#toyah podcast

[toyahinterviews]

THE DYSPRAXIC HELP 4U PODCAST WITH BILLY STANLEY 10.10.2021

BILL: Welcome to the podcast, Toyah. How are you? TOYAH: I'm really good. Thank you very much. It's nice to have some normality back in life BILL: I must start by asking when did you learn that you were dyspraxic? TOYAH: Very early. I had a very remarkable teacher when I was in infant school and it was about my second year and she realised I was very, very bright and very creative. My very first year at school when I was four and a half, we were allowed to work with colour and crayons. So when we were taught mathematics, we had different coloured bricks, which represented numbers     I (was) top of the class at that. Then with using crayons - top of the class with that. And then when we moved to the following year when I was five people very quickly realised I could not pick up the normal standard training reading and the normal standard training of numbers. They were just gobbledygook to me

So I was put on phonetic writing - the “Janet and John” books I was given in phonetics and then I could immediately read. But once I was six, none of that was available to me. It was completely taken away and treated as if I was lazy, treated as if I wasn't making an effort. I think part of the problem was is the school didn't like me having special treatment. They didn't want me being singled out to be someone special. I went from being top of the class to the next 10 years being bottom of the class until I left BILLY: Did you have the support of your immediate family and friends? TOYAH: They didn't even support me when I was an international megastar! BILLY: Did you struggle to conform to social norms and the trials and tribulations of being neurodivergent and did having a personality suppressed throughout your mainstream education somehow mould you into the person you are today?

TOYAH: I think I felt very alone. But teenagers generally feel alone. School for me was tedious and it was boring. I should have been at a drama school where I would have excelled or a music school where I would have excelled. I just did not fit into the conservatism of my education. So I would say in answer to your question that I became quite insular and incredibly independent because of it because there was no one I could rely on There was no one I could go to and say, “why can't I do this? Why don't people listen? Why don't people see me as me?” So everything I did I was told I was wrong and I was told I was being the wrong person. So no one saw me in my true natural state and my true nature. So I think it actually made me who and what I became as a star BILLY: Dyspraxics often say that they play the fool as a means of masking our differences. Do you consider yourself to have been always the master your true persona?

TOYAH: I tell you one thing that I did do was I covered up brilliantly in social situations, where I knew what was coming because of culturally where I came from. I had a bad speech impediment and at that time I had a limp because I was born with a twisted spine and pelvic dysplasia, which is all been corrected. I knew that people were going to make a joke out of me. So I knew how to cover this up. I knew how to bluff my way. When I went to my first job interview, I just lied and I'm a great actress. So I just lied and I got the job Interestingly, the director Derek Jarman, who I did two movies with, who used to come and see me sing - he said to me “Toyah, you’re still acting”, and he understood that I had to create these layers. I think the most frustrating thing that I found - it wasn't really until I met my husband at the age of 25-26 where he was so crystal clear about my cognitive issues. Up until that point, I just went with being highly individualistic and deliberately not fitting in. But I thought that was part of my personality rather than my inner internal neural pathway wiring BILLY: Given that dyspraxia is a lifelong disability, has it impacted you more throughout adulthood? 

TOYAH: My my dyspraxia has got worse as I've got older. When I was younger, say from when I was born until I was about nine I had no idea I had disability. No idea. I led a perfectly normal life. I was being trained to be a junior ice skater alongside John Curry, the Olympian. I had a very normal life and then once my corrective surgeries started, I realised that this was a disability that was going to be with me on a certain level all of my life People made me aware of the limp, which I was never aware of and people made me aware of my speech impediment, which I was never aware of. I just thought I was being treated like the village idiot all the time, which is what culturally happened 55 years ago.    So my dyspraxia has definitely got worse as I've got older but in lockdown I found the most incredible teacher who has a military background and he studied my movement. And by studying my movement, he was able to reverse my dyspraxia so I can now play keyboards and I can now play guitar. I've written 30 odd albums and I've never been able to play one instrument There are ways of connecting those neural pathways and he did it through physical exercise. In 2000 I did the “Dore Programme” which is highly controversial. The government have tried to sweep it under the carpet. I did this for three months and went away and wrote two books. That's all about connecting and firing the neural pathways in the front cerebellum through movement. Through spinning, through disorientation and balance 

BILLY: Without the intervention of a family friend do you believe you would have gone on to achieve the career you've had? And as such did the lack of awareness and support for your respective disabilities in adolescence hold you back in some regards later in life? 

TOYAH: It's a very good question. I think if people saw and accepted and realised what was going on with the relationship between my brain development and my body growing rather than giving up on me I would have had a far more advanced artistic career. No doubt about it. But I was written off very early as purely baby making material. I never had children and I think instinctively I knew I was carrying a gene that had this disability So it's such a good question, because when I was about 14, and this is just a story of complete luck, a man that ran BBC Pebble Mill had a boat next to my parent's boat down on the River Avon. He said to my parents "you know your daughter is incredibly talented. You've got to get her out of the school system and put her in drama school" and he nominated me into the Birmingham Old Rep Theatre School. I never looked back. I just excelled! I was put in the right environment. So up until the age of 14 I was never in the right environment   BILLY: You had an early interest in dancing. Did you encounter any difficulties such as a lack of spacial awareness?

TOYAH: I took up dance when probably about 14. I earned my own money, I paid for my own dance classes. And again, anything to do with movement will trigger the neurons. What I didn't know back then was dehydration and the neurons not quite firing goes hand in hand. I was never given water at school. I drank one glass of water a day. Now I drink five litres of water a day. The brain cannot function in a state of dehydration, neither can your heart So I never knew this at school. We never had water in the classroom. We never had water available to us until lunchtime, and then again when we got home. So all of that is a perfect storm. When I was dancing and even still today, I think it's why I'm never still when I move my neurons - I can feel the fireing. I can feel my brain activate. You want to feel good, just move. We’re water, fat and electricity. So connect with all of that BILLY: Dyspraxics often struggle to learn new information at a rapid pace and have weak short term memory. We do however seem to have fantastic long term memories. Has this been the case for you?

TOYAH: It's a great question because I can give you two examples. I did a play in London called “Trafford Tanzi” about a female wrestler. I‘d pick the fight sequences up on first show. The fighting instructor, a judo Olympian showed me the fight sequences for this two and a half hour play. He never had to show me them again. They were there. When you give me a script, and I have a reading technique where I'm very, very slow but it’s there But give me a dance routine in a West End musical (Toyah in "Cabaret" in 1987, below) it takes me months because I need to connect the counting to the music score and I feel music as as a kind of heartbeat. Musicians feel music has 1234 1234. I don't feel music that way. And dancer’s choreography - they build dances through counting. It's hopeless for me. Hopeless. So I excel at some things and other things I have to find my own way in and that can take time

BILLY: Did you encounter any difficulties such as the lack of spacial awareness, poor balance and where you're also impeded by needing to wear a raised shoe? TOYAH: The thing is most of the time I wore a raised shoe on my right leg. My right leg has now been made the same length. 10 years ago I had surgery to make my right leg the same length. So when I wasn't wearing the raised shoe, my balance was affected and also my gait. Limp is called a gait and I had an emphasised gait. But again, I'm incredibly muscular so I can cover these things up But I think my movement is very individualistic. And it's not what I'd call feminine movement. It's strong movement. I move like a gymnast. I'm very, very strong and very supple, and that’s partly because my tendons are just too long for my joints. So I overextend but my movement is quite unique BILLY: You've had numerous operations in the past to help with your physical disabilities, unbeknownst to your fans and peers. Would you say it was a conscious decision and what impact does all this have on your dyspraxia? 

TOYAH: No, I wouldn't because I managed to disguise it. So up until about the age of 30 my life was pretty normal. I'd had joints removed in my toes to stop them growing and I'd had corrective surgery on my right foot when I was 11. But after that I had a relatively normal life other than I could never wear lovely shoes and still can't because I have a club foot. When I was 30 my right hip socket wasn't formed. It was a shallow socket and it developed a very bad abscess when I was 40 that hollowed out the thigh. There was a huge hole there For 21 years I had to live with that and that was done through pain control. So when I say pain control, that's physiotherapy, it's not drugs. I was allowed to carry Co-Codamol (painkiller) if I needed it, but I managed not to use it. They didn't want to do the surgery on me until the prosthetics were fully developed   So when I was 51, a very wonderful incredible surgeon called Richard Villar designed a prosthetic for me. It's very, very tiny. He took the hip joint out and put in the metal plate into my hip, pelvis, and then this tiny prosthetic goes in to the hole that the cysts formed. I couldn't walk for three months. I was off my my legs for three months while bone grew around that. And I've had a normal life since

So from the age of 30 until I was 50 I was under pain control management. That was all done through extreme muscle. I tell everyone this, if you've got joint problem problems you've got to be built like Arnold Schwarzenegger, because this muscle helps that tendon function through a dysfunctional joint. Then you can support that joint and you could probably live with it for your whole lifetime. By the time Richard Villar did my right hip he said the whole area had completely disintegrated. He had no idea how I coped and I said “I've just had to do this all my life. I know how to mask” So I found - once I had my hip replacement at 51, I'm now 63 - my dyspraxia became worse because my brain had to adjust to a different leg length so I became clumsier. And I'm now dealing with that. It has actually taken about eight years to deal with it BILLY: Is there anything in particular that you've struggled with when it comes to masking? 

TOYAH: You see it in the hands. It's a classic sign that when I'm acting and when I'm expressing my hands kind of freeze. So now I've trained my hands so you will often see me - I will not spread my fingers. I've taught myself not to do that. So my hands are always closed fingers now BILLY: I strongly believe that through dedication and perseverance one can overcome adversity to achieve success. Was there ever a time when you felt like giving up? TOYAH: I'm not someone who gives up because in my upbringing, even though my family felt they loved me, it was so unnutritious on my soul, my body and my heart. I was brought up to be a failure, everyone reflected back at me failure. So because of that I'm the toughest fighter you will ever meet. I just don't give up, I will fight to the death whatever the subject matter is. And that's partly my upbringing, because I was always told I was going to fail So when I reached 30, I had to disguise the pain. That was the biggest thing, disguising the pain, so no one knew and I think there must have been times when people wondered why I was tense rather than relaxed. It's as simple as that. I was always masking pain. There are certain things and I can only explain this through a performance. I was playing “Puck” in “Midsummer Night's Dream” about 1994 (above). So I would have been about 36 and I masked the pain by working on skateboards, roller skates and a penny-farthing so I didn't have to run 

So I could get my sweeping movements on stage by using the skateboard as a body board. So I would run in the wings, jump onto the skateboard onto my body and curve around on the stage and then stand and deliver my lines. That was a way of masking pain because I knew the pain built I could do shows but by the end of the show the pain would be building to intolerable. When I did “Calamity Jane” in the West End, which was incredibly physical - the irony of that was because it was so physical I didn't experience any pain in the whole year because I was so physically tuned up and that helped. Except on one night and an actor dropped me and it did my back in. But that’s the only time I've ever had an injury So it's been a very interesting journey and I would say to people you just don't give up. You just have to keep learning any kind of mild physical disability, which is how I say I am. Just keep working with it. You don't give up because everyone around you is is telling you to give up. You just don't BILLY: There is a common misconception in society that dyspraxia affects intellectual ability. We generally struggle to absorb information that has no bearing on our intelligence overall 

TOYAH: I'm a complete sponge. I'm ahead of everyone in the room, which I think is what confuses people so much. I'm very, very small. I have a slight lisp. I have a slight gait. My malatropisms are frequent in every sentence I say, but I'm ahead of everyone. So I think it's this super intelligence. It has absolutely nothing to do with the condition in your body. You're still intelligent. I read every newspaper every morning within an hour and maintain that information. But there are certain areas that I can't maintain information on I would never make a politician because it just makes no sense to me what politicians do. If you're not helping someone earn a living, have food on the table and be healthy you're not doing your job and as far as I can see everything politicians do is illogical and just help CEOs get big fees in big companies     So when I see something illogical and there's so much in the world that isn't logical I can't work that out. It will never make sense to me. But on other levels I have super intelligence and I don't mind patting myself on the back with that. I'm ahead of everyone in the room 

BILLY: How are you when it comes to reading between the lines both in your personal and professional life? TOYAH: I have to study myself all the time in mirrors. Going up for a part I have to change the way I move. I have to deal with the hands. I'm incredible at reading people. You get people that do face recognition for the police. I can read someone literally in five seconds because I’ve studied myself so much. So I'm a very good reader of personality traits BILLY: After many years as an actor and a musician touring, can you withstand the constant changes of the lineups and surroundings? Are longtime colleagues supportive of your neurodiversity and the way that you work? TOYAH: It's a good question because in the following week I'm working with three different groups. I've always kind of ended up with different bands. The Toyah band, what's fabulous about the band is we've been together for 18 years. They know how I need to learn something and they know when I can't learn something. They know the route in and we have kind of eye signals and hand signals on stage when I've lost the count. I anchor by the downbeat. Now, most musicians don't need a downbeat, they can work around that downbeat (makes a tsk tsk tsk noise) I need the boom, boom, boom, that's how I recognise music

So the Toyah band make that very easy for me. As a solo artist - it's important to me to be a solo artist because it's important to me to establish who and what I feel I am rather than what other people feel who and what I am. I'm not a person that lives by others opinions. And I think that makes some people … I'm difficult to be with for some people because I won't let people tread on me. It's all my upbringing, it's all survival. It's all how dare you tell me that my precious time isn't how I perceive it BILLY: Is it fair to say you're still fighting an uphill battle with acceptance and credibility as a neurodivergent woman in the entertainment industry? TOYAH: I’m fighting the war and I'm a woman and you've got that as well - being a woman in the music industry. There's quite a war going on all the time BILLY: I discovered via your blog on toyahwillcox.com that you are also dyslexic. As a fellow dyslexic myself, I am in awe of the fact that you've penned two books and have co-written nearly 30 albums throughout your impressive career to date. Have you ever felt like you've been at a disadvantage in comparison to your peers? 

TOYAH: There are some authors I will never be able to read because they have a way of thinking that I believe is brought to them through their education and it's quite an elite education. There are some authors like Stephen King - I can pick a book up and read it in two hours. But there's other authors I have to go through with a dictionary. I have to go through each paragraph three times There is an elitism in writing and because I read the newspapers - the simpler writing techniques like The Sun and The Mail - I can read those in five minutes. If I'm going to go to The Independent and The Guardian and The Observer I'm like oh, I don't understand that. So what do they mean? Why have they said that? Three sentences later, they're saying that … I just have to go over and over and over it BILLY: Do you find putting pen to paper easy and does it play a big part in your day to day life?

TOYAH: Both books are a stream of consciousness. I don't know about you, but I think about my life like a diary. So say that's a diary (rustles some paper) Every single note of every single day is in that order in my brain right through virtually to my first memories. I could tell you what I was doing a year ago and what I was wearing, and that really freaks people out So when I'm in a situation and I was in the situation two days ago rehearsing the tour band for “Posh Pop”, which is the new album. They wanted to change an arrangement. So that in my head is like taking the ABC and just throwing it at the wall. It's literally like that. I can't hold it down. I can't sequence and I'm saying sorry, I'm having a brainstorm here  I'm going to have to stop everything, write it down in its order, learn it, see it, photograph it in my brain to get the line still. So sometimes when I look at print, the print becomes a black block. Impenetrable. You're just looking at a blank block or it's like confetti firing off and I can't control the images 

So reading books … I know a good writer Alice Sebold, “Lovely Bones”. That is an intellectual book. I read it in two hours, because she wrote it as a stream of consciousness. So with both of my books “Living Out Loud” and “Diary Of A Facelift” - they’re streams of consciousness. But because my consciousness is so ordered, when I write something it has that order in it BILLY: Your incredible acting career has seen you star in a cult classic film “Quadrophenia” and opposite Laurence Olivier in “The Ebony Tower”. You've also tread the boards in big West End shows and have appeared in TV shows, both as an actor and presenter. What impression did the people you've worked with leave on you? TOYAH: I’d say in “Quadrophenia” we were soul brothers and sisters, we're all the same. There was one standout, absolutely brilliant intellectual and that was Sting. He could do anything with such eloquence and brilliance, but the rest of us we were of similar mental ability and function Laurence Olivier was exceptional and I think part of this exceptionality was his generation. Seen two wars, have had to survive, gone without food, not knowing waking up every day and I think not knowing made exceptional human beings. I'm not saying it's good but Katharine Hepburn, Lord Olivier, Sir John Mills, Diana Dors, exceptional human beings. They shone

BILLY: What did it feel like working with Laurence Olivier? TOYAH: I came out of “Trafford Tanzi”, which was a massive critical success so I was pretty confident when I worked with Laurence Olivier (below, with Toyah in "The Ebony Tower") What I was aware of that he was in the latter part of his life and he wasn't well, but I absorbed him like a sponge because he had done so much and he had fought so much for what he believed in. The National Theatre was not an easy thing for him to do and then to be put into a Hollywood system when really he was passionately in love with the stage was not an easy journey for him The Hollywood system messed up his wife, Vivian Lee, and I witnessed this with Katharine Hepburn that the Hollywood system of the golden era of Hollywood was a cruel system. So I was looking at another survivor and recognised that and just was absolutely in awe of all of them. Huge respect  

BILLY: You've got the same fight and spirit that those stars of yesteryear had. Does it hold you in good stead? TOYAH: I've got my limitations. My physicality gives me limitations as an actress. I was looking at people who were seen as chameleon who could be anything. So I didn't actually hold myself in the same regard as them. But I am still a fighter BILLY: In 1984, you had the honour of being invited to make a speech at the Women of the Year in the presence of Diana, Princess of Wales (above with Toyah) Your speech expressed views on how being disabled incites creativity. What was the driving force behind your speech? TOYAH: It was a huge honour, Woman Of The Year celebrations. It's so motivationally important and you think well, why in a time today but it's incredibly important. To be invited to do that was just amazing. I wanted to just say that because I've been perceived educationally as a no hoper - and even my husband Robert Fripp, one of the world's greatest guitarists - then two weeks ago, (he) said to me and my guitar teacher "Toyah is unteachable". Even he thinks I'm unteachable 

I felt it was an opportunity to stand up and talk about the people I attract in my life, who seem definitely to have some form of disability. And the question is, is it disability or is it a different perception and experience? All are viable So in this speech I talked about two deaf male friends in an audience at Shaftesbury Avenue Theatre. I think 1982 or 83 where I was giving a concert and they were sign languaging the lyrics to each other. I realised they couldn't actually hear the music, but they were experiencing it. So I told this story In 1987 that's was revolutionary, we were just beginning within music theory to understand that people who are locked into their bodies but can't express themselves were still experiencing life and experiencing emotions. So this was all revolutionary and has come a long, long way since then I gave this speech and I just wanted to say that we need to see disability as these people have rights of access to everything but their disability doesn't stop them being phenomenal. So how do we use the word disability? I think we've come a long, long way in those last decades to making everything accessible and possible for everyone and that if we're educated at school, to know that we are all utterly physically unique, then we develop languages and connections no matter who and what we're connecting with It crosses boundaries, we need to cross boundaries and I think that's what that speech was about. If you read it today, I was probably using politically incorrect language but all of that is being ironed out and I'm certainly learning every day about the new language and the new acceptance and what can be said and what shouldn't be said (Watch the speech HERE)

BILLY: As a 31 year old with significant hearing difficulties I applaud you for taking a stand and making the speech that resonated experiences you'd had at the time. Every generation must play its part in spinning the wheel of change for the greater good with the best of intentions

TOYAH: Every generation must have the right to change the world for good. Every generation must do that. Our present young generation who’ve had 15 months of COVID now deserve the mantle, they deserve the right to change the world for good and it's quite an extraordinary time to be alive. I think  it’ll only change if people are taught about this So when I work with my band and if a firestorm starts in my head, I tell them. I say "could you just stop talking while I sort my head out?” Because sometimes you're having a firestorm and you just need to put everything back in place and conversation can be  exhausting. I just educate them about what I need Three years ago, I was in a play (as Queen Elizabeth I in "Jubilee", 2018, above) with a profoundly deaf actress. Sophie Stone, breathtaking actress and she said to us if we talk away from her she's not involved in the conversation. We had to learn to socially interact in that way to make sure we were always facing Sophie. But another thing she said that after eight hours of rehearsal, of reading sign language and doing sign language and reading lips, she was exhausted and she needed to be alone So it's all about interaction and learning and acceptance on a social and a work level. If we're not given that time, or we're not given that journey, the integration and the acceptance and the equality of it hasn't got a chance. So we need to learn this from the dyspraxics and the dyslexics and the hidden disabilities as well 

BILLY: What coping strategies do you use for dyspraxia and dyslexia? Awareness of dyspraxia pales in comparison to other hidden disabilities. What do you think is the cause for this? TOYAH: It's always been a big problem for everyone in my life that I am so capable of sitting in silence for weeks on end. I've actually gone months, well, let's say a month without even uttering a word. Silence and solitude for me is as informative creatively as it is for people in a nightclub. I think part of that is I have exceptional hearing. It's a massive problem. I am three doors away from the street and I can hear people talking on the pavement outside So everyone that comes into this house who knows me is aware that my hearing is exceptional. Because of that I do get very, very tired. There's a lot of information coming in all the time. Socially I say to people, let's get together, let's have a cocktail hour. If it goes to two hours, great. But after that I'm not good company. I get very, very tired by overstimulation of being social. And it's not criticism. It is just how I’m made BILLY: During the pandemic, you and your husband Robert kept the fans entertained while uploading many short, humorous videos online, going viral and racking up billions of hits. You've evidently helped people throughout the past year to keep a smile on their faces, but how have you coped mentally as a neurodiversive person? 

TOYAH: By doing exactly what you just said. I can't really do nothing. The first three weeks of lockdown I was in silence. I was meditating. I was actually praying a lot. Praying for my friends. We had a lot of people pass from cancer in that first three weeks. We lost two musicians. That first three weeks were very, very hard and then after that I realised that we were all in the same boat I wanted my husband to move and I started to teach them how to dance, which he hated. And then we started to do these crazy little films which he absolutely loathed in the beginning. But the messages coming back with “thank you, you saved my life. I'm alone in a single room apartment and I don't know what to do.” So all these messages were coming from around the world Slowly we realised that we'd hit on something that neither of us had ever touched upon before - that is our music was actually really affecting people's lives in a good way. So for me, the lockdown has been the busiest part of my life creating Toyah YouTube. But it's also kept me sane because I'm a performer and a performer needs an audience and it's as simple as that BILLY:  Did it feel like you were personally letting fans down when having to cancel gigs despite it being out of your control? Did the move on to YouTube reassure your fans that all is well and  normality will resume eventually?

TOYAH: Not only that. People who bought tickets didn't know when they were going to see you and people can't give up that money easily in a lockdown if they're not being furloughed, but they're out of work. You want to protect your audience, you want your audience to know that you see them, hear them and honour them. I had three tours cancelled and I wanted people to know that they hadn't lost that ticket money. So the whole of the connection through internet became vital and very, very precious BILLY: I am very much looking forward to seeing you live on tour in March 2022 TOYAH: Oh, that's fantastic! Good! We’ll know what we're doing by March. Completely new lineup, completely new sound BILLY: The “Posh Pop” tour gets underway in autumn of 2021. performing songs from the new album, hits and classics with electro acoustic band. Thank you for appearing on the The Dyspraxic Help 4U Podcast TOYAH: Thank you and thank you for understanding the process Listen to the podcast HERE

[dec4podcast]

A little something for the weekend...

Toyah and Robert Fripp - Sweet Child O' Mine

[iyatoyah]

Art For Mental Health Auction is now active!

AUCTION OFFICIAL BIDDING PAGE:

https://www.charityauctionstoday.com/auctions/Art-Auction-for-Mental-Health-13108

FACEBOOK EVENT PAGE FINAL RUN ( August 21st- September 5th )

https://www.facebook.com/events/738598846988305

FACEBOOK EVENT PAGE PART 1 ( August 9th- August 21st )

https://www.facebook.com/events/308213180536428

Recent COVID-19 pandemic is a hard time for the most of us, but for some it is especially difficult to stay in balance. Many of us face depression, suicidal thoughts and hopelessness. This auction came to life to help spread awareness of mental health importance and remind us all there is hope and we are in this together. By raising the funds for American Foundation for Suicide Prevention-AFSP, this auction aids research, help centers, and immediate attention and assistance via hot line: 1-800-273-8255, and much more of non stopping efforts done each day for our mental health. The artists who painted and donated the pieces being auctioned here, created their art to the selected I Ya Toyah songs' lyrical content from her Code Blue album (with exception of Forbidden Bark and Funeral for Love that are non album singles). Code Blue content is devoted to the subject of mental health and suicide prevention, giving it a base for the participating artists to extend these written thoughts onto the canvas, and continue the conversation about mental health through not just musical medium, but also through the visual arts. To make a difference, please bid on auction items, give a cash donation, or simply share this auction on your social media using the hashtag, #artformentalhealth2020 All money raised during this auction are going to American Foundation For Suicide Prevention National, supervised and delegated by AFSP- Illinois Chapter. Thanks for supporting suicide prevention and mental health cause during this challenging time of COVID-19 pandemic!

