Living the technicolor dream

Imogen Lloyd Webber walks into Balthazar on a busy Friday afternoon, sits quietly near the bar and launches into a conversation that ranges from Kim Kardashian (“She’s built an empire on her backside”) to Hillary Clinton’s term as secretary of state (“She’s extraordinary”) to health care (“I can see why people are so frustrated”).

Dressed in a purple Diane von Furstenberg dress, ballet flats and heavy TV makeup, the pretty blonde gets a few appreciative looks, nothing more.

In New York, Lloyd Webber, 34, is a little-known television personality. In London, she’s the daughter of perhaps the most successful musical theater composer ever. (That would be Andrew Lloyd Webber, the man behind the “Cats,” “Phantom of the Opera” and “Joseph and the Technicolor Dreamcoat,” among others).

Caitlin Thorne Hersey

Billionaire’s daughter Imogen Lloyd Webber has succeeded against the odds, establishing herself as a liberal commentator on US cable.

No one here has any idea who she is — and she likes it that way. “It’s brilliant!” she says. “People don’t even know how to spell my name properly here, much less who I am.”

Which is exactly why she came.

Her billionaire father has said he won’t leave money to his five kids, “because they need to learn work ethics.” He needn’t to worry about his workaholic oldest daughter.

“I’ve always had to work. My father has very rightly said he doesn’t believe in inheritance. He should spend the money how he wants; it’s his money. That’s been absolute freedom for me,” she says, with apparent sincerity.

Perhaps she’s well-adjusted because her parents divorced when she was 6, and Lloyd Webber had a normal upbringing with her mom, Sarah Hugill, and younger brother, Nick. Occasionally she would do something crazy, such go to the Oscars with her father, but soon after, she’d be on a plane, in coach, heading home to her regular routine.

She studied modern political history at Cambridge, where she dropped “Lloyd” from her name for a while to ensure she was judged on her own merit. She got good grades, but people always figured out who she was, so eventually she gave up.

“I’m incredibly proud of my dad; I don’t want to drop his name,” she says.

In 2007, Lloyd Webber, who had been toiling away on a sci-fi novel that has yet to see the light of day, decided to write something more marketable: “The Single Girl’s Guide,” a clever instruction manual culled from interviews with female friends. Filled with ribald jokes and practical advice, it flew off the shelves. While doing press for the book’s 2008 US release, she appeared on the now-defunct “Happy Hour” show on the Fox Business Network, where producers realized she had a brain (and face) for TV.

“They just kept inviting me back,” she says.

She stuck to British issues at first, but soon tackled US politics, too.

In February of 2010, she decided she was getting enough gigs to move here. But she did it like everyone else — renting a fifth-floor walk-up and going on plenty of bad dates. “Every woman does this when she hits her early 30s . . . I said, ‘OK, so I may not be married with children, as a whole lot of my friends are, but I had the opportunity to come here,” she says.

Since then, she’s covered everything from the royal wedding to deficit reduction for Fox, HLN and MSNBC, among other places. She’s held her own against Sean Hannity and Bill O’Reilly as a liberal commentator to their shows, and has a regular gig on “Imus in the Morning.” “I found her brilliant and unpredictable — not your usual talking-point lefty,” says “Imus” executive producer Bernard McGuirk. “And she has a wicked sarcasm that’s refreshing to hear out of this pretty English lady.”

He eventually figured out she was that Lloyd Webber, but not because she told him.

“It’s hard being the child of a famous person,” says her US spokesperson, Peter Brown. “You start off with people having preconceived ideas of who you are. There may be minor privileges, but there are also setbacks. Imogen’s too bright not to be aware of that.”

Judging by the copious fan mail she gets, Lloyd Webber is becoming a hit on her own. The petite polymath shrugs off her ability to tackle any topic on air, saying it’s a talent shared by many New York women.

Brown says her dad is impressed with her career. “I think he’s rather proud of the fact that she’s left the UK and gotten this gig without any help,” he says.

Recently, Andrew Lloyd Webber visited NYC, inviting his daughter to the Tonys. As the two squeezed through the melee, a fotog snapped their photo. The next day the picture ran with the caption, “Andrew Lloyd Webber and mystery guest.”

“Apparently people were wondering, ‘Who’s the blonde?’ ” she laughs.