Tiffany Norris didn’t set out to work for billionaires or Hollywood celebrities. One day, they simply started coming to her. It was only a few months after setting up shop as a ‘Mummy Concierge’ – the first of her kind in the UK – when the phone rang with a mystery number. “They asked if I could help and said their name. I thought it was a joke.”
Norris, 42, is essentially a personal assistant for pregnant women. She’s hired to do everything from booking suites in private maternity hospitals to sourcing VIP nannies when the baby arrives. Based between London and the Cotswolds, she has worked with everyone from members of the royal family to household Hollywood names – although she won’t say who, she’s signed too many NDAs for that. She also won’t say exactly how much she charges: “I don’t want to sound crass.”
After becoming a “concierge” for her first celebrity, her name began travelling through the super-rich networks. Soon, her VIP client list swelled. Now she has a waiting list of 12 people, including two “very well-known” celebrities hoping to have their pregnancies and future childcare micro-managed. “I’m quite kind of well-known in LA as the person to go to,” she adds.
And for good reason. Norris is committed to the job. After giving birth to her fourth child, she allowed herself a single day of maternity leave (in England, employment law says company employees must take at least two weeks). Norris will answer phone calls at 2am from worried celebrity mums, leaving her phone on loud overnight. “Sometimes,” she says, “I get phone calls and maybe they’re stressed over the fact that they don’t know what pram to buy, or they suddenly decide they need a maternity nurse, and you know, what can I do?”
Norris has a particular talent for sourcing the best nanny that money can buy. Until seven years ago, she was a journalist, specalising in weddings and parenting. This gave her a portfolio of contacts in the business. “I’m not like a nanny agency,” she says. “But what I do have is, quite literally, a little black book that I guard with my life. It has all the names and numbers of the most sought-after parenting experts. The best of the best in parenting.”
This list of high-profile experts includes maternity nurses, sleep trainers, potty trainers, and of course, nannies. “I’ve got the kind of people that might have a year-long waiting list, but if they chat to me, I can get my clients in,” says Norris.
If Norris’s clients require a nanny, she will consult her black book, but it takes a lot to get listed there. “I interview nannies before I even consider taking their details. I am probably more selective than any nanny agency would be,” she says. “I’m a bit like a dragon to the nannies, but then that means I work with the most amazing nannies.”
The criteria are extensive: to work with a super-rich client, Norris’s nannies must have worked at a prestigious nanny school. She names Norland College and Chiltern as examples. They must have at least 10 years of experience in the nannying world, and they must have experience working in what Norris terms “brutal jobs”. “This means high-net-worth families, where maybe they’re used to having to fly all around the world to various homes, or they’re very used to being a rota nanny,” she says.
Rota nannies are common with the rich. “This is when nannies have two weeks completely on, and then two weeks off. They need to have experience of literally looking after a child 24/7, including overnight,” says Norris. Only then might you be considered for Norris’s little black book.
Being a celebrity nanny might be hard work, but it comes with its perks. “They get paid an absolute fortune. Starting salaries are often $100,000 (£81,000), and the bonuses are high. I had one celebrity client ask me if a nanny would be happy with a $2,000 (£1,600) clothing allowance every month,” she says. “I said, yes, I think they will be fine with that.”
This isn’t rare in the world of VIP childcare. “Some celebrities want their nannies to look stylish and completely blend into the family,” explains Norris. If that means wearing designer [clothing], then so be it.
Then there is the travel. “Most of the nannies I work with regularly fly on private jets and spend the summer going from superyacht to superyacht,” says Norris. “It’s an incredibly glamorous lifestyle, but they are under no illusion that it’s also a very hard job.”
Sometimes, being a nanny means working around the clock or even sleeping in bed with the children they are looking after. “A lot of nannies want to know, if I’m on a superyacht for six months in the Maldives, am I clocking off at six o’clock?” says Norris. “Or if, for example, there’s a night when one of my clients has hopped off onto an island, and they’re spending a night at a hotel, the nannies might take care of the children overnight on the boat. It just means the next day, they’ll probably get the next day off or something like that.”
Above all else though, celebrity clients want to treat their nannies well. “Otherwise, they know they won’t put up with it, and they’ll leave,” says Norris. “There’s an understanding relationship, if that makes sense.”
But it isn’t just about the nanny side of the job, Norris wouldn’t be a celebrity concierge without her close relationship with some of London’s most exclusive private maternity wards. “I work with all of the private maternity hospitals – Portland, the Kensington wing,” she says. “I’ve had clients who say they’re having a C-section, for example, and then they will book out one of the suites in the hospital.”
The suites come complete with a lounge and private lift to avoid paparazzi. “I’ve been asked to go in and basically transform the hospital suite to replicate my client’s bedroom at home,” says Norris. This transformation would involve hanging family photos on the walls, transporting over the same bed linen they are used to sleeping on, and their own pillows. “I’d also get the same reed diffusers so it would smell like their home.”
Some requests border on the implausible. “Some clients might I’d say, my baby’s not born yet, but I want them to be a member of an exclusive children’s member’s club the second they’re born,” explains Norris, with a hint of exasperation. “Often we are talking about member’s clubs for children that have massive waiting lists, and it’s also impossible to put a child’s name down who wasn’t born yet because they don’t have a name.”
Still, Norris makes it work: “[Members clubs] do make allowances for me and my clients,” she says. “Most people in the industry know me now. They trust me.”
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