ADDITIONAL LINKS AND PUBLICITY:

Coffe Or Suicide Podcast

Car Con Carne

ReGen Mag

UnRated Metal Magazine

[rockzone]

Gig Guide: 17 - 23 Jul 2019

Wednesday, July 17, Mushroomhead at Gorilla, Manchester. From Cleveland, Ohio, combining metal, rock and atmospheric elements. Comparisons to Pantera, Faith No More and Pink Floyd. Friday, July 19, F.I.L.F. at The Spinning Top Bar, Stockport. Described as four rotting corpses and a pot-bellied pig, with an evening of political incorrectness and classic musicianship. Saturday, July 20, 80s Smash Hits On The Pitch at Stockport RUFC, Stockport. Featuring Toyah Willcox, Martin Kemp, Odyssey, Hazel Dean, Tight Fit, Sonia, Kelly Wilde, Wiggy (from Hitman And Her), Funky Town, Hassle & more. Saturday, July 20, Bursters at Club Academy, Manchester. Korean rock quintet with a heavy and emotional sound. Sunday, July 21, Kyla Brox at The Crystal Ballroom, Glossop. Winner of the UK Blues Challenge 2018 and daughter of cult blues figure, Victor Brox. Monday, July 22, Naked Giants at YES, Manchester. Famed in Seattle for their energetic live shows, now members of Car Seat Headrest’s newly expanded 7-piece live band.

* To avoid disappointment, you are advised to check with the venue before travelling to any of the Gigs mentioned above.

* Alan Ovington’s Rock Zone Podcast is available at www.wearetameside.co.uk/podcasts/the-rock-zone

[toyahinterviews]

XS NOIZE PODCAST WITH MARK MILLER 25.8.2022

MARK: In a career spanning more than 40 years Toyah Willcox has had  Top 40 singles, released over 20 albums, written two books, appeared in over 40 stage plays and 10 feature films and voiced and presented numerous television shows. In this interview, Toyah talks about her upcoming tour with Billy Idol, touring her hit 80s album “Anthem”, her Sunday Lunch videos with husband Robert Fripp, acting and lots lots more Hi Toyah, welcome to the XS Noize podcast TOYAH: Thank you very much, good to be here MARK: You've had such an amazing career and you're still very busy so we'll have lots to talk about. But first of all, let's talk a bit about the Billy Idol tour. You’re joining Billy Idol on the October dates of his tour alongside Television. How much are you're looking forward to those shows? TOYAH: Really looking forward to it. Firstly, Billy Idol - I think he's a world icon and he has such an incredible career of music to perform. I've been performing “Rebel Yell” in my set for 20 years and I know the effect it has on the audience. I'm very I'm excited about that. Obviously, I won't be performing “Rebel Yell” with Billy Idol (laughs)

But I think it's a really great line up. You've got Television doing the whole of “Marquee Moon”, which is an album I bought when I first moved to London. It's a phenomenal album. And then I've got my set to open all of the events and I know I'm gonna have a lot of fun   When you're on a multi-bill but you're not the main star it's really good fun, because you just go out there, you love the audience, you enjoy what you're doing and then it's over. You can relax. So I'm really looking forward to it on many levels. And I actually love arena shows. I love doing them. So I'm going to be in my element  

MARK: You're well known for your image, so do you have an outfit planned ready to go? TOYAH: Absolutely everything is planned on the rehearsal, the setlist is done. The costume is ready, everything is and if you think I'm going to tell you … I'd have to shoot you afterwards MARK: What can fans expect? What sort of songs? A medley of hits really?     TOYAH: Yeah, I mean, I've had well over 15 chart hits, probably a bit more than that and I'm only playing for half an hour. So what is that going to be? Eight songs, ten if we really kind of squeeze them in. It's got to be hits. I want to go right from the beginning of my very early punk hits, because I was number one in the first indie charts. So 24 months running when that first indie chart came out in ‘79 I was number one. I never left number one in that chart. So I want to include my punk hits, which not many of today's generations will know at all. But I want to go through a complete journey right up until the single I release next Friday, which is “Slave To The Rhythm”

MARK: Last Saturday you played Let’s Rock Northern Ireland alongside Adam Ant, Belinda Carlisle, Heaven 17, Howard Jones, Wet Wet Wet and many more. You went down really really well. Everybody thought you were brilliant. How much do you enjoy - TOYAH: I had a nighmare getting there. A plane was an hour late. I was with Chesney Hawkes, Chesney and I had to get undressed and dressed in the car. We got out the car, I walked on stage. I did my show and I had an extra two songs in the set that I wasn't aware of     So I was announcing songs and the band was going “no, it's this!” It was so much fun. It was brilliant and the audience were amazing and then I walked off stage, got in the car and caught the plane back. I have never been so stressed in my life purely because of travel MARK: Well, I thought because it's maybe old friends like Adam Ant, who you go way back with, back to the Mayhem days and stuff like that but you don't get to see each other and say hi really?

TOYAH: I saw Belinda. I was flying with Wet Wet Wet. I was flying with Chesney, Carol Decker, the bass player from Wet Wet Wet. We had some of the Real Thing there with us. We know each other, we're all incredibly supportive and good friends, but we do only get to meet in airport lounges. So it was fabulous. It was really nice MARK: This coming September Cherry Red will release a remastered edition of your gold selling third album “Anthem”. The album reached n:o 2 in the UK charts and features the Top 10 singles “It’s A Mystery” and “I Want To Be Free”. What do you remember about making that album because it’s such a classic album? 

TOYAH: It was a very busy time, because “It’s A Mystery” was an enormous hit before we even started the album. And it meant that we had to make the album in a very tight window of two weeks. So when the band were in the studio putting the backing tracks down they were sending me tapes every day to Norwich where I was starring in “Tales Of The Unexpected”. As soon as I finished that I got back to London and in the mornings I would write the lyric and the top line melody to what the band had created, go into the studio by 2pm and record that song. Sometimes I had to do two songs a day It was a fabulous time. We were absolutely riding on this incredible success of “It’s A Mystery” and the album was an absolute joy to make but boy, I wasn't getting much sleep. And we were trying new sounds, we were trying new arrangements and it was all happening in this magical 14 day period that we had. And touch wood it worked. It really worked. I've never known anything like it

MARK: I can remember watching your first Top of the Pops performance of “It’s A Mystery”. It's such an iconic 80s moment for me. So how amazing was it for you? What can you remember about your first performance on Top Of The Pops?

TOYAH: I was very nervous. I believe Adam Ant was on because he was number one. I think Joe Dolce was on with "Shaddap Your Face", Midge Ure was on. It's a long day and I went to theatre school. I started in theatre before I ever had hit singles. I've made movies, been at the National Theatre. So I know a lot about turning up on time, rehearsing and then delivering. So it wasn't a problem to me, but we'd arrive at the Top Of The Pops studios at 10.30 in the morning. You do at least five rehearsals on camera and then go to makeup. And then you're on standby for the live show   It wasn't a problem for me. But on this day, I was quite nervous and completely overawed by the experience. Because Top Of The Pops was the one show that every generation watched for the whole of their lives. I can remember sitting in the lounge with the whole of my family watching Top Of The Pops in complete quietness. We listened and to suddenly be on this show and to know that I was going to have a really high chart position because of this show was just overwhelming and magical. If I only could pick 10 points in my life to take away with me and remember in the big blue sky … Top Of The Pops, that very first one would be up there. It was amazing

MARK: Yeah, it's definitely one of my favourites because all the reruns on Top Of The Pops, you see it now and again popping up and it's obviously on YouTube, it’s had millions and millions of views. It's fantastic. The outfit you wore on that show – you were supposed to wear something else instead? Was it that one? TOYAH: Melissa Caplan made all of my costumes from about ‘78 through to 1985. And the costume I wanted - she was making me a very special one. I think I'd already done The Rainbow. Let me have a think about this, because this is such a condensed piece of my history. I know that we played The Rainbow about January or February and I think “It’s A Mystery” charted towards mid-February. So Melissa couldn't get the costume ready in time for Top Of The Pops because we were all firing on all cylinders, kind of working through the night recording and still doing live shows and me filming as an actress  

So I had what was a design made by Willie Brown (below), who did all the clothes for David Bowie when he did “Heroes”. It's a really beautiful dress and it's not a dress I would normally have worn other than in a photo session because I was still very much working at androgyny and not being too feminine. And I actually think this dress is responsible for my success as is the song “It’s A Mystery” itself because I looked so cute and so feminine. I wasn't scaring anyone on that first Top Of The Pops

MARK: Do you still have the outfit? TOYAH: I do. It has kind of organza shoulders and it’s starting to deteriorate but I still have it and it can be restored because all my costumes are going to go to the Victoria and Albert Museum. But it's something that can't see sunlight or the air anymore. It’s vacuum packed MARK: You're so busy. Last year you released “Posh Pop”, written and recorded during lockdown, it was your first album in 13 years. That's a great album, very uplifting. I love the opening track “Levitate” TOYAH: Oh, that's good! I like that track as well. It was lockdown. I am not someone who  sits around doing nothing. So lockedown actually was the first opportunity I ever had in the whole of my career to just reassess and re-evaluate, like lots of people out there    It was a chance to kind of reset who or what we wanted to be. And the silence of lockdown. And what I mean by that is no one was emailing me every minute and no one was phoning me. It meant that I could sit down at an instrument and start writing music. I took up guitar in lockdown as well

And “Levitate” was one of the first songs written because we wanted the song to be - Simon Darlow my co-writer (below with Toyah) and I - just about freedom, freedom of choice, about being able to leave the house, being able to write about a situation that was profoundly uncomfortable and quite honestly terrifying. So “Levitate” is literally about that word And it's also one of my favourite words that I can ever remember. When I was at school everyone was fascinated with this word. Levitate. Levitation. And there was a very famous saint, who became canonised, because he levitated while praying and I started to read up about him and ironically, he was Italian. I can't remember his proper name now. But it was such a problem for him that crowds would turn up during the services, during his holding service with his his flock and he would start to levitate and he said or it's kind of reported that he found it profoundly embarrassing that he was known for levitating   

And you've got eyewitness accounts of this happening. So people would go along and I'm talking about mediaeval times. People would go along and record this happening, they would draw it happening, they would write about it happening, they would pass the stories to their children. I've just always loved that word. It's a word that says that we have so much potential, that we almost cannot control our potential. And that's where “Levitate” came from MARK: As much as the album is uplifting, the song “Barefoot On Mars” is about your mother's final days in the hospice. It’s very moving and and it's very emotional but it sounds upbeat 

TOYAH: Yeah. I wrote the lyrics after finding out what happened to my mother. I was contacted by ancestry.com Christmas last year. Was it Christmas last year? This is the problem with lockdown. I've lost so much time. It must have been two Christmases ago. And we knew nothing about my mother, my mother never talked to us. She never told us about her history. We could trace back press cuttings on her because she was a child actress and a dancer and she used to get reviews from the age of 12 So I'd seen all of that but she wouldn't talk about it. But ancestry.com contacted me and they said “we need to talk to you and we need to have counsel in the room because you do not know about this - we have unearthed press cuttings” and it appeared that my mother witnessed her father murder her mother, but because my mother was so young she couldn't give evidence and she couldn't go to court and testify   And I came back home after finding that out and I wrote the lyric for “Barefoot On Mars” and I wrote to Simon Darlow and I said “this is what's just happened to me”. And I've written this lyric and I went into the studio the next day, and he’d done the track. And it was so breathtakingly beautiful that we just recorded it there and then. That song came about very quickly

MARK: Yeah, it's a great lyric, great song. Along with your husband and guitar legend Robert Fripp you have over 110 million hits on YouTube with your Sunday Lunch series of weekly music videos. They're all brilliant. What inspired you to do these? And how did you get Robert on board? TOYAH: Well, again as a performer, as someone who's always worked on a stage to suddenly think that it's going to be longer than three weeks because the lockdown originally was only going to be three weeks and I'd be back out on the road and it was dragging on and on and on. And I just thought we're all equal in this. We're all in the same situation. And some people are alone and we have each other. So we posted a very short 29 second video of me teaching Robert to do the jive and he's so cute in it because he just can't do it

And that instantly got 100,000 hits within about five minutes and we realised there were people out there that just needed contact. So we started to do this every Sunday. And it just grew and grew and grew and slowly we realised why it was growing and it is because the world audience for rock music is massive, absolutely massive. And we kept it to the simplicity of this kitchen. It didn't used to be this kitchen, we'd work in other rooms around the house, but people identified on a Sunday lunchtime with their own kitchens. So that's why it became traditionally that MARK: I think from the first video a lot of people were saying you should appear on “Strictly Come Dancing”, that they would ask you? TOYAH: I know. No, no. None of those programmes are interested in me. So fair enough. I'm too busy anyway MARK: So you wouldn't do it?

TOYAH: I would but they've got to be interested in you. I can't phone them up and say I want to do it. It doesn't work that way. I'm very, very busy. “Strictly” has already started. I am touring “Anthem”, and I'm working with Billy Idol. You've got to be completely 100% available if you get any of those programmes and for me that's very rare MARK: You would be great on it, definitely TOYAH: I don't know about that. I'm 64, I think it's a very gruelling show to do. I'm not sure how I would cope with training and all those pivotal movements within your joints for 11 hours a day. I did go and see a recording of it all lockdown. And they did back to back shows. They did the live show on the Saturday and then did the show for the Sunday immediately after and I thought my God - this is so gruelling! MARK: Going back to your videos. How long does it take to put them together? And how do you choose which songs to perform every week?

TOYAH: Well, the songs have to have one vital ingredient and that's they translate on guitar. So I give Robert a whole list of songs every week that I think would visually really work very well. And then he kind of goes through all of them and see how they work on one guitar. Because he's not only playing lead lines, he's also playing bass lines as well, which is what's so remarkable about what he's doing. And if he can't make that work, we can't do the song. Sometimes I can encourage him to revisit an idea and say “look, I think you can do this on one guitar” and he'll give it a go and it works. But there are so many elements that we have to take into account   Firstly, we have no production values whatsoever. We just come in. We have a few days rehearsal where we learn the song together. Then I do the setup. I work out what the trick is going to be within the setup. And then I bring him in, we sit down and we usually have the first take in one go. So there's a lot of kind of little bits that need to come together at the right time. And if Robert is worried about the song then it won't work

MARK: I enjoyed your most recent one. Ozzy Osbourne’s “Crazy Train” (above) TOYAH: I know! Brilliant!  And he closed the Commonwealth Games last night and I'm 30 miles from Birmingham, and I'm a Birmingham girl as well. And we didn't know he was going to do that. So it was really well timed that one MARK: You mentioned at the start about your latest single “Slave To The Rhythm”. It’s an amazing version and I’m really pleased you’re releasing it but I did some research for this and you sang on the original demo. Is that right? TOYAH: Yeah. The original was written by Simon Darlow, my long term writing partner and he asked me to sing on it and then the demo went out I believe to Frankie Goes To Hollywood. And they didn't want to do it. They wanted to rewrite the lyric. And then Simon met up with Trevor Horn and another writer and producer and it became the “Slave To The Rhythm” that Grace Jones has made. This is the iconic version that Grace Jones did. So it's had quite a journey through a few writers, but it began with Simon Darlow

And Simon said to me that he really felt that as I was involved at the very beginning purely as the session singer, should we give it a go? And I was a bit worried about it. Firstly, Grace Jones owns it. It's very much her brilliant iconic performance, but also as someone who allies towards everyone that's been exploited and abused through history ... Grace Jones has a right to that song   I was really worried about doing it. And Simon said, well, actually, his reference is that we're all slaves to time. That none of us can escape time. So that's the way we've approached it. So within the video we have the theme of time just ticking away with the fingers. So that's how Simon said we should address it MARK: I look forward to hearing it. I love the version on your Sunday Lunch. I'd love to hear the actual proper studio recorded version TOYAH: It’s a beautiful version. It's very, very brilliant and respectful. And we've not trodden on Grace Jones' toes at all. I deliver it in a very gentle way. So it's lovely

MARK: You also mentioned Trevor Horn, and Frankie Goes To Hollywood and I hear you've recorded a version of “Relax” with Trevor Horn. So how did that come about and when can we hear that?

TOYAH: Well, I can't tell you too much about it other than we're working with Trevor this week. We've got a live show with him this week as well.  Trevor heard our version of “Slave To The Rhythm” via one of the writers seeing me perform it live for the first time that G Live in Guilford. And that was Bruce Wolley, who is one of the new co-writers on the song. He’s in the history of that song  

He came to the show and he heard me perform it live. And he got in touch with Trevor and he said "you've got to hear this. It's really good". And Trevor phoned me and said would I come into the studio and record “Relax”. It's a very, very different version. His original idea was for the voice to be artificial intelligence. But the label turned that down and he wanted me to sing it in my deepest register. It absolutely gorgeous. It's so beautiful. It is actually romantic

MARK: Great. Can't wait to hear that and Trevor Horn, what an amazing producer

TOYAH: He’s breathtaking to work with. As soon as I put the headphones on to do the harmonies in the studio I thought my God this is best sound I've ever had in the studio! It was fabulous

MARK: Trevor Horn, his records just sound amazing. Recently, the BBC showed your first ever professional screen role as “Sue” and the play “Glitter” (above) with Phil Daniels and Noel Edmunds. In the show Sue says “I want to be so famous that I'm a household name all over the world”. Sue’s dream was to be on Top Of The Pops. That it was shown in 1976 so it's amazing to think that the real Toyah Willcox achieved this soon. There  was definitely some sort of weird synchronicity going on there TOYAH: I know, it's absolutely fabulous. I had to audition for that role. I was spotted by the Bicat brothers and they called me down to London and I did the audition with Phil Daniels. With no knowledge at all that we both end up in “Quadrophenia” together a few years later. I've never been on camera. I've never sung into a microphone. I only had this idealistic dream of becoming a singer. I had opera lessons at school, I sang at school but that was opera, that was not rock music

And I remember making “Glitter” so clearly because I was just living the dream. But I had no technical experience. I had no experience of projecting my voice or placing words. I was completely raw and I think that shows in “Glitter”. But somehow the National Theatre watched it being broadcast at the end of ‘76 and they cast me in “Tales From The Vienna Woods” and by that Christmas I was living in London, about to open on the Olivier stage at the National Theatre   I leapfrogged about 15 years of experience. And the National was great to me. They gave me speech therapy, they gave me movement lessons. They really tried to kind of hone my talent. But “Giltter” was the turning point in my life for everything. It was the biggest piece of luck I have ever had in my life MARK: Yeah it’s good actually, watched it this morning. Really enjoyed it TOYAH: What did you think of it? MARK: Yeah, I really liked it. Noel Edmunds was good TOYAH: Would you say I was good?

MARK: Yeah, absolutely. And Phil Daniels TOYAH: Phil’s always good. He's been in front of the camera all his life MARK: For your first ever professional performance it was great TOYAH: You’re very kind MARK: I really, really enjoyed it. And again, Phil as you said, starred as “Jimmy Cooper” alongside yourself as “Monkey” (below) in the classic movie “Quadrophenia”. Can we talk about this because it's one of my favourite films. It's such a classic movie with an amazing cast. Did you think  how special it was when you were making it? 

TOYAH: It's a very good question because there is no way that cast would not let it be special. Up until that point, I had always kind of worked in an isolation of being the youngest in the company. So I'd made “Jubilee”, which I loved every minute of. I was working with the glitterati of London punk. People with way more life experience than me and they kind of protected me 

And then I made the “The Corn Is Green” with Katharine Hepburn and George Cukor and again, I was cosseted. I was the youngest. And when I stepped onto the set of “Quadrophenia”, or even for the rehearsals, because we did a lot of prep rehearsals for that film -   suddenly I was no longer the youngest and I was in a group of about 50 people who were all determined to be superstars. And you just had to step up to the mark   It was an incredible experience. And were all great friends. We all really really loved each other. But boy, we were fighting for the limelight. And we knew it was going to be special. How could a film where the music was written by Pete Townsend and The Who had performed that music for years and years and years ... How could this film not be a success?  

But ironically, when it first screened, it was critically panned. But audiences loved it. I think it was 1979 we shot it, 1980 it was released. Generation after generation around the world has discovered this film and loved it and it even still has conventions in Los Angeles

MARK: It's a great film. Absolutely classic. Is it true that John Lydon tried out as “Jimmy” and you read with him for the part? TOYAH: I got John through the screen test at Shepperton Studios. So Franc Roddam - I haven't even been cast in the film at this point, because I was working at the Royal Court Theatre, and had amazing reviews for my stage acting - Franc Roddam got me to do two scenes with John Lydon at Shepperton on camera, on a huge 36 mil camera. So I used to meet up with John Lydon in his apartment off the Kings Road and we'd run the scenes. He was perfect. He was word perfect. He was fabulous And when we got to Shepperton we just did the scenes. I played Leslie Ash’s role and John was doing Phil Daniel's role, and he was really, really special. And he behaved, he was a gentleman, he was great to be with, but no one would insure the film if he was in it. Now I have to stick up for both John Lydon and Phil Daniels here. Because if the issue was different, I think John Lydon would have gone on to be a great Hollywood actor    

Phil Daniels was the only person who could really play “Jimmy,” because of Phil’s life experience. He was right for “Jimmy.” Phil Daniels gave an Oscar winning performance in that film, but obviously he didn't get any nominations because it just didn't happen. But Phil Daniels is the reason that film is so successful

MARK: You couldn't imagine the film without him at all or without the rest of the cast because everybody went on to make something of themselves. What draws you to a movie, what do you look for in a part? TOYAH: The one main factor is can I do it? Because sometimes I'm offered unrealistic things. I'm physically very small. And I now warn people I say "look, it's very kind of you to offer me this but if you're going to cast me next to people who are 6’2”, the director and the camera team are going to have real problems getting us in two shots." Two shots is where you've got two characters in one shot. So I now look for the fact can I portray that character with my physicality? And is it a character that I can really use my intelligence on?

If it's just a character where they need Toyah Willcox in the film so my name is on the poster ... I don't do those. I really don't do those. I'm an incredibly intelligent actress. My dyslexia just really informs me about people. And I really want characters that I can reveal to an audience. So that may sound complex, but there is so much you can do without saying words, and I look for that in the storyline MARK: Some people forget you were an actress first before you were a pop star. Do you have any film projects coming up? TOYAH: Well, lockdown has not helped the industry that much. So I had a film show at Leicester Square last week called “Give Them Wings”, which I won the critics Best Actress Award at the Richard Harris Film Festival. I'm playing the mother of the lead in that and I've had phenomenal reviews for that film, but that was shot just before lockdown started. During lockdown I managed to make “The Ghosts Of Borley Rectory”  

Again, I've had Best Actress nominations for that. So the film industry is now getting back on its feet with a backlog of movies waiting to find a cinema and a distribution deal. And I think it's going to take a long time for cinema to find its feet again. Netflix, Amazon Prime, Disney - they've all gone straight to streaming and at the moment that is where the industry is at MARK: In a career spanning more than 40 years you've had loads of Top 40 singles, released over 20 albums, written two books, appeared in over 40 stage plays and voiced and presented numerous television shows. So with all that in mind … what are you most proud of? What’s been your highlights? Can you pick anything out? TOYAH: Highlight ... probably doing Old Grey Whistle Test at Drury Lane on Christmas Eve 1981 (below) That had 12 million viewers but it was such an honour to be invited to do that. Other highlights “Posh Pop” going to number one in 36 charts. Getting a call from Trevor Horn after 45 years in the business was pretty flattering. I get up to a great job. For 45 years I've woken up to a great job. So I'm very grateful for everything I do     

MARK: Yeah, I’m sure. Just a few more questions, Toyah. You’ve so much energy. What keeps you going after all these years?

TOYAH: It’s probably because I never had children. I've got a lot of energy and a lot of money (they both laugh) I don't want to be flippant about it. But everyone I know with children I think how the hell do you do that?!

MARK: I like to ask the guests the following questions, Toyah. Out of all the music in your collection which artists or bands do you have the most albums by?

TOYAH: David Bowie

MARK: And what is your favourite?        

TOYAH: My favourite David Bowie album - I've actually got three – “Man Who Sold The World”, “Hunky Dory” and “Ziggy Stardust”. I just love the path he took. It's a very, very tangible path where you could see him just changing through desperation because “Hunky Dory” was a really hard time for him as an artist. He had shotguns held to his head in Texas. Andy Warhol was really nasty to him. And you just saw this ascending trajectory into “Ziggy Stardust” through these albums. And even on “Man Who Sold The World” you could hear my husband's King Crimson influence. So I just love those three albums MARK: Absolute genius. We miss him TOYAH: Yeah MARK: Which song or album is your guilty pleasure? TOYAH: “Bridge Over Troubled Water.” That album is just one of the most beautifully written and performed albums in the whole history of modern music MARK: Would you say it's a guilty pleasure? I love it TOYAH: Well, l I love it but you've got to remember people go “you’re a punk rocker!”

