured by Carmen during her student and RTE days - although these days, looking as if she has just stepped off a catwalk, it's difficult to image Carmen looking anything but chic and stylish.But, she insists, she buys her clothes in the same place as the rest of us girls: H&M and ASOS."Oh, and New Look is brilliant. I love the clothes in there."But like her style in clothes, her taste in nightlife has changed since then:"We would have never went to anywhere like Mojos or BED then, it was all dark pubs and alternative places but still we always wanted to dance and have fun and I suppose we still do. In Mullingar we really just go to Danny Byrnes and then Mojos and I suppose like most people when you are out you are in a little bubble with your friends and can have fun where ever you go."The idea of BED is just to have fun. I think that the club scene in Mullingar has actually got better over the last two years, despite the recession. Now when people go out they want to have fun and to get away from it all even just for the evening and a night out can be managed by most of us despite the current climate."I have great people already working behind the scenes to make BED happen and I hope that we will open the doors before Christmas. In the meantime we are launching next year's Masquerade Ball in November. This year funds will go to upgrading the CT Scanner at the hospital. We've got to keep the hospital up there and save people the trips up and down to Dublin. The scanner is vital and we need to raise €240,000 which is serious money."Ever 27 will be at the launch in SPIN, it'll still be called SPIN then but shortly after that we'll all be going to BED, please come and join us," she laughed.