MARK: Yeah, that's right (laughs) You're not supposed to like stuff like that. But nowadays everybody can like anything and it doesn't matter TOYAH: Then there's no such thing as a guilty pleasure, is there? MARK: (laughs) You got me there. Such an amazing career. We could talk for a long time. I had to just pick certain things, there's lots more things we could have talked about, but it's an absolute honour and pleasure to be speaking to you TOYAH: Thank you very much. You obviously know a lot about me, and I'm very grateful. Thank you MARK: There's lots more and we have a short period of time, we could spend hours (Toyah laughs)  Good luck with the new single and I can't wait to hear “Relax” TOYAH: All right. Thank you very much. Good to meet you MARK: To meet you too. Bye

TOYAH: Bye bye

[toyahinterviews]

MY TIME CAPSULE WITH MICHAEL FENTON STEVENS 24.1.2022

MICHAEL: I'm Michael Fenton Stevens, and this is the podcast where we talk about the fascinating subject of sandpaper grades. Well, it might as well be because in each episode I talk to a different guests about the five things from their life that they'd like to preserve in a time capsule Four things they love and one thing they wish they could forget. Something from their past that they wish they could bury in the ground and never have to think about again. Some are bound to be sandpaper grades one day ... Perhaps my guest in this episode, the pop star, musician, actor, TV presenter, writer, and famous woodworker - no, actually, that's just about the only thing that Toyah Willcox hasn't done. Yes, my special guest is the amazing Toyah, one of the very few people where one name is enough. Paraphrasing her career or careers Toyah has had eight Top 40 singles, she's released over 20 albums, written two books, appeared in over 40 stage plays, acted in 10 feature films and numerous television shows

Toyah is married to the musician and rock legend Robert Fripp, founder and guitarist of the prog rock group King Crimson. And as a musician and singer herself Toyah has toured 33 times since 1979. Her films include “Jubilee”, “Quadrophenia”, and Derek Jarman's “The Tempest” and she's appeared on TV in “Shoestring”, “Minder”, “Tales Of The Unexpected”, “French and Saunders”, “Kavanagh QC”, “Secret Diary Of A Call Girl”, “Casualty”, and as the narrator of the “Teletubbies” and my personal favourite “Brum” She's also had the misfortune of working with me in a stage production of “Amadeus”, which we talk a bit about in this recording. So let's hear what from all this the extraordinary Toyah Willcox chooses to put in her time capsule Toyah, how fantastic to have you on “My Time Capsule”. I can't believe it, it's so lovely to see you. After all these years!

TOYAH: How many years is it? MICHAEL: Well, it must have been - TOYAH: It was “Amadeus”, wasn't it? MICHAEL: It was “Amadeus”. That's right. We did a tour of “Amadeus”. 1990 - TOYAH: Great tour! MICHAEL: 31 years ago - TOYAH: 31 years ago. Well, it's all a blur for me because in the last 20 years my music career came back with a vengeance. And I haven't looked back and I've lost all those kinds of memories. I mean, I can remember Peter Shaffer was involved. Tim Pigott-Smith, Richard McCabe, you. I was also doing a daytime tour of prisons of Janis Joplin (Toyah at the prison in Aberdeen in 1991, below) The really exhausting tour!

MICHAEL: It was exhausting. I remember you going off to prisons. At the same time I was going off with an actor called Max Gold. You may remember? TOYAH: Oh, I love Max Gold! You went with Helen Baxendale as well? MICHAEL: Yeah, yeah, the three of us. So we had the really nice job of going around schools. While you would go to prisons and come back and say “Oh, my God, it was a bit weird” ... TOYAH: I'd rather gone to the prisons. The thing about going into the prisons, Michael, is they needed entertaining and they were utterly engrossed. And the thing that disturbed me was I was able to leave, and I was performing to what looked like completely normal human beings you'd bump into in a shop, but they weren't allowed to leave and I found that grossly disturbing   MICHAEL: I've been to prisons before I was an actor. I worked as a solicitor's clerk TOYAH: You look like one now!

MICHAEL: I look more like a judge (they both laugh) I went to a number of prisons, and they were horrible. Horrible. I think everybody should have a visit to a prison. Yeah, and just smell it     TOYAH: Yes. Well, what I experienced, because I was going in with about 20 press people to every prison, was some of the prisoners would hand me notes and I'd open up the note and they'd say "they've only made it like this for you". They cleaned it, they painted, they made it look pristine and clinical. And I was getting these notes saying "this has only happened because of you". And then you know, you really think about what is going on and prison is prison   MICHAEL: Because in that time, people would have been slopping out of a bucket in the corner of the cell. So it was just awful TOYAH: I'm glad I did it because it was a great leveller. And, you know, I was a huge rock star. And suddenly I was made to experience what life is like for someone who is so desperate they steal a car, they steal food, they steal someone's stereo. That everyone had a story and everyone had a reason. It was such an eye opener. What an experience!   

MICHAEL: Astonishing, but we are going to talk about things like that. You're going to pick five things from your life. Four things that you treasure, and one thing that you'd like to get rid of. You've made notes. Oh, how brilliant! TOYAH: Not only have I made notes -  I've done lists! (Michael laughs) Do people have a problem picking these things? MICHAEL: Only sometimes narrowing it down TOYAH: Well, my passion list is very selfish. So shall I start? MICHAEL: Yeah, go TOYAH: OK. My passion is stones. I absolutely love stones. I collect rare gems - can't afford diamonds but rare gems I can do. And I collect very rare crystals. So I'm holding up a 37 carat topaz (on Toyah's left hand, above) MICHAEL: Oh, it's beautiful

TOYAH: It's absolutely beautiful and I collect stones like that. And I bought the stone, had it made into a ring and I don't go anywhere without it. This ring has survived so much. It's been lost at petrol stations. It's been lost in public loos. It's been dropped from great height and I have always worn a blue stone and I feel naked without a blue stone on me Now people might say "oh, that sounds really frivolous. What does it mean? People are starving around the world." For me, this is a stone that has been created out of the creation of the world, from the impact of volcanoes, from mountains forming from earthquakes. It's been there long before I was conceived     And for me, it's what I call a universal connection. You know, it makes me realise that I have a very precious moment in time within the existence of the universe. It is not even a speck of dust in the existence of the universe. And I wear this ring just to remind me not to waste time MICHAEL: Ah! Very good. Very good. And you don't, do you? TOYAH: I try not to

MICHAEL: I always thought that that was the case. When we did this play together you to me had been this enormous rock star. So suddenly, I became aware of the fact that you acted and I hadn't really noticed it. I suppose, you know, “Quadrophenia” and things like that you would have noticed, that you would have thought you were in there because of your pop connection. But actually, there you were - this incredibly dedicated actress with an amazing CV already behind you TOYAH: I started at the National Theatre when I was 18 MICHAEL: It's incredible TOYAH: Yeah! But I think I was a bit just too rebellious for the system. I did Christopher Hampton’s adaptation of “Tales From The Vienna Woods” with a phenomenal cast. Kate Nelligan got me in the cast. She saw me on a TV play on BBC2 called “Glitter”, and she was watching while having supper with the director Maximilian Schell, great German movie star And they said "right, we're going to cast her as Emma and “Tales From The Vienna Woods”" and I never looked back. So I had already, before I had a hit single, done the National Theatre, the ICA, worked with Stephen Poliakoff, Danny Boyd on “Sugar and Spice” (flyer, below), he was the assistant director on Nigel Williams’ “Sugar And Spice” at the Royal Court Theatre. I’d already been in the royalty of acting before “It’s A Mystery” was a hit

MICHAEL: That's the thing I remember about it. And then also, it was your style of acting that I really liked. From my memory of this thing one of the things that slightly wound up Tim Pigott-Smith was that you never repeated. You hardly ever repeated anything. You would be fresh every night TOYAH: I know and I now realise how destructive that can be to someone like Tim Pigott-Smith, because my whole philosophy was the audience deserved a new approach. And this is how I feel about every show I do. And believe me, I've been on stage with A-listers in America, where they have done exactly the same rock performance every night, down to the same head moves and the same solos. And I thought the audience deserves you present in the room So when I get onstage, not as much now with an acting play as I do with music, the audience deserves to be present in the room in that moment and that moment is sacred, and it's with them forever   But I realised with Tim Pigott-Smith - I had quite large scenes with him as “Constanze” - that my doing it differently every night, with him playing such a huge role as “Salieri” ... I was not helping him. He would have words with me about reining it back and becoming what we were in rehearsals and I did rein it back

But I think I was a handful for many, many people when I was much younger. I totally totally sympathise with Tim Pigott-Smith, dreading being on stage with me. Richard McCabe was equally dangerous and when we had a couple scenes ... I mean, my God did the fur fly! MICHAEL: Yes, I remember. You probably forget that I actually understudied Richard in that production and I watched you closely every night and in fact Helen Baxendale understudied you TOYAH: Yes, she did. I remember one scene where we were getting violent with each other because “Constanze” goes mad, and I was wearing a pregnancy bump. And we were in Oxford, and I was twirling like a Whirling Dervish, and the pregnancy bump came off (Michael laughs) It landed on the stage and Richard just went! I mean we literally had to stuff it back up my corset. We were wild MICHAEL: It was a brilliant production. I had a fantastic time doing it. My favourite memory was, I think, in Glasgow where somebody right at the beginning, when Tim was saying, you know, goes to the future. How he started the play in the wheelchair as an old man     

Goes to the future. “Come with me. I will take you on a journey.” And somebody in the audience shouted, “you didn't do it, Salieri!” And he ignored it. And then they said, “We know you didn't murder Mozart!”, and then eventually said "no, bring the curtain down ... " - TOYAH: I remember it because I just felt for him because that opening speech, I mean, how many pages long was it? It was a constant battle with that opening speech. And then they put him on a bath chair and I don't know if you remember in Sheffield, it rolled off the stage - MICHAEL: I do, yes! TOYAH: I think he was in it and he had to jump out. He battled so much, and was also battling with keeping Compass Theatre Company afloat. And even though we were a sold out tour, he was still battling with budgets. He was remarkable MICHAEL: It was a fantastic performance as well, wasn't it? TOYAH: Breathtaking 

MICHAEL: It really was mesmerising TOYAH: And Richard McCabe was playing Mozart for real     MICHAEL: Yeah, he played the piano. Amazing TOYAH: I mean, who could do that today? MICHAEL: It's never been done before or since, fantastic. Oh, happy memories. So anyway, I'm going to bring you back to stones. When did you first start collecting stones then? 

TOYAH: When I could afford to MICHAEL: It wasn't coloured glass from the beach then? TOYAH: Tell you what, that is very perceptive of you because the first stone I fell in love with - I was 23, and I think and I was on Lynmouth beach, and the stone was the size of my head and it has white lines going through it, massive! And I took it and you're not allowed to do that these days  And that stone is still with me. It's outside my kitchen door now. And if anyone moves it - we have gardeners ... If anyone moves it, they get an email and a phone call. “Come back now and put that stone back!” (Michael laughs)     And I love it for exactly the same reason I love my topaz ring. It's part of the Big Bang and we're all part of that process. And so that's when it started, I was 23 - so I'm 63 now ... 40 years ago MICHAEL: You're slightly younger than me - TOYAH: Am I?! MICHAEL: And you look 10 years younger (they both laugh) TOYAH: Thank you!

MICHAEL: Well, I think it's very important to have an awareness of the enormity of time and your place in it. But also not to use it to make yourself feel insignificant but as you say … lucky TOYAH: Yeah. God, you’re perceptive! I love this! I was having a conversation with a journalist from the Financial Times last week because he was fascinated that I collect crystals. I have 22 rare crystals in this room and it’s called the Crystal Room. And he said “I'm having a really bad time, I've given up on hoping about the future. I feel insignificant in my life”   And I picked out one crystal - I’d pick it up for you but it's so heavy I can't lift it! And I said "look, this has come from a Big Bang we really know nothing about. It's made from carbon. We are made from carbon. This peach I'm holding up I'm having for my breakfast is made from carbon. We are all the same process. We're all the same thing. We have a gift of being in an organic body so we can be potential and experience potential. Then we go back to the big process" and he got it. Feeling insignificant is nothing but waking you up to your own potential. We are not insignificant

MICHAEL: No. That thing that you say of driving yourself on I mean, not driving yourself but actually filling your time, making use of it. I mean, again and again there are many people who would have said well, alright, I had enormous success as a pop star and then you might’ve gone well, we'll just do a sort of few reminiscence tours and it makes nice money and things like that. But you don't. You write new stuff, you perform again and actually, your latest album has charted

TOYAH: Yeah, it went to number one across the board. And this is a very interesting fact, Michael - Amazon's top seller, so I went straight to number one in the Amazon chart. I went number one into dance charts, the rock charts. I was number one best seller in the UK for a week MICHAEL: That's amazing TOYAH: Yeah, in the Official Chart I was number 22. Because my generation don't use Spotify. This is generational. So the album is called “Posh Pop” and this physical CD I'm holding up outsold Queen, outstripped Metallica, it just sold in tens of thousands. But I was pipped to the post by the younger artists who are downloaded on Spotify MICHAEL: Yes, and get paid nothing for it TOYAH: I agree. So it's a very interesting time. I returned big time successfully to music when I played Wembley in 2002. Because Youtube had given younger audiences the chance to experience heritage artists like me and (they) want to see us live and I've not looked back since MICHAEL: No, I'm not surprised. I mean, when you burst onto the scene, you were completely unique TOYAH: Yeah, well, I was unique. I was androgynous. I called myself third gender. I was very very tomboy and very strong. I came from punk and then got adopted by the New Wave movement and then into rock. But I do think if I came in exploiting my female sexuality, I would have had a much, much bigger career (they both laugh) MICHAEL: It's possibly true. Yes, play the play the game TOYAH: Play the game! I was a rule breaker from day one MICHAEL: And what led you to be that? TOYAH: I think, actually, I had to create a character - (because of) lack of confidence. I've never had confidence in my femininity. I'm very physically small. I mean, I'm barely five foot tall. People … how can I put this? ... In a physicality way people talk down to you. And it's only in recent years I've realised the techniques that short people use to appear tall and that is you never look up when you talk to someone else     I learned this off the Queen and I learned this off Kylie Minogue. You never crane your neck to look up at someone. You use your eyes to look up. Therefore you always look as though you're the same height as everyone else. I could only have learned that with the invention of phone cameras     

When you can go online and you can study how people's body language is and I learnt it off movie stars who have to act with people like Charlize Theron and Nicole Kidman, who are both over six foot - the smaller guys never ever crane their neck to look at them. So I think my beginning characteristics was I made myself huge in the space. So I was a rebel. I was a loud punk rocker but now, because I can study technique on camera, I can rein it in

MICHAEL: My wife is only five foot. Well, she'll say five foot and a quarter TOYAH: I say 5’1” I just lie (Michael laughs) MICHAEL: But she has exactly that skill. And she's always had it. People never think - people who are 5’8”say “you're the same as me, aren’t you?” and she never wears built up shoes. Everybody assumes that she's much taller than she is. Because she goes in with a presence and she just commands the room as it were TOYAH: You have to. It does have its benefits. I get mistaken for a child at airport security quite a lot and I get brought right to the front of the queue with the line “come here, little girl” (Michael laughs) and then when I turn up they look at me they go “oh, my goodness!” It's that “don't look now” moment. You know, they go kind of argh! I exploit that every time I can

MICHAEL: Well, if you can't see over the crowd, you might as well burst through them TOYAH: Gosh, you'll never get me in a mosh pit. There's no point. All I can see is backsides (Michael laughs)

MICHAEL: Alright, Toyah, so we're going to put rocks into the time capsule. We're going to move on to item number two TOYAH: Item number two is a white pet rabbit who lived with me between 2007 and 2016. He lived for nine years, he was very, very special. He was a house rabbit. He’d sit by my feet in this office. Completely humanised and was with us 24 hours a day. And when I had to go on the road, he went into a rabbit hotel, and he cost me about £7000 pounds a year in dental treatments and in hotels (Michael laughs) And obviously he has passed away, rabbits don't have long lives. But I would like to see him again because he was so gorgeous and he put everything into perspective. All he wanted was to eat, sleep, be stroked and hump soft toys     When I was freaking out and (I was) over pressured and everything was too much I just would hold him and feel his little beating heart and it would calm me down. He was definitely definitely one of those animals that people would take on an aeroplane to keep them calm MICHAEL: What was his name?

TOYAH: WillyFred. He was called that after the drummer in REM, who is my third time capsule item. Our greatest friend, who when he wasn't in America would live with us here. But let's keep to bunny first. WillyFred bunny was a pink eyed New Zealand white with huge character. People would actually knock on the front door and asked to see him because they loved him so much When the vet finally said - the rabbit was nine years old and by this time I was carrying him everywhere and hand feeding him with a syringe - the vet said “no, you can't keep doing this. If you keep hand feeding him he can't go through the natural process. He won't die, he will just keep deteriorating” So the vet and all the nurses came to our house and we put him on the kitchen table and we all said goodbye to him. And they gave him the inevitable injection and we were all holding him as he passed away and the whole room was in tears. That's how popular this rabbit was. He was the biggest flirt. He would pull women's skirts, he would flirt with women. He would just look at a woman and completely win her over    

We believe that this rabbit was the soul of a Buddha just biding time, waiting to be reincarnated in another life. He was that wise that we treated him as if he was a soul just passing through time. And everyone, when we put him down, who worked with this little bunny rabbit was in the room saying goodbye to him MICHAEL: There are moments, aren't there, where animals are so clearly thinking, I think TOYAH: Oh God, you can't deny it. They have emotional light. I mean, this sounds ridiculous, but I keep Koi fish. And at the moment we've got a female Koi who's about to pass and the other fish will not let me near her. I've tried to remove her from the pond so she can be dispatched. Every time we go to remove her from the pond … whoomph! They stop us taking her away     And what I trust about that is they're telling us to let her go through her own process. And you know, animals have emotional lives. They have natural intelligence that goes beyond our bodily intelligence. Animals are emotionally connected. And a very, very special

MICHAEL: Yes. I saw a wonderful photograph on Instagram I think the other day where was somebody said that this was the best example of photo bombing they'd ever seen. And it was basically photographs of their wedding and there was a dog and it just was looking back at the camera as to say (with a disappointed voice)“Oh my God … not another one ...” TOYAH: Yeah! Animals are … I mean, how can we live without them? They're just so remarkable MICHAEL: You say £7000 pounds a year on bills ... but that must have been worth it? TOYAH: It was worth it. And I had a rabbit with bad teeth. So to save his life literally once a month he had to have his teeth kind of clipped. And it just was ridiculously expensive MICHAEL: Are they quite large, the New Zealand rabbits? TOYAH: The largest I ever had was 10 kg’s

MICHAEL: Oh my God! TOYAH: It was like picking up a dog. They're bred for their meat so they grow very quickly. WillyFred was 3 kg’s MICHAEL: Yeah, but that's a good armful, isn't it? TOYAH: Yeah MICHAEL: Well, in that case - WillyFred is in your time capsule for you to revisit

TOYAH: Thank you. The third item is the actual human being that WillyFred was named after called Bill Rieflin (below with Toyah) and Bill passed away at the beginning of lockdown last year. I made three albums with Bill, he was the drummer in REM. But in my band Toyah And The Humans, he was the bass player. He was one of these remarkable human beings that could play every instrument. He would just pick an instrument up and within three hours he could play it in a virtuoso way. Don't you just hate those people? MICHAEL: Yeah, I know some TOYAH: Bill, my husband Robert Fripp and I, we would travel the world together. We were inseparable. Both Robert and I are very, very independent human beings. I can have a lot of time alone. Robert can have a lot of time alone. And Bill was the same but put the three of us together and the dynamics were like nothing I have ever experienced in my life. And our time together, our precious time together ... I met Bill in 2003 and the three of us became inseparable until he passed away about March the 24th 2020. We were inseparable

MICHAEL: What did he die of? Do you mind if I ask? TOYAH: He had prostate cancer. He did not have it checked in time. Both Robert and I knew he was behaving strangely. Something was bothering him. So I flew to Seattle, about 2012 and I said "Bill, I've come here to tell you to go and have a Well Man check." He did. And he was told he had advanced prostate cancer. But he survived. I mean, he was lucky enough to be in Seattle, which is the world leading cancer area So he did survive and he was - I hate to say this because I know it irritates cancer patients - but he was a fighter. He would not accept that his time had been shortened by this and his surgery was brutal because it went into his colon and then it went into his lungs. He lost a lung, he lost part of his colon, he lost his bowel. But he was still determined - he was touring with King Crimson a few years before his death. So he really did live a very, very good life MICHAEL: That's part of what you were talking about, the preciousness of life, the knowledge that it's such a wonderful gift. And when people fight like that to just ... “I want a bit more, just a bit more” -

TOYAH: Yeah, he inspired me incredibly because he was always learning - he loved language. So he was always learning right up until the end. And he came over to the UK and I spent two days driving him around the UK meeting healers I trust and energy healers. Healers don't necessarily heal the physical body, they help prepare you for what you're about to transition into. And that really helped Bill because he had no faith. So whenever he was in the UK, we did that. We got healers into the house, who explained what the transition of the soul is, how energy transitions and it can never die, energy can never die   So it was his learning process I feel has helped me not fear death. It's helped Robert not fear death. And we managed to get out to Seattle to see him just a few months before he passed and we went and sat with him in oncology while he was having treatment in Seattle. And for us it was a shared process, which just gave us strength. And as you say, made us realise that ... I'm 63, my husband's 75  … It doesn't mean you stop. We live to live. We don't live to die

MICHAEL: Absolutely. And it's a real lesson that when life is hard, and it's a struggle people really find it precious. So in a way it's wasteful to not find life precious when it's easy

TOYAH: I know when it's easy - when you write a song in two minutes and you think the next song will feel like that. You take it for granted. I think people get exhausted by life. Life is genuinely challenging and exhausting. But I think at that point you reach out and this is where friendship and love and community helps put you back on your feet MICHAEL: So you mentioned Robert (below with Toyah) so I'm going to say how did you meet him? Because it's just an extraordinary thing - coming together of these two greats from the pop industry TOYAH: Well, thank you. We first met in a taxi on our way to a Nordoff Robbins (Music Therapy) charity lunch at the Hotel Intercontinental, Park Lane. And we didn't really know each other but we had the same management and I found this legendary rock guitarist, who I knew very little about, I had his album “Discipline”, but that's the only album I knew about, from 1981      

I didn't know his 1970s history, or 1960s history, the Rolling Stones in Hyde Park. And I thought he was a very quiet, gentle, considered human being who didn't speak until he'd considered what he was going to say. And that just brought out the worst in me. And I was goading him and teasing him and provoking him in this 20 minute taxi journey And then we had our photo taken with Princess Michael of Kent and I didn't meet him again for about another five years, by which point and this is what my husband does - he's known for this … He was living in New York at the time, and his diary wasn't filling for a three week consecutive period and he decided that I was his wife. He said he just knew, he knew as soon as he met me that I was his wife. So he came back to England, arranged for us to make an album together and he proposed to me

MICHAEL: Wow, that's amazing! TOYAH: Now, another angle on that story is he gets into a lot of trouble because he has dreams that come true. And he dreamt he was in the studio with David Bowie about eight years ago. And he wrote this in his diary. “Oh, in my dream, I was making an album with David Bowie, Tony Visconti was producing.” Well, at that time Tony Visconti was producing “The Last Day”, Bowie’s penultimate album. Visconti hit the roof, because the press picked up on Robert’s diary as actual and announced Bowie making the album MICHAEL: No! TOYAH: Yeah, and it was a dream MICHAEL: That's incredible! 

TOYAH: It is incredible and everyone in our community, because we live on a High Street, we're surrounded by shops and businesses, and they're all our best friends. Everyone on this High Street knows that if Robert has a dream it's going to come true. So he's like our little talking newspaper (Michael laughs) MICHAEL: Brilliant. I mean, I have to say that my awareness of my knowledge of people in Robert’s position ... I mean, he'd had 10-15 years of extraordinary success, worldwide success, been regarded as one of the greatest guitarists of all time, I think     So to suddenly meet someone, well, what I'm going to say is that in that situation, as you will know, having been in the business - the opportunity of meeting beautiful women is almost inevitable. It's thrown at you all the time. So the fact that meeting you in the back of a car he made that decision, that's astonishing insight. It's intuitive, isn't it? And it's amazingly certain. That's real love, I think. That's true love

TOYAH: Yeah. A brutal observation of it is that I didn't want to have children. I'm phobic about childbirth, and my family life wasn't comfortable, my childhood was not comfortable. So I wasn't attracted to having a large family. And when Robert met me I was highly independent. I didn't need his money. I didn't intend on getting pregnant and he could see that you could have a relationship with someone that would still allow him his freedom to travel and his independence

MICHAEL: And you'd understand his world as well, wouldn't you? TOYAH: Yeah, I did. But I've had to fight for my place in this marriage. And in the beginning, the first two years, I was like a war warrior fighting women off who felt that they could do better than me. And he always said it was never a problem for him. But he was always being targeted by women because he had a reputation of being highly sexed. And he said "well, that was myth rather than legend". The first two years I found incredibly tough. And now I feel I'm in my prime at 63 and there's a lot going on, my career is just ascending. I'm very, very confident in our marriage and everything, but it was a tough beginning

MICHAEL: Well, I'm going to take you back and I will put Bill (above with Toyah) into the time capsule for you TOYAH: Thank you! MICHAEL: And as with all these things, wouldn't it be lovely to see them again? TOYAH: Yeah, definitely. I feel Bill is with me. My album “Posh Pop” … I’m utterly convinced he was standing beside me, helping it be the success it became. I don't feel separated from him at all MICHAEL: No. OK, so that's number three. So we're going to move on to item number four. TOYAH: It's a phone call and you will know this and every actor and performer will know this. It's the very first phone call I ever had telling me I'd got the job, and the whole world is yours in that moment. I was 17. I was at drama school. I've been seen by the Bicat brothers, Nick and Tony Bicat, playwrights, music writers, to do a half hour play with Phil Daniels and Noel Edmunds about a young girl breaking into the Top Of The Pops studio to become a singer  

And I've been down to London, done the audition with Phil Daniels, never expected to hear back and it was a Sunday 11 o'clock in the morning. I was about to go out and visit Blenheim Palace with some drama student friends. The phone rang at my home, Grove Road, Birmingham. I picked the phone up and it was a secretary saying “Toyah, you've got the job. You start on Monday” I cannot tell you ... that moment has never ever been overtaken by anything else. Because I just knew my life was about to change. It was glorious and the nervousness, the feeling of being an imposter. Can I do it? Will I be OK? Of course I can do it! I'm going to be the best ever! You just travel through the universe of potential and egotism and I'm going to do this! I'm going to do that! This is only the beginning! All those emotions. That day was the heightened day and when my friends came to pick me up, I just said "I've got the job!" They were elated for me. Elated! MICHAEL: I can imagine. Did you sing in that show? TOYAH: Yeah, I had to write the music as well 

MICHAEL: Wow! TOYAH: Tony Bicat put me together with a band called Bilbo Baggins, who were like the little brother to the Bay City Rollers. A Glasgow band. They were gorgeous, I was just in love with them all. Pebble Mill, we rehearsed in there, Bilbo Baggins, the band were put into a room     So I would rehearse with Phil Daniels and Noel Edmonds in the daytime and then I would go into the room with Bilbo Baggins, where we would work on lyrics together, and the music together and they taught me how to sing with the band, because I've never done that So I composed the lyrics with Tony Bicat, Bilbo Baggins, and then the band moved into the studio when we were actually recording this half hour play called “Glitter”. And we performed it live MICHAEL: Oh my God!

TOYAH: Just looking back I wish I could do it now. I wish I could go back as Toyah now with all of my experience and record that play now and sing it now because I would give a performance that would be Oscar winning (Michael laughs) My performance was very, very naive. Not bad, but just naive and totally inexperienced, which I think is what the Bicat brothers wanted

MICHAEL: But also, I suppose what attracted people at the National Theatre to you. They saw this naivety but a freshness and something new TOYAH: It is extraordinary because Kate Nelligan and Maximilian Schell were watching that go out live and we made it in May of ‘76. It went out October ‘76 and by November same year I was living in London, a member of the National Theatre and that's all thanks to Kate Nelligan, who took a real shine to me. I ended up living with her for nine months, she had a granny flat at her house in Stockwell. And she said “come and move into that flat” MICHAEL: She's fantastic, Kate Nelligan TOYAH: She's amazing and Brenda Blethyn was in the cast as well. They just kind of scooped me up, tolerated me and supported me. They were wonderful people MICHAEL: I did a fantastic play with Brenda. Well, it was a terrible play actually, but we had a fantastic time doing it TOYAH: Where did you do it? MICHAEL: We did it at the Almeida TOYAH: Ooooh! 

MICHAEL: I know. Sounds posh, doesn’t it? TOYAH: You wouldn’t think there was a terrible play at the Almeida MICHAEL: It was a terrible play, sadly. They chose badly, but she was fantastic in it and I had to grab her breasts every night TOYAH: Oh! Dear Brenda! How long ago was this? MICHAEL: So that would have been at the end of the 90s. It was fun … TOYAH: Well, you were older and wise by then MICHAEL: I was wise enough to know that we were acting. She did this extraordinary thing. She played a sort of a frustrated housewife which you can imagine she did absolutely brilliantly. And she knew that I was famous for my love life. And so she'd started talking to me about it and then said "what's it like?" and I said "what?" and she said "when people touch you?" and I said "do you want to find out?"   

She said "OK" so I said "well, let's start here" and I put my hands on her breasts. And I did that every night and then one night I did it and I slightly moved my hands and she fell to the floor going ooohhhh! (Toyah cackles) Afterwards, I said "I'm so sorry. What did I do?" and she said, "it’s alright - I've got very sensitive nipples" TOYAH: Oh my God! I love that! MICHAEL: I love Brenda

TOYAH: She’s so generous because on the first day of rehearsals at the National Theatre (Toyah in "Tales From The Vienna Woods", above), she didn't know me from anyone else. She said "have you got diggs?" And I said "no. I'll go back to Birmingham. She said "you can't do that every day, come and sleep on my sofa". And I thought I don't want to sleep on the sofa. This what I was like and then Kate Nelligan says “I have a granny flat” … “I'll stay there”. Talk about looking a gift horse in the mouth! I was a very ill experienced young person

MICHAEL: She was well established by then, Brenda, at the National. She did “Bedroom Farce”, I remember she was fantastic in that TOYAH: I loved and adored her not only for her talent, but her generosity as a human being as well MICHAEL: Yes … Oh, I've just gone into a revelry (they both laugh) TOYAH: I've never touched her breasts though

MICHAEL: No. Well, I never really have. I mean it was acting. There we are. Oh, that phone call. Well, we're lucky in our profession that we've all had those moments. But I think everybody must have a phone call and they think it's going to affect their life. And that moment comes and it's a wonderful thing, isn't it? Particularly when you're young? TOYAH: I have to tell you one that I'm now allowed to talk about because I had to sign a disclosure contract about it. I went for an audition three years ago, and I walked into the studio and I thought this is a blind audition. There's cameras everywhere. There's the top casting people in the world in the room. And they said "we can't tell you what it's for. The script is not the script you're up for." And I learned this to a T, I gave them the performance of a life and I just thought, well this is weird because it is a blind audition. And I left and got the phone call. "J.J. Abrams is calling you in an hour" MICHAEL: Oh my God! TOYAH: I actually ran to the loo. I thought I was going to puke MICHAEL: I’m not surprised 

TOYAH: It didn't happen. It didn't come about because I thought it was a joke. And when the call came I asked too many questions. And I was trying to test to see if I was being wound up and I probably came across as far too controlling. So it didn't happen MICHAEL: Well, yeah, not everything comes up. We've all had those as well where you're close. But how fantastic! I will definitely take that. The phone is ringing inside there, you can pick it up anytime you like (Toyah laughs) “Toyah. You've got the job, you start on Monday” TOYAH: Yeah, I’d love that! MICHAEL: Right. OK, we got one thing left. Now this is something that you're supposed to get rid of from your life TOYAH: It's the combination of fresh raspberries and almonds MICHAEL: Oh, really? That sounds delicious to me

TOYAH: No. I can eat them separately. But if you put them together in a dish I get really, really funny. Part of it is my dear mother had a habit of doing what you asked her not to do. So an example of this - I don't do pantomime anymore. I don't have to do it and I'm too old to do it. It breaks your body     But I would have one day off for Christmas and that would be Christmas Day and my mother (above front in 1946) would say "what would you like for Christmas lunch?" and I'd say "I would love a trifle. I want a trifle. I want it full of sherry and cherries and no almonds, no raspberries". And she'd arrive on Christmas Day. “I've made you an almond and raspberry trifle.” She would always do exactly what I asked her not to do So if she made me a cup of tea I'd say “Mum, no milk, no sugar, just black tea.” “There's your tea, it's got three sugars and milk.” It was always that. “Mum, turn left, turn left” She turned right. And it gave me a phobia of almonds and raspberries. And I bought two cottages. One for them to get them out of Birmingham, because they started to get break-ins because people knew they were my mum and dad

So I retired them into a beautiful cottage on the river Avon, and I bought the cottage next door and I needed to do this cottage up and it had wild raspberries growing. And I started to write a book one morning and I was in the first chapter, in the moment delivering this first chapter at my computer, in the silence of my cottage     Unfortunately I'd put a doorway in between the gardens and my mother was outside the window going “You’ve got to pick the raspberries! The raspberries will rot on the vine!” I got a pair of shears. I cut the raspberries and I threw them in the fucking river Avon and I've not eaten raspberries since and I said “there's your fucking raspberries!” (Michael laughs) MICHAEL: You've had quite a relationship with your mom then over the years TOYAH: (exasperated) Oh! I don't know where to start. I have to write the play, the book and the film about this relationship

MICHAEL: You should! TOYAH: Well, I never knew until December the 3rd last year when ancestry.com contacted me to tell me about some press cuttings they found - my mother, very likely at the age of 14, witnessed her father murder her mother. There was a court case. It was a crime of punishment. My mother was born out of wedlock, which is why she was such a snob and kind of refused to acknowledge anything in the working class system. She was very, very complex, really complex and she was living a character she created so no one could discover her history And she was just driven mad by her history. And she had a chaperone. She was a dancer, a professional dancer and she had a female chaperone (in the photo above behind the car) who even shared her bedroom with her. My mother was never allowed to be alone probably because her father only went to prison for three months. He escaped the gallows. He was free. And I think the chaperone was with her right up until she married my dad to make sure the father never got near her MICHAEL: Good Lord! 

MICHAEL: So when you found this incredible thing out only recently did you suddenly re-evaluate the whole thing or …?

TOYAH: Yeah, I mean, I had to be with counsellors in the room when they told me. They were so concerned about how it would affect me and it did affect me because it was literally like a jigsaw puzzle falling out of the sky of my past and just all falling into place. I suddenly understood this extraordinary past. So did my brother, my sister, my husband, I mean all of the family spouses suddenly realised why my mother would destroy every moment. It's because she felt if she didn't, that we will be in danger

MICHAEL: Yes. You can't be happy

TOYAH: You can't be happy. I've really had to re-evaluate everything in the in last 10 months and there is a song on “Posh Pop” called “Barefoot On Mars”, which has gone viral because it's about that moment, and I just wish she could have told us while she was alive because we would have got her therapist. We'd have done therapy with her, we would have been kinder to her rather than exasperated by her. She refused medical attention. She refused medical help. She was destructive on every level to her physical body and her mental health MICHAEL: And yours TOYAH: I think she made me who and what I am and my God I’m tough

MICHAEL: Yeah. You are Toyah. Well, I'm going to put that into the time capsule for you, but I don't think you really need to lock it away. I think you're perfectly capable of dealing with it. You're an extraordinary woman TOYAH: Thank you. Just don't show me a raspberry (Michael laughs) MICHAEL: Particularly not with almonds on it TOYAH: And can I add one more thing which is purely for my oral pleasure? And that's a Cadbury's Creme Egg MICHAEL: All right, in the sealed compartment are raspberries and almonds and sitting on top of it a lovely Cadbury's Creme Egg TOYAH: Yeah! (laughs) I love it! MICHAEL: Brilliant. How wonderful to talk to you. How lovely to see you again, looking so well TOYAH: Well, thank you and I hope that we get to work together! MICHAEL: Yeah, that would be fantastic. Keep well!

TOYAH: Alright! MICHAEL: Bye!  

[toyahinterviews]

HOW TO BE 60 WITH KAYE ADAMS AND KAREN MACKENZIE 29.7.2022

KAYE: On this week’s How To Be 60 podcast we have teenage rebel Toyah Willcox and it’s safe to say age has not withered her. Long time no see! It has been 38 years. How are you? TOYAH: I'm very good, thank you and the Holiday Inn in Birmingham is still standing. I do remember this interview - KAYE: You don’t! TOYAH: I do because - this is gonna sound really stupid - but at the beginning of my career I didn't meet many people from Scotland unless I was playing there. So I remember Gloria Hunniford interviewing me in Dublin, or Belfast actually, and I was thinking gosh, that's a lovely accent   But I was so rarely in Scotland unless I was on tour, and I played there and then fans talk to you at the stage door. So for you to interview me was very, very memorable KAYE: How weird. I just thought I would be so utterly forgettable because I was so nervous. It's interesting now, isn't it, because I think you're just a couple of years older than me - TOYAH: I’m 64 

KAYE: You're 64 - OK, four years older than me, but sitting there as young women in our early 20s because you were just - you're a pop star and I felt so fresh out of uni, that there was like 100 - not years between us but there was a gulf between us. Do you understand what I mean? TOYAH: Oh, yeah. Back then even a two year gap between someone was considered another generation and I just don't think those time gaps matter anymore. I think if we've got something in common - I think most people are living the life rather than living the age KAYE: What does that mean to you? Because my God, you're living the life at the moment, Toyah. I have been bingeing on your Sunday Lunch on YouTube, which I recommend. Oh my God, Karen and I, two wee Scottish women are sitting there with our chins on the bloody - KAREN: Presbyterian Scottish women - TOYAH: (cackles) Firstly, I am doing this with my husband and no one seems to realise that this is a husband and wife doing what we do for each other and secondly, but just as importantly, we're doing it to make people laugh. And yeah, it's outrageous     

But what I have to flag up, because the headlines every week is "Robert’s wearing this, Toyah’s was wearing practically nothing". I started my career when I was 18 and every audition I went to while I was 18 into my 20s I was asked if I would do nude scenes. So as an actress, nudity means very, very little to me   It was part of my rite of passage into the world of acting. I never relished it. I never enjoyed it, but it started to mean nothing to me. When we hit lockdown and Robert and I started to do our Sunday Lunches, slowly less and less clothes were being worn as I ran out of wardrobe. We've just we've hit a world market collectively - we've had 111 million views. And it's extraordinary. I’m now in the top 30 of YouTube influencers   

KAYE: So will you describe them, Toyah? For those people who haven't seen them. You describe it and then we'll talk a bit more about it but I want you to describe it rather than me TOYAH: OK. Robert Fripp, in the world's top 40 of guitar players. He's one of the greatest guitar players in the world. We've been married for 36 years. I'm a singer and actress and a writer. And in lockdown we started to post videos every Sunday lunch of either me teaching him to dance, because he cannot dance to save his life. And then slowly we evolved into covering rock songs and we started to cover very famous rock songs     Last Sunday's went viral. Last Sunday we covered the band called Slipknot because we were so amused by how Slipknot do what they do. They all wear masks. None of them show their face. So I put Robert in a Slipknot mask     I am admittedly wearing virtually nothing but just enough to cover some modesty. And it just went viral and I think it went viral because my husband is 76 and I'm 64 and what we're doing and the way I see it is we've been rock and rollers all our life, age just a number

KAYE: I want to talk about that. Because obviously there's a lot of deep philosophical sort of lines that I could pursue in that but first of all, I have to say, Toyah, your breasts are magnificent. My God. They're like the eighth and ninth wonders of the world TOYAH: They do have a time limit. Robert says to me quite often "how long can we keep this up for?" and I say well, as long as my boobs hold out. I think we're giving it another two years and we're touring this next year. We're doing Toyah and Robert’s Sunday Lunch, The Tour. And then we have to think about how we're going to develop it if we keep working because I really am not confident when I hit 70 that I want to do this (laughs) KAYE: Oh my God. Have you always had great tits? TOYAH: I had a cancer scare about 10 years ago and I had reconstructive surgery. My surgeon was just absolutely brilliant. He gave me the best boobs ever. And they’re natural, I don't have implants or anything. So he just had to remove a lump and then he had to make my boobs even and he just did the best job in the world     

It's another reason why I really feel that women should be free to show their bodies because we go through remarkable things biologically as women, and we survive so much on physical and psychological levels. But I just really think that we should be proud of who and what we are no matter what age or what shape we are KAYE: You said you don’t want to do this at 70 and Robert is 76. Did your age come up in your thinking at all? Did you at any point think should I be doing this at 64? Not at all?

TOYAH: No, I was being very honest about my age and as soon as I hit 60 I just put two fingers up to the world. Because I think if you are being oppressed because of your age, that is almost passive aggression towards you as an individual. I think if people lie about their age to you, again, it's another form of passive aggression     So I just shout right back at people what my age is, and I just stand my ground. I can remember having a meeting with a PR person, male PR person, about eight years ago and as soon as the meeting started, he said "how are you old woman?"     I said I'm not an old woman and you've not got the job. I will not be treated as if I'm inferior because I've survived 64 years. And the thing is, we have all taken absolutely remarkable journeys that enrich everybody's lives. If you've had children, I haven't, but you've enriched the lives of those children. You've enriched the lives of your viewers and your listeners. We should be immensely proud. We have so much to offer and we should never ever be invisible

KAYE: To be honest, you are really forcing me to examine myself and doing this podcast has made me do that because I have bought into the lie. I have lied about my age, which is why I started this podcast. I won't bore you again with the story. As with everything it starts with a joke and then it just becomes something and I was like well, that's up to me     I can say whatever I like like blah blah blah but as time has gone on now I'm thinking actually I do have responsibility to be honest about my age, because what am I doing by lying? And I agree with you and I put my hands up and I say guilty. I am buying into that negative connotation that is attached to an older woman and I'm supporting it and I'm complicit TOYAH: It shouldn't be negative. This is a cultural thing and I think part of it is the power play of bullies. But when you move further and further east around this hemisphere where age celebrated. The older woman, the grandmother, the matriarch is really celebrated. Celebrated for her strength and her wisdom    

I can understand why you felt you had to lie about your age because in TV, it's something that happens to women but I think these days because of YouTube, because of Instagram, because of Twitter, because of all those platforms, we can now be far more honest and far more empowered in truly singing about our individuality   

I don't have to jump through loops for anyone anymore. I'm a hard worker, but I'm really out there thanks to YouTube and I just feel I'm not jumping through hoops anymore.  I really want to take this journey into whatever we call old age or mature age and just flag up some things that really celebrate how amazing it is. Every year that we have it's a gift. It's an absolute gift     I just want to flag that up. We can't keep kind of installing fear in people about their future. It doesn't have to be there. It's a complex thing and you're right - it can get philosophical, but I always say to people I meet who are in their 20s save 10% of what you earn. They say “why should I do that?”    

Save 10% of what you earn. That is your power. When you hit 40, when you hit 50 and you start to hit barriers against your age, you will have enough money as a bedrock to keep you independent and you will never have to borrow from the bank. So I tell people that you start young to build your future and build a confident middle and old age KAYE: How does Robert feel about it because (he is) one of the world's finest guitarists – how does he feel about being a 76 year old rock and roller?

TOYAH: I will be honest with you - neither of us see ourselves as these age groups. We are still how we very much were in our 20s and Robert only recently said to me "I've just looked in the mirror and I've seen a very old man" and I said but you're not an old man in your head and you're an exceptionally good 76. You look great, you're very sexy. And what you do - the world loves you. You're so cute     I'd say the problem that both Robert and I have is we are age inappropriate. I'm dress far too young. I take my clothes off, but I am far too young in my head. I just don't think old and Robert doesn't either. But we are noticing things and in 2010 I had hip replacement. Best thing I ever did! It’s fabulous. I've dancing on every stage around the world. So I am experiencing what old age throws at us, but I'm not living with that attitude KAYE: Yeah, so you're not in denial about age but you just refuse to do it the way that society tends to want you to

TOYAH: Yeah, it's the negativity that I think is very unhealthy. Negativity and fear just doesn't help anyone. Like you had an email (which Kaye read at the beginning of the podcast) from a lady who's just starting a full time career at 60 and it's the job she's always wanted … she's living her dreams! We still have dreams     OK - we have menopause, we were dealing with libido that drops. Yeah, these are biological things. But we're utterly biologically remarkable and we still have dreams and you have a right to live your dreams. They might diminish in ambition, but you'll always get some form of that dream available to you to make your life very, very fulfilling KAREN: Can I ask you … in your Sunday Lunch videos, the clothes that you get - you said you're kind of emptying your wardrobe. Did you have these clothes anyway? (they all laugh) Stored in the back in clingflm

TOYAH: Exactly a year ago, I was a burlesque dancer for the first time. So exactly a year ago, I opened in a show in London called Proud Cabaret (below), where I was with burlesque dancers and I dressed as a burlesque dancer. So I had those outfits, but you get through them very quickly if you do four of these a month. So I go onto Amazon and I just order fancy dress outfits and doctor them. I cut them up, I redesign them, I sew them together so I'm now at the point where I'm making what I wear. But a lot of them come off Amazon

KAREN: That's incredible. Can I just say Robert sometimes looks like he's terrified. It looks like he's signed this contract and not read the small print. He's sitting there going “what did I get into here?” TOYAH: What's terrifying him - and this is a little bit technical - is Robert doesn't play in the same tuning as every guitarist in the world plays in. So the standard tuning for rock is E tuning. Robert plays in C tuning which means he's learning songs - the notes are actually on different strings. So it's a real challenge for him and he's done it deliberately this way so his brain is super active KAREN: Right. Because he does look like he's concentrating really hard TOYAH: Yeah. And he has to to a certain degree and he is a little scared about what I'm going to do because I never tell him KAREN: I was going to say -  that concentration is “I’m terrified … what’s going to happen next?” 

TOYAH: I very rarely tell him. What I do before he sits down is I film a rehearsal with just me in the picture and I say this is where you're going to be positioned and this is what it's going to look like and then I just don't tell him anything else KAYE: I think he's hypnotised by your nipples. I think that's what it is. He’s in a hypnotic trance TOYAH: Well, he does really love me behaving like this KAYE: Does he? Which is an amazing thing because for a lot of relationships - for the woman to be so out there as you are … A lot of guys struggle with that. Has he always been cool with that? TOYAH: He’s been so cool. I was doing a play once, "Therese Racquin", a French play about a French murderess and this was inTthe Playhouse in Nottingham and act two opened with me having sex on the kitchen table with a cohort. My husband was sitting in the balcony and he turned to the woman next to him and said “that's my wife”. I heard him say it! 

KAYE: I was reading some interviews that you and Robert have done recently and he was quoted and maybe you can fill in the backstory here Toyah, that particularly recently, emails come to him, he said and this is a direct quote and I hope it's right - Robert's saying “I've seen how difficult it is for a very short woman of a certain age to be seen or heard or acknowledged.” TOYAH: Yeah. So Robert is a deliberate barrier between me and the world and we decided on this because well, you know what it’s like. We get very strange people contacting us. I would very confidently say that my wages are a third lower than the men I work with on festival bills and on TV. So, Robert is a barrier of strength. When I say to him, Robert, you’re going have to say that you've read this email, because I'm being exploited here Also, even where we live - I'm a singer, I'm an actress primarily, but I'm also a property developer and I have a lot of property. I even have to put Robert as the barrier when we are doing the deals because my lawyer's fees will be double his. Everyone's fees will be double his    

And also I quite like the fact that people don't know I'm the money person. So we cover that up and it means I can get a lot more done business wise, without men being aggressive towards me, and suddenly wham bam, thank you mam  - I cut the deal and they never knew it was me. So that's very deliberate   

KAYE: But does that piss you off that you have to do that?   TOYAH: No, I feel that it's actually attributed to my success. Because it has stopped an awful lot of exploitation and dishonesty because men do not do that to another man         KAYE: So what what drives you? I was reading back over your career and I couldn't even begin to list all the things that you have done and there never seems to have been a lull. You're constantly creating, reinventing and even the Sunday Lunches - that was created within lockdown. A lot of people just sort of lay in front of the telly, scratched their arse and watched Netflix but not you. What drives you?         TOYAH: I think it goes down to the fact that when I was very, very young I had absolutely no support from my family whatsoever. I was the brunt of every joke. Every dream I told them about was laughed back at me in my face. I had absolutely no emotional support whatsoever. The moment I left home I thought eff this, I am going to change my life. I'm going to change my life beyond recognition

I just have never, ever let go of that. The fact that you build your own life - I truly believe we're responsible for our own lives on many, many levels and that's down to being how you feel about your age and positivity     It's how you look after your body when you're young so that you have a healthier old age. We are in control of that machine. But I remember the first time I appeared on Top Of The Pops, it was only then that my parents realised I had worked so hard to get to that point that I was taking my own career very seriously. And they were in shock. They were in shock of every single thing I did, because they never treated me as if I had any hope at all in the world     KAYE: And how did that feel? TOYAH: It was good. But it's ingrained in me - KAYE: But how did it feel to know that you didn't have that support? I'm very fortunate that I had the very opposite experience and it was a huge comfort to me. I can't imagine what it would be like not to have it

TOYAH: I often say to my husband just imagine what I would have been if I had support. Just imagine if every child in this world has nurture. It just would be an incredible planet. I had no nurture, no nurture at all. And I think the reason I feel the safest is when I'm on stage because I'm totally in control and I'm alone and that is my upbringing I had a very negative mother, who would just go into meltdown over any piece of news. She would just go into meltdown and I remember telling her when I had my first professional acting role, which is a play called “Glitter” that's going to be showing on BBC Four this week. I was 17- 18 when I made it. “Don’t be so stupid! You don't get jobs! You're never going to be an actress, you're not going to do this! Stop lying!”       It just went on and on and on. I was even at Pebble Mill making it and she was waiting for me to be sacked. It was ridiculous. But what I will say is that financially from the age of 18 I supported them til the day they died. And I think it was only in the last 10 years - I bought them a cottage on the River Avon - that they realised how hard I'd worked to put them in their retirement

KAYE: So was there a period before they died and that you had that big conversation and that there was the Hollywood reconciliation?

TOYAH: No, never. It was just so dysfunctional. So dysfunctional. We would sit down for family meals, I have an older brother and sister but it would just deteriorate so quickly (laughs). I was even fighting with my mother a week before she passed away and that was trying to get her into a hospice to accept painkillers because she was so advanced with cancer. She had no painkillers     Just so dysfunctional, and I put that down to the fact that they both were very young during World War Two. My mother witnessed something terrible when she was a teenager. Absolutely the worst thing you can witness - she witnessed her father murder her mother. And my father was a way in Alexandria, in Egypt, on a war boat for six years They came back so dysfunctional that I remember when I was very, very young, probably between the age of three and seven, there was a kind of normality. But then after that our world just fell apart KAYE: So what were your feelings towards that? Do you feel sympathy for them in their experience? Do you feel resentment that you didn't get that nurture? How do you reconcile that now they've gone?

TOYAH: It’s very difficult because the one thing I really wish I persevered with was that I would have had lessons to play guitar. We couldn't afford it. It was one thing or another, I either had singing lessons or I was going to play guitar and I stuck with the singing lessons     So good and bad there but I just feel if I had nurture, rather than being looked upon as someone with learning disability, because I'm severely dyslexic, if I had nurture I just think I'd have gone way beyond anything I've ever achieved in my life. I would have trusted people more and it wasn't til I met my husband ... my husband could see the damage had been done He really is my best friend and he really is someone that can kind of talk me out of a corner. When I feel confused or angry about something he can help sort me out. So the first time I ever experienced nurture - in the traditional sense of the word - was from my husband

KAYE: Wow, that's quite a story TOYAH: I know that it's a very heavy story, and I do think twice about telling it, but there are so many people out there who've experienced the same and you can't say to these people your old age is going to be horrible, because your lady that's just got a full time job at 60 is living her dream. And we all have that KAYE: You’re right because we have this Disney version of youth is wonderful. Younger ages are fantastic and yet when you get older, then it all gets grim and it goes pear-shaped. Whereas you look at your life as an experience, your later years, and continue to be exciting and new and stimulating. You would never go back because your early years sound really really horrific to be honest TOYAH: If the big boss in the sky above said “what age do you want go back to?” I would say I'm very happy where I am. There's so much strength in our ages. There's so much power in our ages that I am perfectly happy where I am   KAYE: One of the conversations we've had over the weeks that we'll be doing the podcast is what do you call the sort of 60s age and quite a few people have said it's the age of contentment. What would you say?

TOYAH: Well, I won’t do that! (laughs) KAYE: I didn't think so TOYAH: I don’t think I’ve ever experienced contentment. For me, it's an age of completion and what I mean by that is when you're 60 you have the time and the physical energy to complete things and to make way for the age of contentment. I'm not really considering slowing down and cutting the stress out of my life until I'm at least 70 Science is very, very clever. Science can keep us going for a long, long time with a high standard of life. But I'm a business woman, and somewhere in me in my DNA, that business person is firing on all cylinders KAYE: Karen, what does this make you think then because you're a great advocate of taking time for yourself and destressing? KAREN: Well, I'm just looking and listening to you, Toyah, and it sounds like you're thriving with what's going on in your life at the moment. Your Sunday Lunch is one thing, your property development - that's another big thing. So there's obviously a lot. How do you relax?

TOYAH: At the moment, ironically, you'd think I would have relaxed in lockdown but we got busier and busier - KAREN: How do you relax then? TOYAH: There's no time, I work seven days a week

KAREN: So this is you and Kaye together then. Neither of you relax. And what about holidays? Would you have a holiday? TOYAH: There’s no time. I'm supposed to be on holiday this week. No time. This week I've made an advert for Sunlife. I'm making an album with this world producer. And this was supposed to be my holiday week. It just doesn't happen KAREN: Are you happy with that level of activity and stress? TOYAH: Everything that I'm doing this week needs to be done. It leads to other things. It's very, very essential. What I do try and do is take December off, which sounds odd because December is usually a busy time. We are culturally Christian, and we live in a very Christian town and Christmas is huge here     I live on a High Street and I just try and take December off so I can see my neighbours and see my friends and catch up with people and give them gifts and all of that. Otherwise there'd be no time at all

KAYE: If you've got time for just five minutes of bingo, which I know is probably not a game that you will normally play ... So we've just got a whole load of questions and we very randomly choose a number (plays a tombola sound) KAREN: I'm gonna say 47 KAYE: OK, have you planned your funeral? TOYAH: Yeah. KAREN: Have you? When did you do that? TOYAH: Well, we did it this week KAREN: How bizarre! TOYAH: Because we're adding to the property empire all the time so we redid our wills. I said to my husband you have very specific things you want. Let me know. I need to know now. You can't just expect me to build that funeral and do the right thing for you. So we did it this week KAYE: What is it going to be like?

TOYAH: Well, it's an interesting one. He's a Dorset man and he fell in love with the town I grew up in and we now live on the High Street in this particular kind of market town and he wants to be buried in our garden. I said no, you can't do that. So we're going to probably have a cremation and the ashes - half will be in our garden here and half will be on his parents grave KAYE: And what about you? Have you thought about your own funeral? TOYAH: I am deciding if I'm brave enough to think about cremation. I've actually bought funeral plots for both of us next to my parents. I'm starting to feel we can no longer do that. We can't do that anymore. We've got to just think more ecologically about how we dispose of things that aren't ... used anymore. So I'm trying to come around to cremation KAREN: I’m intrigued that you actually bought lots next to your parents given the relationship you had with your mom

TOYAH: Well, it's it's a very good point, Karen, because I do really really love them. I can feel them close to me. This morning I burst into tears and Robert said “what's the matter?” and I said I can feel my father so I don't feel detached from them. What I would really like is whatever the karma was that brought us all together has been solved in my lifetime   

Because if say reincarnation exists, I never want to go through a childhood like that ever again. It was awful. I'm not even talking about physical abuse. It was psychological abuse. But you can still love people who are very, very difficult to get on with it

KAYE: Did they know they were abusing you psychologically? TOYAH: No KAYE: Or was it just the way they were? TOYAH: No, it was their right. They were my parents. They had a right to do that. It was only in 2009 - I had a big cancer scare. I was taken away, put in an induced coma, had parts of me removed and we didn't tell mum and dad til I was brought out of the coma and then they realised how frail and vulnerable I could be. After that there was a little bit more respect KAYE: Such a story, you’ve really taken my breath away with it. One more bingo number (plays the tombola sound) OK, 27. What has life taught you, Toyah? TOYAH: That love is the most powerful, political, emotional thing in the world. We cannot move forward with anything without love in our lives KAYE: Well, I think we will end it there because what a wonderful way to end. What a fascinating conversation. Thank you so much and it's been lovely to speak to you again after 38 years

TOYAH: Well, it's so good to see virtually both of you KAREN: And lovely to meet you KAYE: Thank you, take care, Toyah KAREN: All the best with Sunday Lunch TOYAH: It’s going to be wild! (laughs) KAYE: It will. Say hello to the magnificent breasts for me! Bye! (laughs)

[toyahinterviews]

ON RECORD | IN CONVERSATION WITH SATNAM RANA 12.5.2022

TOYAH: Hello everybody, how are you? Thank you for being here as well SATNAM: Thank you, Toyah. Oh, I'm so looking forward to this evening. I've enjoyed meeting you briefly behind the scenes but now to put it on tape as they say, well, on the record, and in conversation Toyah, what can I say? Just our Brummie living legend is how I see you. 13 top 40 singles. 25 albums, Toyah’s written two books - TOYAH: I think it's about 30 albums now - SATNAM: I'm going to be corrected (the audience laughs) Two books, appeared in a bit over 40 stage plays by now as well. Acted in 20 feature films at least, including of course, the epic “Jubilee”. Presented hundreds and hundreds of TV programmes and released “Posh Pop” last August, which was your first solo album of course since 2008

So as I said, truly a living legend. You don't know this but when I first started my career in 1999, at Radio Five Live at Television Centre … I actually caught you in the corridor of the Five Live studios and I just remember this ball of energy and everyone saying “it’s Toyah Willcox, Satnam! It’s Toyah Willcox!” And I feel like that right now! TOYAH: Was that Portland Place? SATNAM: It was Television Centre at White City TOYAH: You know, I think I do remember it. I really do. Because I only ever did Radio Five Live once - SATNAM: Really? TOYAH: Yeah, so I remember it. Yeah, because it terrifies me, Radio Five Live - I mean, they’re so brutal. It's like throwing yourself to wolves. Why would anyone want to do it?

SATNAM: I just remember the buzz and the excitement and I just remember you because you were so smiley and so warm and so friendly. So it's a beautiful memory. And for me really it's a memory I hold dear to my heart because those early days were so important and influential in terms of starting out in the media. But what I want to know is - I've given you a bit of a Wikipedia catalogue of Toyah . . . Where do you get the energy from? TOYAH: Well, I have this saying, and I heard Lulu say this. She was doing a kind of lifetime interview on Radio 2. And the presenter said to her “Lulu, why do you keep going?” and Lulu said something that really resonated with me. She said “I'm hoping I'll be discovered” SATNAM: Love it! TOYAH: It's so extraordinary. And I don't know if it's like it for other artists but everything I do - I feel is just two steps forward three steps back. Now that may sound negative because I actually think the best part of the creative process is being in the process (of) not finishing 

But it gets tough and it can be tough, and I'm forever that youngest child in the family trying to prove myself and I think that's where the energy comes from SATNAM: I want to take you back then right to the beginning, if you don't mind. So I said to my colleagues "oh yeah, Toyah Willcox, Birmingham." "Oh we didn't realise Toyah was from Birmingham", but you were born here, weren’t you? TOYAH: I was conceived and born in the same bed (the audience laughs, Satnam giggles) Now in retrospect I find this really entertaining, because I'm about to turn 64 and you never think of your parents having sex But when you look back and you think I was conceived and born in the same bed, which is kind of a very weird thing to say these days. So I was born 119 Grove Road,King's Heath, Birmingham 64 years ago. And my mother kept that bed right until she passed (they all laugh) SATNAM: Oh my goodness!

TOYAH: I remember having to throw it out when I was clearing her cottage and I'm thinking I'm throwing away the bed I was conceived in. Is this right? So yes, a lot of sex went on in King's Heath (the audience laughs) SATNAM: I'm already thinking will the BBC be able to broadcast this but it is a podcast so I think we can get away with it (they all laugh) What sort of child were you? Were you a shy child, a loud child? When I think Toyah I think flamboyant and out there 

TOYAH: I was very, very happy. My mother didn't understand why she would catch me looking in a mirror just laughing. I was very happy in my own company. One thing I had absolutely no realisation about was I had a speech impediment. And I was born with a twisted spine and I had what's called “W legs”. My legs pointed kind of inwards So I had a very funny gait. So I not only laughed a lot, people actually laughed a lot at me. So I had to have a lot of elocution lessons. The children's hospital, the orthopaedic hospital literally was 100 yards down Broad Street. I was in there every six months being monitored for correction surgery, taught how to walk. My mother was my physio So that was my normality. And I was okay with it. And I never understood it was different, until I realised I wanted to act and sing and then I realised there was something different but it was a blessing. Because the National Theatre embraced my lisp. They embraced the fact that I had found a way to move that made me stand out from everyone else 

So I was very, very lucky to be in this kind of physical situation. And it's only today I can really say that and trust it and trust that what I went through actually helped me drive a wedge right through into the heart of the music industry SATNAM: I suppose if you have a start like that, it makes you utterly resilient TOYAH: Well, I just wasn't aware of it. And it wasn't until … I just thought I was the youngest and my brother and sister used to treat me like a toy. I mean, my brother has broken so many of my bones. It's ridiculous. He used to just throw me up in the air and not catch me (the audience laughs)   I remember that he threw me up in the air once and I broke my arm in two places, and my mother made me change my knickers before the ambulance came (Satnam and the audience laugh) You asked me why I'm resilient - it's pretty obvious why I'm resilient! I just had to fend for myself

SATNAM: And that actually, I imagine, was a huge asset for you breaking through the music industry at a time when quite frankly women didn't necessarily have an equal place in the industry. But we'll come to that. So I was going to ask you about the impact it had on your personality, but it sounds as if actually it helped build your personality - TOYAH: I think it did. And I also had the complexity. Now, we've only got 45 minutes, but the complexity of my mother, and I didn't know until the 3rd of December last year what the beginning of her life was like. My mother was the most difficult, the most obstructive human being I've ever known. She just could not tell you a truth. She could not tell you anything complimentary. And then she couldn't say the words “I love you” And then December the 3rd last year ancestry.com got in touch with me and they said “we need to see you in a room with a counsellor”. I thought my God, this is a bit heavy. And then they showed me the press cuttings that my mother, we think she was about 16, was locked in a room with her abusive father and he murdered her mother. And the father went to court and he was in prison for three months   

Now, I think the psychology of my mother - because she never told any of us this and me and my mom fought like cat and dog. We physically would roll out of the house in a physical fight. I think my mother felt in court - I don't think she was probably even in court - she wasn't allowed to testify. She wasn't allowed to give her side of the story. And she came out of that feeling she could never tell her truth And I never knew this about her. If I knew this, I would have been really kind to her. And I would have been more inclusive with her. So that kind of upbringing for me just made me more and more individual and rebellious. I mean, she couldn't have got a worse daughter in her situation 

SATNAM: So that's interesting because she obviously embarked upon having a family. There’s yourself, you've got two elder siblings. It's almost contrary to what you would expect - TOYAH: It’s a bit of a story because she didn't learn to read or write. She only learned to ballet dance, and by the time she was 12 she was already a professional performer. By the time this incident happened with her parents she had to have a chaperone with her 24 hours a day and I reckon this is because the father was getting out in three months So when my father met my mother - he saw her on stage at Weston-super-Mare opening for the comedian Max Wall - and my father fell in love with her and followed her around the country. And he wasn't ever alone with her until the wedding night, because the chaperone wouldn't leave her. And he never understood that SATNAM: So is there any correlation then between your mum entering the entertainment industry, as potentially escapism from her situation? And you also entering the entertainment industry as an escapism? 

TOYAH: I firmly believe that when children form in the belly they pick up memories, and I definitely picked up my mother's memories - the good memories, and I think she loved being on stage. She was phenomenally beautiful, and she was educated to be on stage. That's all that she had. And I think instinctively I picked that up without any self-awareness So what was so unusual about me is I came into this world, I auditioned at the (Birmingham) Rep, I was dressing at the Alexandra Theatre, I was dressing at the Hippodrome. I did my first ever singing publicly at a pub called The Jug, which I believe was where this building is now. You know, I had no self-consciousness whatsoever. And I think that was my strength. I had this incredible inner confidence SATNAM: And did she put any pressure on you - or your father, indeed, any pressure on you at any point to conform? I know he said you’re a rebel but to conform and do the whole marriage thing and the children thing like she had done? 

TOYAH: No. The advice they gave me is don't get pregnant and don't go to jail. (the audience and Satnam laugh) I mean, that was the extent of the advice. And when I introduced my husband-to-be Robert Fripp to them, they both burst out laughing and they ran in the kitchen - this was at Grove Road at King’s Heath - and I went in I said “is there a problem?” And they said “is he mad?” (the audience laughs) So you know, they never ever really believed in me, and it wasn't until I did the National Theatre when I was 18 I was spotted with my green and yellow hair walking down New Street by two directors who wanted me to go and audition for a play at Pebble Mill that led to me to go to the National Theatre. My parents came and saw me at the National Theatre but they didn't really take me seriously til I got Top of the Pops, which was four years later. So it was a long journey of winning them over to my side SATNAM: So how does family life contrast now then with the way you were brought up and what sounds like a very self-assured and almost inner strength upbringing on your part? Very individualistic. How does it compare now? 

TOYAH: Well, I don't have family now. So when I say that my sister (Nicola, above with Toyah in 2018) lives near Brighton. She's a remarkable woman. Absolutely remarkable. She studied at Dudley Road to be a nurse. She went into very advanced accounting. She was Alan Miliband’s right hand woman during that period in politics and helped build this massive hospital on the Euston Road in London  And then her last job in the NHS, before she sailed around the world - she was part of the NHS response team to terrorism at the Olympics. And what toughened her up - she was present at the pub bombings. She was on site at the Birmingham pub bombings 

And that really toughened her up and she's had a remarkable career. Now, my brother was one of only four Harrier fighter pilots 1972 to 74 because they cost 12 million each to train. So he was remarkable as well. And I do remember my parents saying once they had no idea where the three of us came from (the audience laughs) They have no faith in any of us! SATNAM: It was the magic bed! TOYAH: It was the magic bed! It was the water of King's Heath that did it! (they all laugh) SATNAM: Tell me a little bit about your school, then TOYAH: Colmore Row, Edgbaston. It was an all girls school. It was a very good school in that it was multicultural. It was very, very brilliant like that and I loved it for that. And I loved the mix of cultures. This is how I ended up living with a Hindi family. But also they took in disabled children. My classmates - one was blind. One had the same kind of gait as me. There were other pupils who were going off to hospital meetings. I was there from kindergarten from the age of four and a half til I left at the age of, I think, 17 

But around the 11 Plus, I just went AWOL. I went from being a very brilliant artist mathematician to just not fitting in the system. It got too quick for me. I couldn't pick it up. So I was very disruptive. I was absolutely appalling   And I was appalling to the point that the headmistress once came to me to ask me to control the other girls. I was like the school Mafia. She said “look, Toyah, they all look up to you. They all think you're fantastic. We're having a bit of trouble with so and so. Could you go and have a word with her?” SATNAM: So tell me about your Hindi family and I’m curious - TOYAH: Selwyn Road, Edgebaston SATNAM: Very posh. They took you in, but also at the same time they warned you, didn’t they?

TOYAH: I had a massive fight with my mother. It was massive and we couldn't be kept in the same house. And Mrs. Gerage phoned my father (Beric, below with Toyah) up. She was a doctor. And she said, “look, I will take Toyah in and we'll keep her until this all calms down.” And as I arrived, and Mrs. Gerage opened the door and said “you will not influence my daughters!” (the audience laughs) Her daughters looked like supermodels. They didn't need me. I mean, they were getting all the attention of the boys of Birmingham. They were absolutely gorgeous. And I stayed there for a couple of months until it all blew over, until my mother and I could be put in the same room together and we could talk again

SATNAM: It's amazing actually just to know that camaraderie and the essence of our city, our multicultural city, that togetherness actually existed back in the  - I'm guessing this in the 70s, isn’t it? TOYAH: I was born in 1958 … this would have been about 1972 SATNAM: Yeah, that for me, actually, is a really nice prism into the past of what Birmingham is like and it's just grown, flourished - TOYAH: Birmingham is gorgeous. I mean, I would go to Snobs club, which was just over there. I loved it! Friday and Saturday. It was amazing! And the Embassy that served warm wine (the audience laughs) and I would go to the Locarno (Dance Hall). I saw Hawkwind when I was 11. I think I saw Black Sabbath when I was about 12. Just a fabulous city for culture and music and friendship. Beautiful

SATNAM: And security guards who never checked ages as well (the audience laughs) So you've talked a bit about school, but what are you passionate about? TOYAH: My mother and I used to get on really well and there was a point where that relationship changed. She took me to the Gaumont Cinema of Corporation Street to see “The Sound Of Music” and we went seven times in a row. And I turned to my mother and I said “that's what I'm going to do” And it threatened her. It upset her. It wasn't jealousy. It just connected her to something she was trying to forget. And from that point onwards I saw the barrier go up, and my determination just got stronger And I think I just started to do anything I possibly could to get closer into show business. Now, we had a family friend at the time and this was a really big stroke of luck. He was the artistic director, the managing director of Pebble Mill. And he said to my parents “your daughter is very, very special. Get her into drama school”

So he nominated me into the Old Rep Theatre School on Station Road. And that was really the beginning of my life. Because this was around the time of the Birmingham pub bombings Every Friday, I would pay for my dance lesson. And then every Saturday I would go into drama school because I was only 14. And then I would get a job either selling cigarettes at John Lewis' or working in the china department. As you can guess I lied about my age the whole time - SATNAM: A lot! (laughs) TOYAH: A lot! And no one checked your age so I could pay for the drama school. But this then led me to being a dresser. I dressed the whole of the Dad's Army touring company, which was the same as the TV cast. I dressed Judy Geeson, I dressed Simon Williams, I dressed Sylvia Syms. I was in the ballet Rambert as a walk-on artist, all before I was a legal age. And I just loved it and they loved me and Judy Geeson called me her “bird of paradise”

SATNAM: How beautiful - TOYAH: So I was accepted. Really accepted

SATNAM: So how did that then evolve into - obviously, when music came it was punk? TOYAH: The Sex Pistols played Birmingham only twice and I believe it was 1976. The first time was August at Barbarella’s. And the second time was October at Bogarts just pass the Town Hall. I was at that gig. So at that time I was about 16,  possibly turning 17 and I'd already been making my own clothes since I was 12   But my mother took me at the age of 14 to Rackhams hair department and a man called Derek Goddard cut my hair. And he said “you should be a hair model. I'm going to dye it blue” SATNAM: Oh, is that how it started?! 

TOYAH: That’s how it started. This is you know, pre-punk. He dyed my hair blue and I went home in a headscarf and I wore this headscarf at home and at school for two weeks and eventually my mother had the guts to pull the headscarf off and she screamed. She cried. She howled   And that was the beginning of the end. I became a model for Wella, through Rackhams. I travelled the whole of the UK as a hair model. I walked the catwalks of Blackpool (the audience laughs), the catwalks of Blackburn, of London in my  pre-punk gear

I just became the girl who would do anything with her hair. And I got spotted. I got spotted by the Bicat brothers who wanted to know about me. And they tracked me down to drama school and said “we have to audition this girl” and I never looked back. Now that was a stroke of luck. The next stroke of luck the play was on BBC Two Second City Firsts. My play was called “Glitter”         I had to write two songs and record them with a band called Bilbo Baggins (Colin Chisholm of the band with Toyah, below) that were like the little brothers to the Bay City Rollers. And the play was based around a girl who broke into the Top Of The Pops studio. I mean talk about art imitating life (Satnam laughs)

When this played on BBC Two in October of that year, the world famous German film star Maximilian Schell was watching with Kate Nelligan, and Kate turned to him and said “there's our Emma in “Tales From The Vienna Woods”, which was opening at the National Theatre in February the following year. So I moved to London and lived with Kate Nelligan for nine months. I turned up on the first day of rehearsal with a bag of salmon sandwiches (the audience laughs) that my mother made me My parents dropped me at New Street Station, got the train into Euston, got to the National Theatre, sat next to Brenda Blethyn with my salmon sandwiches and Brenda turned to me and said “where you're going to live?” and I said “I'll commute from Birmingham” and she said “you won't be able to do it, you won't be able to keep it up. Come and live on my sofa”     I thought I don't want to live on your sofa. I mean, God, if only I knew what was going to happen to her 10 years later. And Kate Nelligan says “I have a granny flat. Come and live with me” and I lived in her granny flat. It was so kind!

SATNAM: Yeah. Do you feel that same camaraderie is still there in the industry? TOYAH: It's definitely there SATNAM: Because we don't get to see that side, do we? TOYAH: It’s so rarely you come across someone who's difficult to deal with. Very, very rare. I can count them on one hand after 42 years in the business SATNAM: So who influenced you the most? TOYAH: Well, I love the era when men started wearing makeup. Marc Bolan, David Bowie, Alice Cooper and then you know, I was a star in the 80s so I had Duran Duran. That’s just great! I love men wearing makeup. The big life changing moment for me was definitely Ziggy Stardust and seeing David Bowie at the New Theatre in Coventry 1972 

I mean, I just knew I could do nothing but music at that point. It was a freedom - his  whole body was involved in the music. He wasn't just a musician. I mean, obviously the costumes and the makeup were absolutely breathtaking, the songs were exhilarating, but it was his complete loss into that character that I found utterly unforgettable and life changing SATNAM: And does that still influence you now? TOYAH: Yeah, absolutely. When you see artists who just disappear into the event - I have such admiration for that. It's not a construct. It's not fake. They’re actually plugging into something that is supernatural. And I love it SATNAM: And so I think when I look back at your catalogue, and I sense that … TOYAH: Oh, yeah. Well, I mean, part of that was just trying to escape everything. Escape the kind of the toughness of being brought up in a middle class family, a wealthy middle class family, but that whole physicality was a challenge for me. I used to have to hide the braces in my boots         So for the first couple of years I used to wear thigh boots with hidden braces to equal out my walk. So everything for me was about twisting the truth and not letting the truth be seen on a certain level

But even now, when I get on stage, I get taken over by the event. I always say this to my audience - no audience is ever predictable or ever the same. Every musical performance is utterly unique. And you can see it when an artist goes on stage and it's not unique for them. And they tend to be the huge A listers, believe it or not, and it might be because of the sheer size of the venues they play. But for me - I get completely taken over and lost in the event. And it's a great feeling. It's very rewarding 

SATNAM: Were you influenced by your father and his Buddhism and being on that different, almost spiritual stroke musical plain when you are in that moment of being onstage? TOYAH: I was definitely influenced by my father always seeing something in the room no one else could see and he didn't mind talking about it. So he was always referring to his grandparents. He was always referring to them being around, being in the room. Something, you know, tipping on the table. He just picked it up and there is that otherness. What I love about the fact when I sing - I have to stop people talking to me just as I go on stage, because I have no idea what the first line is. No idea! 

And if someone comes up to me as I'm about to go on, and this happened at Hendley, a huge festival, someone came up to me and I was being announced and they went “Hi Toyah, how are you? How's it going on?” So I said “I’m just going on stage” and I picked the mic up and I was supposed to start with "Thunder In The Mountains" and I started with “I'm well today” and it is completely subliminal where you find those words I play a very cruel game with myself and I'm in the middle of the song and I'm thinking I'm about to start the next verse and I haven't got a clue what that line is. And it just comes like that. So I think that is part of why I really trust the process. And I go somewhere I'm not connected to in the every day SATNAM: That's about the now. What about the first gig? What was that like? That must have been terrifying?

TOYAH: No, it was really bad. It was a synagogue in Golders Green. I remember Will Self, the writer was in the audience. So at this point he wasn't very famous. And there was also … I can't remember his name now but he's the main foreign correspondent for ITV News – he was in the audience. It was their very first gig And I was in this punk band, and my drummer and my first co-writer Joel Bogen (below with Toyah) - very honourable, traditional Jewish people. We never worked on a Friday. They were with the family every Friday, and they got us a gig in a synagogue, and I drank a bottle of vodka (the audience laughs) And this progressed right through the show and by the fourth number I was unconscious on the stage and everyone thought it was part of the show and it was nerves. I apparently pulled it off because Will Self says it's one of his favourite gigs (the audience laughs)

SATNAM: I love that! TOYAH: But this was the height of punk. So everyone expected bad behaviour

SATNAM: And anything goes, I suppose, in the height of punk as well. So how different is Toyah the performer to Toyah the person? TOYAH: I think Toyah the performer is far more interesting. I really think that person is who I want to be. I hate talking about myself as some kind of third entity, but when I'm not performing I'm a businesswoman. I don't have management. I manage everything. And unfortunately I do a lot of managing for of my husband as well So when I'm off stage, I have an office at home. I have to check everything, I have to check the contracts, the accounts, everything is really backbreakingly dull. And then the moment I get in the car and I go to a gig it's like normality. I don't have to do the accounts anymore. So it's very, very different. I am a businesswoman 

SATNAM: I hear you. I think anyone in this game knows that. One minute you can put your knickers in the washing machine and the next minute your lipstick’s on and you're on TV TOYAH: And honestly, I do not know how any woman or father (who) has a family, runs a family and has a job. I really don't know how you do it. Because, I mean, I'm working from six in the morning until about midnight. And that's my normal day. And some people have to fit children in. I don't know how they do it SATNAM: When I told my auntie about Toyah tonight, she was well impressed. I was like the favourite niece in the family at the weekend. But actually, you're kind of one of the original feminists for me, you liberated a lot of young women 

TOYAH: I think that's very generous because for me, it was the women of the late 60s into the early 70s who really were pushing up the glass ceiling and breaking rules and rewriting the rulebook. I think what happened with me is that punk came along and there was something about punk that accepted all types of human beings.  All types of men, all types of women     And it accepted a kind of political correctness that we have today. That gay people were safe in our company, people of all cultures were safe in our company. And it allowed me to be me, to assert a certain point where I didn't have to hide my natural self

And when I left Birmingham at the age of 18, I was making my own clothes. I was quite a lot heavier than I am now. And punk didn't ever see that. They saw me as a person, as an individual, someone with ideas, someone who wanted to perform, to be part of the music. I wasn't judged for my physicality. And then when I got signed to a label that kind of changed because Top Of The Pops was in the sights and they wanted to sell more product. I was advised to lose weight      

Not a problem because when I did “Quadrophenia” (Toyah running down the street in Brighton, below) I was on speed 24 hours a day (the audience laughs) When I did “Quadrophenia” it was quite a journey to get there because Franc Roddam, the director, asked me to get Johnny Rotten through a screen test to play the lead in “Quadrophenia” and he was absolutely phenomenal on camera, but they couldn't get the finance for the film if Johnny was in in it. But that man has a future as an actor. He is so good And then I didn't hear back from Franc Roddam and I was working with Katharine Hepburn in the same studio Making “The Corn Is Green” and I just pestered Roddam. I was banging on the window of his office saying “give me a job! Give me a job!” And when I got the job of Monkey in “Quadrophenia” through sheer persistence and he was unable to find the actress that he could see in his mind's eye, I was also making “Quartermass” with Sir John Mills. So I was doing night shoots and day shoots. So I started to take diet pills. I lost three stone 

I remember once I went into the day shoot. I was in the makeup room with Sting sitting next to me, because Sting was in “Quadrophenia” and I was coughing really badly and the makeup artist put the brushes down and she said to the management on site “I’m getting her to hospital now.” And she took me to where this enormous hotel is - I think it's The Langham in Hyde Park corner that used to be a hospital      She took me in. I had pneumonia. Taken back to the set in Southgate with penicillin and just carried on my routine filming in the daytime and filming right through the night with Sir John Mills. But I loved every minute of it. It was exhilarating 

SATNAM: I can still feel the exhilaration that you felt back then right now, with you just describing it. You still have that va va voom about you. A lot of people might get to a certain point in the industry and sort of think “OK, time to pause and cash in on the back catalogue.” You have evolved and the music industry has evolved in so many ways as well. So how has that evolution into digital helped or hindered? TOYAH: There definitely has been a phase in my life where I wasn't doing what I felt I should be doing. So throughout the 90s I was a TV presenter, and I'm not dissing that because I was actually earning a living at that point. It was very lucrative, but my heart was in music and I was going home every night just feeling hollow   As if I hadn't achieved anything because I knew that I'm a performer. I act and I sing and that's it. And then I was in a play in 2002 at Soho Theatre, tiny, tiny little theatre and the management brought me a fax and the fax said “Toyah, how do you feel about playing Wembley Arena?” I thought it was a joke

And I contacted the agent and they said "no, we are going to sell out 16,000 seats at Wembley Arena. It'll be you, Tony Hadley, Belinda Carlisle, Kim Wilde" and we did it. I've not looked back since 2002. I've got my foothold back in music   But then the biggest and most important thing that happened to me, because after about 1984 I had no access to my musical catalogue ... I could perform it live, but I had no access to promote it as physical record sales. And I tried to buy the catalogue three years ago and the record company Safari would not sell it (to) me and I put in the highest bid So this just shows the sexism even today. But a very good company did buy it. Cherry Red Records bought it and now are re-releasing all my catalogue. So in the last 10 months I've been in the album charts, three or four times in the Top 30 I think. I believe even in the Top 10  

And then I managed to sign my two new albums “In The Court Of The Crimson Queen” and “Posh Pop” to Demon Music which is part of the BBC and “Posh Pop” went number one in 32 charts last August. So it's perseverance. (the audience applauds) Thank you. I have to add, I got the news two days ago that I've got a Best Actress nomination - SATNAM: Woop woop! (the audience applauds) TOYAH: For the Richard Harris Film Festival for the movie “Give Them Wings” (Toayh as Alice Hodgson, below), which we only completed two weeks before lockdown began and it's been waiting to come out. And that's gleaned me two Best Actress nominations. And I also did another movie in lockdown called “The Ghosts Of Borley Rectory” that got me a nomination for Best Supporting Actress up against Julian Sands

So I've been really really busy. And I think like all of us - if Covid hadn't come about and lockdown hadn't come about I would perhaps be in a different place today even but I don't regret it because YouTube has really changed my life

SATNAM: And of course it has and I tell you what - you have really changed our Sunday lunches as well! (the audience applauds) I mean how …  tell me ... and how do you manage to keep the tape on? (Toyah and the audience laugh) TOYAH: Firstly, I want to put this in perspective. The Kardashians probably pay about 100 K a week for the publicity and that publicity machine they keep running. It is a multimillion pound industry to keep them up there. Now I can't afford even 10 pounds a week for publicity   So I realised after posting the very first film exactly a year ago April last year, it was me teaching my husband to jive. We posted this 29 second film clip, and within five minutes it had 100,000 replies (from) around the world And we realised the power of YouTube and the power of us as a couple. So we persevered. He hated it. I mean he hated me for “Swan Lake” where he's in a tutu (the audience laughs) and dancing by the River Avon. I mean it got headlines in Italy! “What's happened to Robert Fripp?!” (Satnam cackles)

But eventually, we persevered and in January 2021 we hit 10 million views on “Enter Sandman” by Metallica because I went braless and wore a see-through T-shirt. And you say I'm a feminist! (the audience laughs) I honestly think that what happened was we realised the power of the female form, the power of our mutual love and the power of this wonderful man who's in his mid 70s, who can play guitar so brilliantly. So we are now exploring how do we do this and really address feminism. And it's an interesting one because I believe Madonna is a phenomenal feminist. And in the early 90s she did a book called “Sex” which for me was a step too far. She gave too much away So my thinking is - I'm 64 in two weeks. I want to tell the world that life should be fabulous forever and ever and ever. You don't stop believing in yourself. So there's that going on. There's also the right to be very physical and extreme without feeling threat. And I only ever do this in the company of my husband   

So I'm not on “OnlyFans” - I refuse to do all that. On "CelebVM", which I do do, I get the odd request for the see-through T-shirt and I write back and I say "you're so kind, you're so sweet, but only my husband sees that and 64 million other people" ... SATNAM: I love it! I love it. And you know, my favourite one is jogging in the kitchen. I know that's quite recent, but jogging in the kitchen just made me think oooh, Toyah … I just don't look as good as you when I try and do it at home - 

TOYAH: That’s what I did to make my husband laugh. I do that so we decided to put it on film. This morning - I can tell you this, we filmed The Cranberries “Zombie”, and I have a problem with brilliant songs. They make me cry. And this song is one of the best songs in the history of music and it's written by a woman, but it's also a very powerful song. And I didn't want to expose my body during it. And I thought how are we going to do this? Because we will go from 200,000 hits in an hour to 5000, it will drop because my best friends on my chest are very, very popular (the audience laughs) So I do a lot of artwork and in my art room I have a lot of silver leaf so I covered my body in silver leaf and I look fantastic! (above) And it's still respectful to the song. That's this Sunday SATNAM: So we've all got a treat in for us for Sunday lunch, ladies and gentlemen. So how has this whole punk, pop lifestyle, acting, presenting, writing benefitted you? 

TOYAH: I do get pissed off that I'm not playing arenas every single night. My ego and my vanity - yep, it's there. It's really there. But I've had a 42 year career where I've been in front of audiences so close that I can feel their emotional experience. And when people say to me, why are you playing small venues?     Well, firstly, that's the venues I fill but I would never ever leave that behind because when I look into someone's eyes and if they're in a wheelchair, if they got crutches behind their seat, if they're crying during “It’s A Mystery” I want to be there to witnesses this. I don't want to be so far away I never see that moment. So how have I benefited from it? I think it's made me a far better human being that I work at the level I work SATNAM: I love that.  For you, Birmingham - how do you feel that people perceive your city, the city that you were born in, that gave you that formative education and training, which propelled you into the big wide world of London and showbiz? 

TOYAH: So how does the world perceive it? How does the rest of the UK? SATNAM: Yeah TOYAH: I think it deserves better because we have a phenomenal musical heritage. But I do think people genuinely know this is a location city, a vacation location, a destination city and what people don't know and what they really should know this is Steven Spielberg's chosen city to come and do test shoots in and if people knew that, I think they’d view the city differently   I was shooting “Battleship Earth” (she means "Invasion Planet Earth", Toyah with the director Simon Cox (on the left) and Simon Haycock who plays Thomas Dunn, below) and we were shooting on a back street in Digbeth on a green screen.       And we couldn't use the lane outside because Spielberg was there doing a test shoot, and this was about eight years ago and nobody knew he was there. And we were just beside ourselves because we felt part of it. Now if Spielberg feels that way about this city, then the whole world should know about it

SATNAM: I remember that because I chased him around Birmingham for about four days. We did get sight of him and we got him on Midlands Today eventually (Satnam laughs)

TOYAH: And another one very, very quickly - when I first met my husband I took him to a pub in a place called Wyre Piddle just outside of Pershore. He was looking at the bar menu on the chalkboard and this man came up to him and said, “well, that and that and that was really tasty. And if you haven't had that, try that” and the man went through the whole menu. And my husband came back to me and he said “I've got a new best friend”. And I said yep, that's Birmingham people for you SATNAM: Absolutely. You can take people out of Birmingham, West Midlands, but you can never take the Brummie West Midlands off them. We're really warm hearted and this is a city that really embraces absolutely everything from musical genres to different people. I've got one final question that I'm dying to ask you 

And I suppose I'm asking you because I'm a woman and I'm a mum, and I'm nowhere near as successful as you, but nevertheless have a taste of the industry so to speak. You don't have children, but what I find quite intriguing is that both you and your husband want to leave your your fortune to some form of music academy for young people, I believe. Why is that? TOYAH: It's very generous of you to say we're going to leave our fortune because he spends money - SATNAM: You live in Pershore now - TOYAH: Where we live we just bought the bank next door which is becoming an archive building of both our careers. I mean, that's like the white elephant in our life at the moment. I'm just getting through everything But we've decided that we will leave everything - our archive, his archive, and the remaining monies and I think it's going to be okay because we’re going to be worth more dead than alive. We're going to leave it to an educational fund, a trust, so that kids can have funding to go to drama school and music school. (the audience applauds) Thank you

SATNAM: And that is something really close to my heart. Because you're talking to the girl whose parents could not afford to send her to Central Drama School over the square there at the Rep when I was a teenager - (then) kind of muddled through and found my own way   But to know that there are children in the future who will have unlocked opportunities is just absolutely amazing and actually at the beginning of our chat, I said you are living legend. You're not a living legend. You are just a legend (the audience applauds) TOYAH: Thank you so much, everybody. Thank you

[toyahinterviews]

TOYAH ON ITV UNSCRIPTED WITH NINA NANNAR 23.7.2021

NINA: I'm Nina Nannar. My guest is singer, actress and all round 80’s legend Toyah. We talk punk, "Posh Pop", growing older and more cautious and trending globally on YouTube.     Toyah Wilcox, what an absolute delight to see you. Thank you so much for joining me. We are just emerging from this lockdown world ... I know you've been incredibly busy during the last 18 months. You've got a new album out. The first sort of new music for 13 years, so lockdown seems to have inspired your creative juices if you like TOYAH: Lockdown, initially was absolutely terrifying. My husband’s 75, and I was so frightened for him. I'm 63. And we only thought the lockdown would last three weeks and the way Robert (below with Toyah) and I, my husband's called Robert Fripp, we looked at this and we thought we're not gonna sit and wait, we're going to make contact and we started to put very beautiful films out, fun films, completely ridiculous films, and we went from 100,000 to, I think, in the last six months 40 million people have seen us.  

And this was so inspiring that we realised that this very unique time was an opportunity to have more contact with people around the world than we ever could through touring. And at the same time support our industry and the people in our industry that the audience never see. And that's the people that do the hard lifting. And I became super super creative. I've always written with my writing partner Simon Darlow in the last 30 years and we locked ourselves away. We became a creative pod. We got my husband into play guitar and this album has been created in the unique history of lockdown. I've made ten videos to accompany the album that we shot in the house. That was very deliberate - saying that creativity starts in the home. Creativity isn't a 100 million budget. It isn't about living in Beverly Hills. It starts in the home.

NINA: We've had a really good look at your beautiful home, all the astonishing videos that you talked about. We'll talk more about “Posh Pop”, which is the name of your new album, which is out in August, a little bit later. You mentioned Robert. It must be really handy if you're a musician and a creative that your husband happens also to be an incredible musician and a creative. Of course, Robert Fripp, the founder member of King Crimson and very established successful musician in his own right. So is that the sort of thing you talked about all the time, creativity and music over the dinner table? 

TOYAH: I love your phrase “very handy”. Because in lockdown I taught him how to cook because I'm going to be stuck in cooking all the time. My husband and I, we talk about the industry a lot and we talk about potential. We feel that at our grand ages in an industry that ain't fond of our age that we still have so much potential and so much to do. So we talk about that. Yes, it is very handy having a brilliant guitarist to hand and a guitarist I love and I love his work. He is a romantic husband but when he plays guitar he's a warrior. It is very useful being in lockdown with someone who is as talented as he is, yes. But in the kitchen? No. NINA: You touched on being a more mature member of the rock establishment, yourself and Robert. How do you feel? About freedom completely having returned? I speak as someone who is the wife of someone who is extremely vulnerable and has been more or less shielding for the past 18 months and I'll be honest ... I'm scared. How do you feel about it? How does Robert feel about it?

TOYAH: Robert is in America. He's now in the USA for two months and I'm terrified for him and he says there's virtually no mask wearing and none of the procedures were used to being in public like hand sanitizer. So I said whatever happens, you keep the procedures up. I've started concerts, I have sent email out all the venues and one of those is a rock club, an enclosed rock club.   The majority are open air festivals and I said please respect the fact that I am still shielding. I will be in a face mask. I won't share microphones. I will be using hand sanitizer and I will only mix with people in the open air. I'm going to be very, very careful. I want to promise my audience, my venues, my promoters that I'm in peak health and I'll still do the shows because the venues and the staff need me there. NINA: Can you see our music industry really getting back to our pre-Covid lives if you like, which is the line that we're hearing - we're going back to how it was before Covid. Has something changed permanently in music ... Do you think, Toyah?

TOYAH: I think there's been a revolution. Within the last 15 months, there's definitely been a revolution. And thank goodness we have this technology to make that happen. The smaller venues that can't do the social distancing are the ones that have decided not to open til next year. I'm doing quite a lot of art centres this year and big big open air festivals. What will have changed is the audience's perception and fear of going there and I think to a certain extent we need to acknowledge people want to be safe in a large crowd. I think what you're asking is will audiences return? I like to think they will.   I think the winter time will be the challenging time for the venues. Artists like us who are desperate to work and we worked live in front of audiences all the time, we’ll do what we can to make it happen. God bless the Royal Shakespeare Company that's put up an outside arena, outside the theatre. If we have to do that, we will do it and I will be there because performers need to perform and audiences want to live a relatively normal life. We will find a way.

NINA: You have certainly found the most astonishing way of reaching audiences during lockdown. I am of course referring to "Toyah and Robert’s Sunday Lunch". Those people that won't have experienced it, and many, many millions around the world have, you’ve been trending globally with this. This is where yourself and Robert take a classic rock song and perform an excerpt of it in your house. I mean, they are absolutely incredible. One of my total favourites was when you did Metallica’s “Enter Sandman”. You were on your exercise bike in the kitchen. Robert was playing his guitar. I mean absolutely brilliant. How did you not crack up when you were doing it because you are completely serious during it? TOYAH: I remain serious. My husband is quite a serious man and he's been through a revolution in the last year. He's now got a mohawk haircut and he's on the road with King Crimson. It took a lot of time to get him to that point. When we did “Enter Sandman”, it reached the world press and it reached 40 million people. And suddenly people saw that what we were doing was actually art above everything else, which was a lovely lovely compliment and we do push the barriers out.  

What we wanted to say to people is that music is for everyone. Music is for every level. We’re giving you this for free. We're not asking you to buy £250 ticket, this is on the ground. We are on the ground with you. Robert very quickly realised the power of this and how much people were looking forward every Sunday lunch to what we were going to give them. I mean, people were outraged, people were laughing and believe me we are laughing as well, but were laughing at ourselves

NINA: You've got some response, didn't you? A lot of response from the original artists, people like Robert Plant and Judas Priest?

TOYAH: I know! I mean my goodness, Alice Cooper watched it live online and I was like oh no! And then Robert Plant, when we did “Whole Lotta Love” Robert Plant texted “well that's a whole lotta laughs”. Bless Judas Priest, Birmingham boys like I'm a Birmingham girl, said “thank you so much, that's the best publicity we've had for our tour in a long time”. And we're getting wonderful beautiful responses of people. NINA: They are just incredible. I was very interested to read was one of the reasons why you decided to do this and of course it was about reaching out to the creative community but is also there was a physical need to do something and I think that was one of the things you've spoken about before?

TOYAH: My husband says that he went into deep meditation in the first lockdown. Well, from a wife's point of view he wasn't moving enough. And I started to teach him to dance and we put a 30 second clip out of me teaching one of the world's greatest guitarists, who can play 11 notes a second, teaching him to jive. He couldn't tell his right foot from his left, and this went viral. It went viral immediately. Within 5 minutes we were getting messages from the Philippines, from New Zealnd, from Japan and we were looking at this coming in and going my goodness!   So I spent a good three months teaching him to dance and then it slowly evolved into rock music just to keep him connected. But also people connecting to us via the films were saying that they were giving up on life and these were people who were alone and we felt very, very ... well, we felt lots of love towards them, but a responsibility to say "we see you, we recognise you, we hear you" and a lot of our creativity came out of that. And I think artists need to perform and we need to be moving and so that's what the last 15 months became for us.

NINA: Has it certainly helped with your mental health and Robert's mental health? TOYAH: Yes, I really think for me it's done me the world of good. I don't know what I would have done if I had nothing to do for 15 months and no connecion for 15 months. I would have been lost. So it's very much helped my mental health. With Robert it has broadened his horizons hugely. Robert is a very intellectual, control freak over his music and now he's playing other people's music. He's broadened his attitude to performance, his less precious about it. I think it has made us better people   NINA: “Posh Pop” then. What is posh pop?

TOYAH: Well, “Posh Pop” is a joke. The name is a joke because I knew Robert was gonna play on it. If it was just a Toyah album with Simon Darlow playing all the instruments, my co-writer, and me singing, it would be a pop album. Put Robert Fripp on it it’s suddenly posh pop, so that's my comment on it. But it's also a very accessible album of brilliant songs and I wanted to juxtapose one of the most influential years in rock music, 1973, when you had Roxy Music, Alice Cooper, David Bowie, you had the beginnings of Talking Heads, Television - in New York, the New York art scene. I wanted to juxtapose it with the moment we were writing in which started in September last year and just ask, has anything changed? And the influences of then and the present day are all mixed together and it's really a very accessible, very clever album. NINA: The first single from that was “Levitate” so let's take a quick listen. (The song plays) Sounds to me sort of vintage Toyah, it’s really punky and it’s really rocky and I think some of the inspiration was about lockdown lives, wasn't it, some of the lyrics of that?

TOYAH: “Levitate” was about - it deliberately ... the album opens with “how's your day?” Because it's the most important thing you can ask someone at a time like this, and the lyric is about just rising up. That's not just emotional, it's physical as well, about just rising up out of this situation and finding your true self again without the restrictions. And “Levitate” is literally about we are unified in this. Let's rise up together and find our new lives.

NINA: How do you feel now, Toyah, in your position as a really well known female musician? I'm thinking back to the days when you were on Top Of The Pops and we were at school singing “So what if I dye my hair? I've still got a brain up there” which is just about my favourite lyric of any song ever, which of course is “I Want To Be Free”, which is one of the singles from 1981, and it was the most astonishing line. We’d walk around school singing it. None of us dared dye our hair because my mum would be very cross about it, but it just encapsulated a spirit in that which I think you still have.  

But what must it have been like to have been a female performer back in those days? I spoke recently to Skin from Skunk Anansie and she was talking about the 80’s, the 90’s, and it was really, really difficult, no matter how successful you were, to carve out your own space and say "yeah, I'm a woman, but I'm still rocking, I'm still a part of the punk movement, yes, there all these male bands, but I've got a place in this history too".

TOYAH: I agree and Skin, my goodness she inspired me. What a wonderful, wonderful human being. When I started in the rock business in 1977 a woman could not dye her hair and be safe. It was a very dangerous thing to do, but I was protected by the punk movement and the punk movement for me made it very possible to be a rebel, a new age woman and to break boundaries because that team of young kids made sure I was physically safe. It was a very unusual time, I think, to be a woman in music because you weren't dealing with female executives. There were virtually nil female executives in the UK - you had quite a few in the USA. So we had to be tough. We had to stand our ground. You have very beautiful women performers. Beautiful I mean as in feminine. You had Cher, you had Lulu, you had Sandy Shaw, but then you had Janis Joplin and Janis Joplin for me represented everything I wanted to be in music. I wanted longevity and I didn't want to self-destruct, but she was tough, opinionated and that gave me a lot of strength.

NINA: Do you have any sense of kind of bitterness? When you look back and go "well, you know, why did you give me such a hard time? I was just a really talented musician like so many. Why was it so difficult to put me in history?" TOYAH: That's a fantastic question and thank you for asking it. I'm not gonna bully men. I'm not gonna bully them because we're culturally changing and everything we're going through at the moment is good and the cultural changes we are making are good. But back then we were governed by an attitude, and it was a very sexist attitude. Very rarely did I come across misogyny, but because I was an androgynous performer people didn’t know what to do with me.  

I deserve my place in history, and strangely enough it's starting to come alive since last December when my first album “Blue Meaning”, made in ‘78 (NB She means "Sheep Farming In Barnet") charted for the first time. That's last December. My second album went into the Top 30 two months ago, and I'm presently one of the biggest pre-order artists in the world so it's changing enormously. I'm a fighter. I am a survivor and no matter what a big corporate industry does to me up there, on the ground they can't touch this rebel. They can't touch this rebel. I'm a survivor and many of us women are. NINA: Do you think that it's better for women now, or is there still at sort of a pressure for the artist, however talented she may be, to look incredible?

TOYAH: It's a great point. Beauty will always attract a large amount of audience and viewers, especially on social media. Exposing yourself to a certain degree and we've experimented that with “Toyah and Robert “. The less I wear the more millions of viewers we have. What I'm saying is "I’m 63 and thank you, this is what a 63 can look like". Image for women I think will always be important and there are women out there who would love to afford to look a certain way and they can't afford to.   And what I always tell myself is when I don't bother to dress up I disappoint a woman who has a dream of a buying a nice handbag and buying nice jewellery and they want to see what it looks like in person. And you've got all these levels. All these levels. Poverty stopping women from being able to get their hair done, poverty stopping women from being able to have the time to cook had the time to buy fresh vegetables and when you ask your question about women in music being glamorous, I think sometimes people need a role model which is glamorous but not unattainable

NINA: I like to ask all of my guests where you would like to be in five years time and I'm offering you anywhere on earth doing anything you want to do. I'm not saying I have the power to deliver, but it would be quite interesting to know. You could be doing anything. Could be headlining Glasto, winning an Oscar. I'm giving you anything you want, Toyah TOYAH: Well, I’m a megalomaniac, so thank you for asking that. I'd like to visit Bora Bora and be able to afford to visit Bora Bora. And I want to be signed up to at least ten Star Wars movies. I want to be playing arenas around the world and I want “Posh Pop” to to be completed and out there and I’m really doing the battle charge for women who are ... five years time I will be 68 NINA: You look amazing so you don't want much then in five years time (laughs)? TOYAH: The desire never stops. The ambition and the desire - it never stops! NINA: Thank goodness for us. Toyah Willcox, thank you so much for joining me today. It’s is absolutely brilliant and good luck with “Posh Pop”

[toyahinterviews]

TOYAH ON THOMPSON'S LIVE WITH CHRIS GOODE 16.5.2018

CHRIS: If you're new here then I should set this up by saying that I always begin these conversations in the same way, which is to ask my guests to talk to me about something they've seen or heard or read or otherwise encountered lately that either they're excited by or they want to raise a question about.      So that's how we began, we have exactly an hour from the moment Toyah sat down because she had a performance of “Jubilee” to go and get ready for. But as you'll see, we packed a lot into the hour. If you enjoy this episode, really a 10th as much as I enjoyed recording it … well, you're welcome. This is a true artist and a remarkable human being, this is my conversation with the one and only Toyah Willcox TOYAH: There is actually so much because it's been a very special six months, especially working on “Jubilee” because the team are so in touch with theatre that they’ve opened that up to me very much. Again I love cinema and I'm very lucky where I live that there is a cinema 50 yards from my front door, that shows films 10.30 in the morning as well as in the evening - CHRIS: It’s the best time to go to the pictures - TOYAH: Most times I'm sitting there alone, and it’s like a personal screening - CHRIS: That’s heaven 

TOYAH: Love it! So I like to immerse myself in something and lose myself. I very rarely read a book and want to know about myself. So when I can find a book that totally steals my life away and locks it in a cupboard, to the point that my life doesn't exist anymore, I get very, very excited. And one of these books - there's actually many-  the first to do that to me was “Under The Skin” Michel Faber (below, Toyah with another book by Faber). But I think that is now a very well established book. I've been sending that to friends for well over 10 years. But there was a book I read about five years ago, possibly more, called the “Raw Shark Texts”. It was the debut novel of Steven Hall, who I believe is a Canadian writer.   But what grabbed me about this was its dimensional writing. So within the book, the actual print work would take shapes. So you would be reading a page, and it would suddenly go into the shape of something falling down a pothole, or a shark. Being dyslexic part of my pattern of learning is I have to read and read and read a page, at least three times. Then I understand it, and also then I know it virtually off by heart.  

So with the “Raw Shark Texts” to have a book that is designed visually for a dyslexic was so exciting! And the story was that the text could take physical form and kill you. So as you read through the book slowly these sharks started to appear in the shape of print. The excitement that that could come off the page and take your life made the whole book multidimensional for me.   And it was your usual kind of rough and tumble adventure, a love story with a mix of “Jaws” and also it had a mix of “Casablanca” and Kung fu (Chris laughs) It was very funny, it was very brilliant, but for me the big thing was this concept that the text could become visual. Of course it’s visual! Text for me can be very mathematic. I sometimes have to work out what a word is saying. And it's exactly the same when I have to do deal with maths, but for it to form into a picture I was just . . . whether I gullible or not I don’t know. I found it profoundly exciting.

CHRIS: It's really liberating, isn't it, when a printed text can have a different relationship with you than the orthodox one - TOYAH: And it should! CHRIS: It’s really joyous, yeah - TOYAH: The Japanese and the Chinese and Hinduism can do that with text, then I don't see why we can't do it with Western text . . . CHRIS: Absolutely. There's a poet, I'm very fond of called J. H. Prynne who has a very big following among Chinese readers and has written his own Mandarin poetry, has learned to do that. The way he says, which I really love, is how crude Western text is to force a choice between words and pictures. That's not something that appears in other cultures, that sort of division of the word and the graphic - TOYAH: It’s quite exposing about us as a culture . . . 

CHRIS: Really is, isn’t it! That sort of left or right, very orderly thing. I had an amazing experience a few years ago because I was really stuck, I got to a point where I was really stuck in my making and as a writer and as a director. I just felt like I needed a bit of a jolt and I was very lucky to get a bit of time at the National Theatre studio to do an attachment there. I had a tiny little writer's room, and they just let me be for about two months to just try and figure out what I was doing. I decided to use some of that time to interview some other people who I really admire, one of whom was a playwright and academic Dan Rebellato.     And I was talking with him about how constrained I felt by script, by printed scripts and how it seems, what you're saying, like the way that a script is on the page doesn't feel to me anything like the energy that I experience in the theatre when the theatre is really working. And I don't know how to make this connection as a playwright, between the script and the energy of the piece. And he said to me very brilliantly, instead of just abandoning scripts, maybe you need to be thinking about what our scripts could look like.     And this has really made me think about why we as playwrights don't use the sorts of techniques that you're talking about with texts. We could so easily incorporate pictorial images, or the text taking different shapes or there being a way of capturing movement or we never use colour, even in our scripts and it really makes me wonder what else we could be doing?

TOYAH: Is that because of the brutality of time? CHRIS: Oh! Say something more about that, that’s interesting. 

TOYAH: Well, everyone is under pressure to produce content, and everything is so formulated to control content. I find as a creative I just have to lock myself away in a house that has no technology, and that helps my relationship with  colour, with sound, with the written word. It's not perfect but that isolation helps find everything that triggered me as a child to become what I am today.     And what I mean by the brutality of time is OK, here you are in a room in the National Theatre that they've kindly given you for two months, but you still have time ticking away. When I get sent a synopsis for film or film scripts very rarely do I get the storyboard with it. You just get the flat page.     And I think certain actors and producers and directors can lift that off the page and understand the script is brilliant where to other people it's just flat text. And I find that quite extraordinary in actors I work with, who can lift something off the page and manipulate it into another world. I mean the entire cast of “Jubilee” - I've seen them reinvent their characters almost nightly (Chris laughs) which is absolutely great but I think this whole brutality about time is very evident in creative’s lives. And the biggest example I can give you - when I wrote my first three albums and I'm a co-writer, I always have a team, because I'm mainly a lyricist. The first three albums “Sheep Farming In Barnet”, “Blue Meaning” and “Anthem” I had 24 years of experience to write those albums.    

I then had six months to write “The Changeling”. And it was crippling. Terrifying! And resenting. I really was resentful about that I could not, I think as a woman specifically, give it a year or two years to mould that album into what I wanted it to be because my career will be gone. I was under huge pressure to be pregnant, which always offended me right up until I was 50 when people stopped asking me if I was ever going to have children. Even when I just had stated categorically, in my first interview when I was 18 I do not want children. It was always a priority over my creativity.     That whole thing - the golden rush of creativity through your teens and into your mid-20’s had a magnificent harmonal physicality about it. You are governed by your your soul growing into your physical body. And then you hit 30 and as a woman oh boy! 30 was tough because your hormones are trying to tell you to have babies. And I was just at war with myself. But that precious time to write those first three albums before I was 24, took a lifetime. And then suddenly, I was so successful, I was in a situation where my writing either became formulaic and I relied on past writing experiences to reissue things and rework things. It was extraordinarily difficult.

CHRIS: And how did you get yourself out of that, because it feels to me like before very long you then went into a different mode of working. How did you free yourself from it, how were you able to do that? TOYAH: “The Changeling” was so difficult to write. It was hell on earth, the pressure I was under. I was one of the first artists to record on digital. And I was under pressure to do it first before any of the others. The first digital machines, which we used at the Roundhouse (studio) were so sensitive to female energy they'd break as soon as I came in the room - CHRIS: Gosh! Wow! TOYAH: I was not near them. I was not allowed to touch them. Steve Lillywhite (above with Toyah in the studio) was producing, and he was wonderful. He was absolutely brilliant, but they became terrified of me going near the machines, because I think part of my distress of the pressure of this album I was setting everything off. Today if I pick up a Samsung phone it just flashes like a TV, it goes through all the channels. And this is something to do with female energy, and I'm absolutely fascinated that no one has picked up on this yet, that certain people when they're distressed can drive this digital programming.     

So here I am, 1982, with the first two digital machines in the UK and I was breaking them every day. And it was really holding us up (Chris bursts out laughing) It was so frustrating! So what happened was we got on with “The Changeling” and halfway through I locked myself in Champneys health farm, which is this thing of locking yourself away, and going into total internalising about how you're going to be creative.     And  what I learned to process by doing that is that when you start something, you don't intellectualise about it. You just write down what you like about it, put it away. Then go back to it. A week later, a year later, three months later, and then look at it with those eyes. It's never the same thing. And  sometimes I can make things work that way, those glorious moments where you write a song in three minutes are very very rare, but they do happen.         And they're like a gift from God but normally what I have to do now, and in the past 30 years, is I piece things together. I never let an idea go, but I never overwork it. So I go back to it and I go back to it and that way I find a way of forming it and developing it. And because I'm not a world megastar, I'm not under that pressure to come up with things very quickly. CHRIS: You have some space and time now -

TOYAH: And time is still very precious. But I'm in control. CHRIS: You’re not being rushed. TOYAH: I think, after about the age of 25 . . . perhaps it was a bit later, 28 . . . I've been able to be creative without A&R men telling me what to do. I always found A&R men the most destructive thing in the room, because they’ve always had an agenda that suits them. They're ticking boxes that suit them and the accountants and not the artist. So it's been very important to me to get all of that out of my life anyway. A huge blessing. CHRIS: And it feels like that was there really from very early on with you. I was watching that ATV documentary from 1980 - TOYAH: Oh my God it’s amazing! 

CHRIS: It’s extraordinary. There's an amazing image really early on in that - I think was called “Mayhem”, (above) - sort of warehouse studio space in Battersea, and then you're in an office and you're surrounded by books, and objects, stuff, weird stuff, and you talk about “sometimes I just want to be in there and look at things and be inspired and be stimulated” and it reminded me so much when I came to visit you at your home the first time when we started talking about “Jubilee” and you still obviously really need that space around you that's so full of  -  you're an ideas person. You're first and foremost - it's not about a particular form because you're so accomplished in so many different ways - but it's about the pure idea, just separated out from all of the pragmatic things and the material things. It's about what actually stimulates you in the moment. TOYAH: Visual stimulants. CHRIS:  You're a very visual person, I know that. 

TOYAH: And there's another link you've led me to - the power of colour. I’ve only really defined and honed this while working on “Jubilee” and what has helped me is you and the team talking to me. No one talks to me. This is the first experience I've had - my parents died 8- 10 years ago, and I had conversations with them because I looked after them for 10 years. Once they died they were the last people that really talked to me. Because absolutely no one else talks to me. I'm just some kind of driving force that gets the band from A to B, gets the musicians in the studio, but no one says “well, how are you today?” No one! CHRIS: (laughs) That’s so awful! TOYAH: And I started on “Jubilee” and everyone says “how are you today?” So through these conversations it's helped me have internal conversations. And this whole thing about colour, and what you've just said about my home is that, actually, everything I do comes from colour. CHRIS:  That's really interesting - TOYAH: And primary colour which is incredibly important to me. And I translate colour into words, emotions, and sound. So I've been looking at a way of developing that language that I can put it out into the creative space. It's so deeply embedded, I’ve got to find a way of getting it out. 

CHRIS: That's such an interesting link between you and Derek as well because he absolutely was someone who thought through colour. TOYAH: Derek's an interesting one because he was always quite a different person. There was obviously huge intellect. There was great technique. And there was also punk rocker. And they were three very different people - CHRIS: Competing people in some ways - TOYAH: I imagine the destructive, the physically destructive side of Derek, I never really knew. Occasionally he would give reference to it, if he'd been beaten up in Hampstead Heath or . . . But he enjoyed rough sex, which I found absolutely fascinating and very occasionally he would talk about it because I was just so dumbstruck by the thought of it. The Derek I knew was hugely spiritually developed but had incredible technique as a visual artist. CHRIS: Extraordinary. TOYAH: Extraordinary. His paintings were magnificent. He'd write to me and they'd be beautiful letters, beautifully handwritten with embossed silver or gold leaf on. Just a visual treat! 

CHRIS: You wrote that beautiful short essay for the publication of his sketchbooks a few years ago. I've had the great joy of being able to spend some time in the BFA archive, looking through some of his sketchbooks. The raw materials, particularly the way that he was recording the process of coming into making and then recovering from making “Jubilee”.        And there are some amazing (ones) that he uses as  scrapbooks and as a repository of just fragments of stuff. Collage in a way and it seems to me that you have an instinct for collage, in a way of putting things together, putting ideas together or ripping things up and putting them together in a really unexpected sort of way. TOYAH: Thank you! (laughs) I don't know what I am actually (they both laugh) I'm permanently confused as to what I am, but perhaps that's a good thing.

CHRIS: It feels to me like you have a feel for materials and objects and as you say colours. It's not only about the ways in which those things are repositories of stories or memories or ideas but it's also what you leap off from them into, which might be something completely different or completely very individual to you. Very distinctive to you. TOYAH: Yes, I see what you're saying. I think, for me, coming from a world where everything has to have a commercial value I realise now that actually the value is in the actual creating. So having been under huge pressure from very early in life to be commercially successful, even a weird kid like me, who was never normal I now feel the act of creating is the act of what you're supposed to be doing. Commerciality, success or not, that almost doesn't matter.     So the way I try and live my life today . . . I'm contradicting myself already, because I spend about 10 hours a day in the office doing contracts and email and negotiating anyway because I self-manage. But to put all that aside, and to put the materials on the table that you love, and there's a saying in my house “if you look at something and it doesn't make your life better, get rid of it”. So as you can see, you’ve been to my house - there's an awful lot of things that make our life better! There’s art everywhere.    

So I put on the table things that are a visual joy and then I work from that to find something new and it's almost kindergarten. I remember (at) four and a half years old, going to school, where we had little wooden bricks that were brightly coloured and those bricks had a numeral value. So blue was 4, green was 2. And that's how we learned to add up. For me - I think I'm completely wired backwards - it became a way of building photographic memory.     So I now think in these colour textures, and those textures have numbers. And then I have to find a way of bringing that onto the page. And the page is almost the last thing that happens. But that first year at school at four and a half, it is so visually powerful for me that I was always touching colour and those colours had a number that I get very excited by objects because of that, because they translate into something else. CHRIS: Yes, they become a system of their own. That's really fascinating. And of course, it means that by the time as you're saying - you're four and a half - there's already no difference in a sense in your head between work and play, they’re the same thing.

TOYAH: No difference at all. You can't live without either and they’re both the same. As I get older, I'm 60 this year - I'm not prepared to waste time on things I don't want to do. You must not do anything in your life - I think the only message I could give to people is do not do anything in your life that makes you die inside. (Chris laughs) And how many of us are doing that on a daily basis? Creativity and play and pleasure are all the same thing. CHRIS: I mostly wanted to talk to you about your theatre career because I think it's the less told story about you obviously. You have a very distinguished career as an actor and I'm really interested to trace it a little bit. I know you went to drama school, didn't you, but where you doing school plays and things before that as a kid? (below, Toyah with her dad Beric and brother Kim) 

TOYAH:  Yes, at school, I was the naughtiest kid in school. I went to an all girl school. Hugely posh fee paying private school. Probably the best school that I could have gone to but then I would have rebelled against anything that told me what to do. So I directed the school plays. “Midsummer Night's Dream”, “Tobias And The Angel”. I did all the posters, I designed the programmes (Chris chuckles). And now in retrospect realise the school came to the conclusion that it was the only way they could control me - CHRIS: Give you stuff to do - TOYAH: And I loved it. Absolutely loved it! I always played the baddie or bottom (Chris laughs) Something I could really push the boundary out with. CHRIS: That's really interesting. TOYAH: Then after that, as soon as I walked out of the school gates - having failed nine O levels - CHRIS: You got music, right? TOYAH: I got music. I realised I had to get my shit together, and it literally was the moment I stepped out of the school gate - it was one of those oh fuck moments that I have really wasted 14 years of education - 

CHRIS: You knew that already by then? TOYAH: Yes. CHRIS: Wow! TOYAH: I realised I was on my on and I went straight into a company called Legal And General for a meeting about having a cleric job. I lied, I said I have nine O Levels but I couldn't find the results, and I went straight in at a high position. I was there for a month, I earned enough to go to drama school for three years and left. I think that's a pretty shitty thing to do. CHRIS: It was a very resourceful thing to do - TOYAH: As soon as I went to drama school, I started doing extra work at BBC Pebble Mill. I had to pay my way at drama school so I was dressing at the Alexander Theatre, the Hippodrome Theatre and the Birmingham Rep Theatre. So I’d do that in the evening and on very lucky days I'd do extra work at BBC Pebble Mill. By this time I was already making my own clothes, my hair was every colour of the rainbow because I was a hair model for my best friend at a department store called Rackhams.  

So I was standing out as the only punk in the village before punk was even known. This was ‘74, and two brothers were looking to cast a girl in a play for BBC Two called “Glitter” about a young girl who wants to go on “Top Of The Pops”, who breaks into the studio, and they couldn't find anyone who hadn't been over educated at stage school - CHRIS: Have all the interesting stuff squished out of them - TOYAH: And were a bit too twinkly and had jazz hands. And they heard about me. They asked to come and see me at drama school and the principal at drama school said “you can’t see Toyah on her own, you have to see them all”. So they came along, they played ball, saw me, called me down to London to do a proper audition with Phil Daniels, and I got the part.   Very rough diamond. I mumbled my way through it and I had to sing and write the songs. It was fabulous! But I’m really shitting it . . . (Chris laughs) The most amazing thing was the night it was broadcast Kate Nelligan was watching TV with Maximilian Schell. They were casting for the National Theatre’s “Tales From The Vienna Woods” (below) and Kate said to Max “She’s Emma” -

CHRIS: “She’s the girl”. That’s amazing! TOYAH: Isn’t that incredible?! Absolutely mind blowing.   CHRIS: Just to skip back a moment. What had your experience at drama school been? Did you feel rebellious there or did you feel like you’d found your space? TOYAH: I was rebellious but I was a driving energy. The whole thing of  having physical disability, and dyslexia . . . I just didn't fit in. They didn't know how to cast me. I was always the little Cockney girl or the maid or something, but I always drove the show. I couldn't stand in the background. I was working with other kids that were what I call your normal, social, polite, beautifully educated well spoken kids, and I was just bouncing off the walls with all this energy. But I was very liked. And when it came to doing live shows I just drove it. I made sure the costumes were there, I made sure the people were in the right place at the right time. So I got respect. But again, I didn't fit in.   And I was probably exactly as I was at school - “the least likely to succeed”, but because I knew that, and I was brought up by my family as "the least likely to succeed" it set off something in me that just drove like a war machine at every wall. I just never gave up. I never took no as an answer. But at the same time I never saw that I didn't fit in. It wasn't until went to the National Theatre - I was wild at the National, I'd stay there all night, I’d drink, I would have riotous parties in the green room -

CHRIS: They called you the animal, right? (laughs) TOYAH: I absolutely was an animal! The energy, the environment, the beauty of it all, the productions, wonderful people. I must have been like a vampire, because I was drinking it all up and exploding like a human bomb wherever I went but I still didn't realise I didn't fit in. And there was an actress called Imogen Claire, who had been in the “Rocky Horror Picture Show” and at the time she was in “Valpone” with Sir John Gielgud. And she turned to me one day and she was very bitchy. And she just said “my God Toyah, you are so naive, you don’t know how much you’re hated” - CHRIS: Oooh fuck! TOYAH: It was an eye opener and I thought, okay - CHRIS: What an amazing thing to do - TOYAH: I thought about it for many years. She was one those kind of (does a luvvie voice) “Oh, darling!” and always had a cigarette in a holder, a haircut like Sally Bowles - CHRIS:  They don’t make them like that any more! 

TOYAH: (in a luvvie voice) “Darling! You just don't know how much you're hated”. (Chris laughs) It's actually something I've thought about regularly for the last 40 years and it's been very valuable. What I didn’t have at that point was I couldn't see through other people's eyes and it taught me to do that. CHRIS: But was there some strength in that for you as well?  That speaks to a very kind of punk attitude in a way . . . TOYAH: I think I’ve always been a coward, actually - CHRIS: Really? 

TOYAH: Even though I'm very quick into an altercation. If someone trespasses into me physically there will be a full fist fight, but I still think I'm a coward. And what I mean by that is the cast of “Jubilee” (above) are not cowards. They are brave. They are politically astute. They fight for their politics. I’ve always avoided that. I’ve learned that about myself doing this show. So I think I've always been a coward. I have never used a political voice. I think I've used the feminist voice. So you say was that wonderful being a punk, being told you’re hated? Well . . . I went with it, and I didn't change. CHRIS: That’s what I mean really, because that would crush some people but I can't imagine it devastating you in that way . . . TOYAH: I didn’t understand it for quite a few years. I always felt I was God and I was right so it took a long time to understand it. CHRIS: And did you realise how exceptional it was for somebody to be making their professional debut on the stage of the National? On the Olivier stage?

TOYAH: No!!! I tell you why … Forgive me for saying this, and this is how naive I was and Imogen Claire was right. I just saw it as a stepping stone. CHRIS: Wow! (laughs) Brilliant! TOYAH: I apologise for saying that now. ITV is next door and the day I went down to meet Maximilian Schell and Kate Nelligan, I had an audition at ITV. I knew if I got that job I'd take ITV. I already knew that. I didn't get it so I was just . . . oh well, I'll just do the National. I mean … what a cunt! (Chris cackles) What. A. Cunt! I would pay the National, I would buy the National to get work like that now! I admit! Imogen Claire was right! CHRIS:  Yeah, but didn't know what you were doing or you knew at some level, but you didn't know the bigger picture maybe - TOYAH: The bigger picture was a hugely ambitious bitch. I was hugely ambitious. CHRIS: So the ambition would have been about reaching lots of people? Was that why it was TV over theatre? 

TOYAH: That’s exactly it! I wanted to be an arena artist, I wanted to play arenas, do movies, reach as many people as possible. Fame fame fame. If I came into the industry now I would be a reality star - CHRIS: Really?! That’s so interesting! That would be the route you would go through? TOYAH: I think so. I would go for the biggest - it's like when Derek Jarman handed me the script to “Jubilee” I picked the part with the most lines. So, if I was 19 today, or even 12 - like Taylor Swift knew at 12 what she was going to do - I would go straight to the reality arena, and change that world. I think I was just brazen. That's not who I am today. CHRIS: No. TOYAH: I’m defending myself (they both laugh) CHRIS: Well, you don't need to but it's such an interesting trajectory, isn't it? TOYAH: Today I only want to be seen from my work. I'm consciously avoiding being seen walking out of the Chiltern Firehouse or Soho House or Nobu (restaurants). I don't want to be known for doing that. I only want to be known for the work I do and what I put into the creative space. And that's become a very conscious decision in the last four years.

CHRIS: That’s interesting. Did something in particular spark that or  . . ? TOYAH: It’s monetary. I look at what drives perfumes, makeups, fashion. It's all manipulative, and I don't like it, it makes me very uncomfortable. I would feel I'm walking straight back into the hands of the A&R men and I don't want to go back to there . . . CHRIS: There's something really interesting about you Toyah, that I didn't know was going to be true. When I reached out to you to say do you want to come and do "Jubilee" I had a sense of you as someone who was  fiercely individual in their vision, in their sense of themselves. What I didn't know was that you would be an extraordinary company member and that you would be able to do both those things at the same time.   So I thought, for example, I don't mean this in a remotely disrespectful way but I thought you might be someone who would not muck in with the company particularly. Or you might be a bit reluctant to be one of the gang. That's been an extraordinary thing about working with you as I've never seen anyone come from the sort of space that you normally work in and be so ready to be one of the company -

TOYAH: I knew as soon as you sent me the cast list that if I didn't get my shit together I wouldn't be part of the company because I come from such a different world. My world is so outrageously privileged. And these are young people entering the world with very defined passionate politics. They have to think about money, they have to think about where they live. They have to think about how they're going to spend their time and stay true to themselves. You sent me the cast list and I researched every one of them. CHRIS: Did you really? (surprised) TOYAH: Oh God yeah!  And I thought my God I'm out of touch! I am a dinosaur. I like to be part of an ensemble. If you look at my theatre in the past, it's all ensemble work. I came in knowing that I had a very steep learning curve. Because wherever I go - I could go into a petrol station at Newcastle at two in the morning and have a conversation with someone as if they know me. That's a hell of a privilege. And what was really interesting was to come into rehearsals of“Jubilee” and none of the knew me - CHRIS: One or two definitely did but - TOYAH: It was amazing! I can't walk down the street up north because everyone knows me, and that's because I play all the time, and stop and talk to people. People know who I am, but in London . . .  it's been very freeing. 

CHRIS: That's really nice. TOYAH: It’s been great! CHRIS: I don’t think some of them still really know who you were in 1981 (Toyah cackles)   TOYAH: No idea! Love it! But you ask, why am I a company member? Because I think theatre can only work when people choose the company. I've very rarely worked in anything where one person's ego has put the brakes on. Very rarely in 40 years. I've been very lucky, I’ve worked with great companies. CHRIS: Just to get back to your time with Derek Jarman for a moment - I think one of the things that always really attracted me to Derek's work was his sense of ensemble. That he was absolutely about building ensembles and building gangs, rather than doing star vehicles or anything like that - TOYAH: He did do a star vehicle, for years he was trying to get Bowie to do “Neutron”. It was very tricky because Tilda was on board. I was on board. I don't know what role I'd have played, but trying to get Bowie pinned down was difficult. I think Derek tried but apart from that he was phenomenal at holding a team together. 

CHRIS: One of of slightly oblique connections I made was meeting one of my theatrical heroes Ken Campbell. Towards the end of the 90’s I worked with him briefly, extraordinary man. He had some good stories about the filming of “The Tempest”, about you being snowed in at Stoneleigh Abbey - TOYAH: It was incredible! CHRIS: Tell us the story because I'm not sure everyone will know - I'm sure people know that you were in “The Tempest” but - TOYAH: I play “Miranda” in Derek Jarman’s “The Tempest” (above) CHRIS: It’s extraordinary, I watched it again the other day in preparation. The poise of that performance. It’s really hard to think of examples of someone doing consecutive films with the same director where their performances are so different. The difference between “Mad”  ricocheting of the walls in “Jubilee” going into the poise and the subtlety you have as “Miranda” is extraordinary and apart from anything else I’m just so blown away that Derek saw that in you and knew that that was another note that you could play with . . . 

TOYAH: He really had to persuade me to do it. I was terrified. I didn't understand Shakespeare and there’s times when I look at text and I can't see words. I just see black stripes. At that point, Shakespeare looked like that to me and Derek said “I will help you learn it. I'll help you have the rhythm. And if we need to we’ll edit.” He just totally believed in me. At the same time we were making “The Tempest” I suddenly became a huge star. A massive star. My ego was huge, but I loved Derek so much and I loved the team so much that I behaved (Chris laughs) I went into that team and became part of the ensemble.   So we were filming and how Derek managed to do this I don't know - we were given Stoneleigh Abbey in Coventry to film. A burnt down stately home that still had the remnants of curtains hanging up. No one had touched it. The only problem was it was February. And we got snowed in. We were stuck, and we just lived it. It was quite interesting, I had a wonderful boyfriend at the time called Gem, who was just stunning and wonderful and he looked after me, he got me from A to B.   I think we were the only straight people in the building. Heathcote Williams possibly went any way that he chose but there was a lot of men around and a lot of time to kill (Chris cackles) It was like a major cottaging industry but so wonderful! Absolutely wonderful. Going back to Ken Campbell, he was always fun. I was at the National with him -

CHRIS: Oh, were you? What he do at the National? TOYAH: He was doing Hitchhiker's Guide (To The Galaxy) - CHRIS: Of course, yeah! TOYAH: And I was doing “Tales From The Vienna Wooods”. So our paths crossed all the time. I commissioned him to write a play for me and he came back with “Toyah The Annoyah” (Chris bursts out laughing) And I was livid! And I said “Ken! I’m not fucking investing in something called "Toyah The Annoyah"! Fuck off and write something else!” CHRIS: (laughs) That's brilliant! TOYAH: I wanted “Beryl The Peril”. I should have gone with him because it would’ve been extraordinary, and I would probably now own a material right to something that would have gone on to have its own cartoon film series - CHRIS: Wow, that's amazing. I did not know any of that, that's beautiful. It's such a lovely picture all of you snowed up together in that place - TOYAH: Heathcote was amazing because at that time we had two rats living in his hair -

CHRIS: (absolutely dying with laughter) Please tell me they were called AC and DC? TOYAH: I can’t remember. The had the collars to the leads around his neck, and then the leads went round the rats necks and they were in his hair. I have such respect for rats, they’re super intelligent, but I could not fathom this man at all.   And this is a man that wrote one of the best songs ever for Marianne Faithfull, “Why D'ya Do It”. Why did it take a man to sum up female jealousy? And the way Marianne performed it is just incredible. Now, Marianne and I had the same manager at this time, Anne Seaford. We're all linked with 6 degrees of separation.    So anyway, Heathcote was playing my father “Prospero” (below). What a wonderful actor to work with. He was kind, passionate, intelligent, he tuned into me. I found it very hard to tune into him, his charisma . . . I imagine if I ever met Aleister Crowley (an English occultist and magician), it would be similar charisma. It was something that could implode you. He was just fabulous!

CHRIS: I really know what you mean because I met Heathcote just once, quite close to the end of his life. He was very kind and he was very straight with me but he was also completely disconcerting, in ways I absolutely couldn't put my finger on. I was like why can't I talk to you as a human being? 

TOYAH: You couldn’t talk to him! He went beyond. Everything you said exposed you - CHRIS: Yes, exactly! TOYAH: I’ve since become friends with his widow Polly who is now married to Dave Gilmour of Pink Floyd. I got to know her without knowing she was married to Heathcote and she has the same power of words. Just extraordinary. Wow wow wow. I'm so glad I met these people. CHRIS: There’s another theatre hero of mine that you worked with who we haven't talked about off the record. Annie Castledine that you worked with a couple of times. How did that come about? How did you find each other? TOYAH: I think my agent at the time was Sally Hope and Sally sent me for a casting to play “Dora Carrington”. I think it was the first time I worked with Annie CHRIS: Hadn’t you done “The Chance” before that? TOYAH: Yes! “The Choice” CHRIS: “The Choice”, sorry -

TOYAH: It must’ve been “The Choice” that we did first at the Salisbury Playhouse in the Studio Theatre and took us all by surprise. It was Claire who'd written “Trafford Tanzi”. So, that was the link. I think Claire asked if I could do “The Choice”, and that's how I met Annie - CHRIS: “Trafford Tazi” had been huge. That was the first time I remember hearing about you as an actor. That must’ve been … 80 . . . TOYAH: It was 83' . . . CHRIS: I remember hearing you on Radio One on “Newsbeat” or something, doing a little interview about it and that was the wrestling play which sounded like huge fun - TOYAH: A fight between man and wife that took place in the wrestling ring. Absolutely stunning! Loved it. So that led me to Annie. Now, with “The Choice”, written by Claire - can you tell me Claire’s surname again? 

CHRIS: I don't know actually. That’s naughty. (NB Claire Luckham) TOYAH: Forgive me, Claire. Claire had written play about her brother. Her brother at the time was 50, which is a very long time for a Down's Syndrome person to live, at that point. And it was about the fact that if you have a choice to abort Down's Syndrome we will lose that forever as mankind. And “The Choice” was about this woman who discovers through her amniocentesis test that she has Down's Syndrome child in the womb. Does she keep it or does she lose it? And I think, from what I remember she chooses to lose it.    And at the end of the play … (her voice breaks) . . . Oh . . . almost made me cry just thinking about it …  The screen would come up and there was Claire's brother saying “if my mother aborted me, I wouldn't be here saying this.” It was so emotive I can’t tell you. I was in tears every night. And the audience - it was completely sold out . . . was 99% midwives.     

And the astonishing thing was that the midwives wanted to be able to talk about not aborting children because of the diversity and the brilliance of how humankind makes another human. It was just so powerful and to have Annie direct that and Annie would direct you as if you were a complete cunt! (they both cackle) CHRIS: Yeah! You’re not the first person I’ve heard say that! 

TOYAH: I love her to death! “Fucking do this! What the fuck?! What the fuck are you thinking about?!” I mean it was exhilarating, exciting and she then asked me to play “Dora Carrington”, at the Minerva Theatre in Chichester (above with co-star Robert Picavance as "Lytton Strachey"). It was extraordinary. I adored working with her, you never knew where you were going to go each day, and she would let you drive the car full throttle and take responsibility not matter what happened in the end. Very exciting. CHRIS: She was something else. TOYAH: Is she still around? CHRIS: No, she died a couple years ago I think, maybe 18 months ago, not that long ago. TOYAH: I knew she’d been poorly because there was a time when people were raising funds to help support her but I didn’t know she’d passed away. I apologise. CHRIS: She was clearly a very special figure and I'm really sorry our paths didn't cross but I didn't know that about you until fairly recently that that was an experience that you'd had - TOYAH: Adorable. 

CHRIS: How lovely. I read you talking about how you wanted to keep your music and your acting fairly separate and I’m wondering the extent to which that's possible at a certain level where you're an ideas person and you're able to express yourself in so many different forms. I can understand the thing about keeping those things separate professionally, but I'm interested in whether your sense of theatre and a performance have impacted on who you are as a stage presence because that's always been very extraordinary . . . TOYAH: It would impact it but you also have to put a layer of protection around yourself in a concert. Derek Jarman was very aware that when I was on stage singing I’d put a boundary wall around myself in the form of a character. CHRIS: Every bit of footage I've ever seen of you in front of a live audience, particularly around that time (late 70's) . . . just the sense of it being a bear pit where you’re very exposed to a heavily male audience that at that time - and probably still to a certain extent - wouldn't have thought twice about grabbing at you - 

TOYAH: I had my fanny grabbed and tits grabbed. There must be a few men out there thinking “God! With this assault thing going on  . . . I did that to an artist on stage!”. It was extraordinary. I think to go on stage and not have a barrier around you and I'm talking about a persona barrier is a very special thing to do, and I think I’ve done it very rarely. I remember two weeks after my father died I was so utterly raw. To go on stage and sing in that state was probably the first time I went on stage as me.   I was just so lost, broken. And then again, when my mother died two years later, I felt that every bit of security in the world was being stripped away. And I was doing concerts. I was touring “Vampire’s Rock” going straight into pantomime at Sheffield Lyceum. And I was just raw and I was going on stage, trying not to shake and cry. I think those are the only times I've ever been me on stage. So, when you do come across artists – I think Kate Bush can be that raw - I really respect them for it but with me I think I've always built barriers around me -

CHRIS: But she's really interesting actually, isn't she, as an example because she’s obviously given a lot of thought to it. For example she had the link with Lindsay Kemp, that Bowie also had. Lindsay Kemp, someone who we haven't much talked about in relation to “Jubilee” but of course he's in that mix as well. I know Lucy Ellinson who plays “Viv” in “Jubilee” gave a lot of thought to what Lindsay Kemp was doing in that role. Did you ever have anyone who had a similar role for you in terms of as a mentor, as an inspiration, who gave you a way of thinking about what a stage persona might be or . . .? TOYAH: Oh, that's a good question. Musically it was Bowie, purely because of the charisma of the man, and also the very focused, concentrated period of time of coming up with pure genius from about 72’ right through to 81’. He had such an incredibly creative decade. Picasso did the same. He was a huge influence on me that way. I can't say that I knew him. I'm married to a man who played on his albums but I can't say that Bowie personally helped me but his career helped me. With acting it's such a good question because I don't feel female and genetically I’m female. So it's always been a battle of how I do a character. And I’ve always tried to add both arguments into my characters, the feminine and the male side. So I feel that I’ve done that truly on my own .

CHRIS: Absolutely. That feels true. For example, just your facility with persona that becomes, I think for me, the most spikiest experience I've had of your work really testing those things  - there's an album of yours called “Prostitute”, which I think is extraordinary. It's in some way unprecedented from circa late 80’s  . . .? TOYAH: I recorded it in 86’ or 87’ . . . CHRIS: That's such a theatrical space that that album opens up. It's so about theatre and about performance. It's about power play. There are so many voices layered on top of each other, so many different voices that we hear you use. It's a really extraordinary conception. And that was one of the reasons I wanted to ask you the question because it feels like a musical expression of something that must be about your theatrical instincts? TOYAH: Well, yes! I did it completely on my own. I think “Prostitute” came about because I surprised everyone and got married quite young. I think I was 28 or 27. And as soon as I got married, I went from being one of the most famous females in Europe . . . to being invisible. Bank managers wouldn't talk to me, they’d only talk to my husband. My manager would only talk to my husband . . . 

CHRIS: How weird - TOYAH: I thought I haven't been through everything I've been through and choose privately to get married . . . to be cast aside CHRIS: Just to disappear - TOYAH: Yeah, and I felt as I’d become a prostitute. And I just needed to get the anger out. It’s very odd to go into a relationship with your partner for life and have everyone battle against it. People were loathsome towards us, they hated us being married. So I hired a drummer/programmer called Steve Sidelnyc, who was fantastic. And I said to Steve “I'm just going to ask you to create sounds in bars. So I want this emotion here, that emotion there for 32 bars,16 bars, 8 bars”, and we just cut and pasted all that together. And then I would go home and I would write the song over that. CHRIS: Oh, right! Interesting! TOYAH: So we came up with the rhythms first. I would then go into the studio, put all the voices down, and all the sounds that I could play myself. And then Steve would come and play live over it. It was very organic, very experimental, and done in the heat of the moment, but that is a very real moment and I used all my theatrical experience to make it a story. CHRIS: I'd forgotten that it even has stage calls - 

TOYAH: Yes! CHRIS: Stuff like that, it's a completely sort of theatrical presentation, isn't it? TOYAH: The rewarding thing about that is it was my biggest hit in America - CHRIS: Was it really? That’s interesting - TOYAH: Billboard (magazine) gave it five stars, and said it was the most exciting thing they'd ever heard. They called it an “antidote to Madonna”, and what I find funny about that is I wrote it because I felt a woman being swallowed up in a man's world. I didn't write it to diss another woman. I have more fan mail from that album than any other album. 

CHRIS: I think I have to let you go, get ready for tonight (Toyah backstage of "Jubilee", above) I just have one final question, as you know, which is that I ask everyone to nominate someone for me to go and talk to next? TOYAH: Tilda Swinton. Good luck! (Chris cackles) You have to go either to Aberdeen or to New York. CHRIS: Yeah, okay. I'll do my best. Why did you think of Tilda? TOYAH: I think it's an obvious choice. She lived with Derek Jarman, they were very close. I think her talent as an actress helped move Derek to the next level because Derek had someone with him 24 hours a day, who had a natural talent, but had also honed her technical talent beyond anything else. I think she was so important in his life, and has continued to be important within the world of acting for 40 years. I think it would be very exciting for you having done this to meet her. CHRIS: Yeah, it really would. Alright, well, we’ll see. Toyah! What an absolute joy. Thank you so much. TOYAH: Thank you and thank you for letting me be part of “Jubilee”. It’s been a game changer for me - CHRIS: It's really nice to know. Me too. TOYAH: Someone wrote to me yesterday and they said “did you know this is the most important thing you've done in your life?” CHRIS: Wow! Goodness gracious me! TOYAH: It’s good. CHRIS: I’ll take it! Alright, have a good show tonight. TOYAH: Thank you!

[toyahinterviews]

TOYAH ON CATtales 21.5.2020

CAT: Hi, you're listening to CATtales and my guest today really needs no introduction. She appeared in the 1978 film “Jubilee” and “Quadrophenia” the following year. Her early hit singles included “It's A Mystery” and “I Want To Be Free”, and by 1982 she had made two platinum selling albums.      After more than 40 years in the music business, she is as creatively hungry as she was in her teens. She's a singer and actress, a writer, a punk rebel and an icon. But most importantly, she is an independent, strong woman who doesn't take any prisoners. This is the one with Toyah Willcox. What a ridiculous time we’re in! TOYAH: Well, I certainly won’t be promoting concerts! (they both laugh) CAT: I know, I know, it's terrible, isn't it? Everybody’s saying the same thing ... it's like they have tours and had to cancel it all. It's heart breaking, isn't it? TOYAH: The thing is like a lot of us have been building up to this year and it's been a phenomenal journey from about 2001, the wave of 80's being so popular has been  incredible. But a lot of artists had just been building to this year with their kind of independence.  

So yes, we do all these fantastic festivals and we do these multi-star line-ups but quite a few of us to work really hard to go out and be solo on tour and and this year we’re supposed to going out with Hazel O'Connor on a completely sold out tour, but also my own tours at the same time. So it's very, very frustrating. CAT: Oh, it must be. As I saw about the tour that you were doing with Hazel and I thought that's going to be a must see, so I'm not surprised to hear it's been sold out. TOYAH: It is still going to happen. And I think what will happen once we find a way of being out in the open safely. And I suppose the most obvious way that's going to happen is a vaccine. I think we're going to have a decadent 20s. We're going to go back 100 years to a lifestyle of complete decadence. I think we're all like pressure cookers waiting to go off. And we're gonna party party party.  

And I know from talking to venues and promoters from my side, the venues need as much help as they can get. So even though this year was going to be one of the busiest years of my life, I think next year is going to be beyond the busiest years of all our lives because we're going be opening the venues, helping the venues, keeping those venues running almost 24 hours a day so that the rock economy can get back on its feet. I think next year, technically, and kind of wishful thinking is going to be an incredible year. 

CAT: I think that's a really good observation. You could be right, as long as we can also hold on that long, which with the human spirit we will do. It will be like the end of the war years, won't it?

TOYAH: Yeah, we are in recession and I mean I've not earned a penny for 14 months. But you know I can survive. The passion to work and the passion to be in front of my audience is not diminishing - its growing and I think it's the same for everyone and come the point where we could all go out there and work I just think we are going to just run our socks off and make everything come back the way we knew it, but much better. CAT: Yeah, I think you're absolutely right and you do sound so passionate about stuff which is so refreshing with 40 years in the industry, you sound actually more alive now that you probably ever have done. TOYAH: Well, I think like many artists my age, I turn 62 on Monday, we're in control of our lives now and what we do we do because we really love it and I don't feel the pressure I was under in my 20’s. When you’re a new upcoming artist and you've got to just keep coming up when new looks, new music and it was relentless and I found it very very … it wasn't conducive to being creative, whereas these days where we can go about our lives as kind of sixty somethings, we’re driving the engine, we can put out there when we're ready to put out there and it makes life a lot more rewarding. CAT: Absolutely. I think the 60 is the new 40, isn't it?

TOYAH: I think it's the new 30’s personally ... CAT: Yes! (laughs) TOYAH: I didn't enjoy my 30’s so I'm determined that 60 is going to make up for that. CAT: The autumn years are the best years. So you’ve got lots and lots of strings to your bow. You started out in acting. You’re better known as a musician probably, but you do presenting, producing, voiceover, writing. That's a lot of balls to have in the air, Toyah. What’s your preference or are you just a good juggler?

TOYAH: I like to be busy and if I can do it and do it well, I'm gonna do it. Obviously I love music, but I can't relentlessly stay tuned in that way. It drains you. So I find going away doing a film, doing a stage play or voiceovering or making a documentary ... they refuel me. They kind of give me new ideas, they connect me to new people.     So I find it's all complimentary. It all helps the other, I find it very healthy and I think a lot of people are working that way. I know when I started in the business, I think 42 years ago, you couldn't do that. People wouldn't allow you to do that. There was so much snobbery in every area. But now I think you're able to do it and people still respect you and see you for what you are. CAT: I totally agree. Actually, it's more like the entertainment business now, isn't it? Rather than having those specific genres, that you couldn't crossover those boundaries, which I suppose I should say it helps your creativity in different areas? TOYAH: Yes, totally it does. I agree. But also, I think with the internet everything has become slightly diluted. I remember when I started my career I was at the National Theatre, I was 18 years old and this is in London and actors just wouldn't do voiceovers. Actors wouldn't do adverts. Stage actors wouldn't do TV and they had no money (both laugh)    

Learning from an actor who didn't act much but made over 75 K a year, 42 years ago, doing voiceovers, everyone was just dribbling at the thought of it so I think we live in a much more balanced world. I don't think people beat themselves up so much over those kind of snobberies anymore. CAT: That's true, that's possibly down to the internet, as you say, isn’t it and social media being a big influence really? TOYAH: For me this learning curve on this particular lockdown has been social media because I'm slightly technophobic and I've had to learn how to do it and I've had to turn it around to give myself presence and it's been a fabulous journey in that alone. I got my first 1.2 million hits on something I posted and all of that is such an important thing in this time - that you can stay connected to your audience via social media. So it's all a learning curve.  

I'm quite an insular person when I'm being creative, which is virtually everyday - it's a silent process. It's not a process where I want a phone in my hand, so I had to learn a way that I can connect to my fans through social media. And what I'm doing I absolutely love, and it's just posting slightly Dadaistic films to make them laugh. It's done me the world of good, my agent is calling me everyday and saying, "do you know so and so has just seen this" "do you know know they’ll book you because of this film" and it's worked and I'm very very grateful. 

CAT: It’s wonderful. I've been watching some of them, I've been having a right laugh at you with a tutu and Robert there doing it. Doing the Swan Lake impression which is wonderful! TOYAH: That’s the controversial one. It made the headlines in Italian newspapers that one because Italians pride themselves on being almost exclusively intellectual and for Robert (below with Toyah in 1997) to do that, my husband's Robert Fripp of the band King Crimson - for him to do that was blasphemous, and you had super über authors in Italy debating this and my husband is not kind man if you criticise him and he attacked these people online and again that was making headlines.     It’s well known in the industry if you diss my husband he’ll diss you a 100 time more (they both laugh) and this was making headlines and my husband found it very entertaining and last week having journalists say in an Italian newspaper, top newspaper, “Oh yes, I was reading an interview with Fripp” ... I mean not even having met him or interviewed him - “I read an interview with with Fripp and I came to the conclusion he’s a jerk” Boy, was that the red rag to the bull!

CAT: Oh dear! First of all it’s terrible for him to say that full stop, but not even sitting and meeting him ... 

TOYAH: Well, thats’s the power of … we all have a voice now, so it's just been very, very enlightening and at sometimes entertaining.   CAT: Absolutely and what's lovely about that. Is it still that rebellious side of your nature and Robert joining in there creating it for you, how wonderful is that? You're known for your rebellion, aren't you? TOYAH: Yeah, I think my rebellion is slightly kinder (they both laugh) But yes, I just never conformed to this thing about age. I think age is a privilege. I think the fact we live so long is a privilege, but it doesn't mean that I diminish and I’m just totally against this attitude, especially within the music industry.       I think it's improving in TV and film now but because a woman hits a certain age, she's no longer a sexually driven or desirable creature, and no longer has thoughts. That's changing but in the music business it's going to take a bit longer to do that. But thank goodness my audience and my generation still love what I do, and I always say to my audience the reason I'm standing on this stage is because of you. And it is you only so I'm really appreciative of that.

CAT: Yeah, I think that's a really great thing to say actually. We're still the same people even though we're ageing. Everybody's ageing. But there is this attitude against women, isn't there? And it's such a ridiculous concept that you're only desirable or you're only talented or whatever when you're young. It’s just bizarre ... TOYAH: Well, I mean obviously when we're young the energy is 10 times stronger. But I think the whole thing about growing old is we become better, we become enriched, we become deeper and that needs to be recognised and appreciated because we have so much to offer. We've been there, we've seen it. We've got the t-shirt. We know the warning signs. So we have just so much to give. I also think with the lockdown and everything with the internet being what it is, we've been able to explain ourselves a bit better because that's given us a platform.       But musically I find that OK, I'm still Toyah. I still have my voice. I still sound like Toyah. Technically I'm a better singer than I have ever been because when I started out I was singing through pure will and ambition and determination. Now I'm technically a singer. I'm really, really good at what I do and I just don't want to not use that, it's a gift. When it comes to writing, my writing is clearer. And I don't feel under pressure to do 4 albums a year, which people would have had me do 42 years ago.      

But the creativity and that flow, and the connection with my audience is very, very alive and I just don't want to be told that I should slow down. It's it's such a bizarre thing to be told when you can see your finite amount of time. I find myself speeding up and I'm trying to fill that time positively with the best work I can possibly do, because I know that is the memory I leave behind and memories have value. 

CAT: Absolutely. It’s your legacy isn't it and that's really your purpose on this world  is finite as you say, and to have something that you can in fact leave (which) is tangible and has touched so many people, it is absolutely wonderful. TOYAH: I know and I think prime examples of that is George Michael, Prince, Michael Jackson, Hendrix, Bowie. I mean, it's just such an example of the power of our lives. The power of our lives continue. So I really value the time I have. CAT: Yeah, I totally agree and it's great that you can actually tap into all that experience that you've had over the years and so your writing, for example, is possibly, as you say, more enriched because of it. TOYAH: Because experience, I just want my next album to be a danceable album. I  wanna go out next year and perform music where you see tens of thousands of people dancing and dancing because I think we all need to just celebrate this together.

CAT: Yeah, you're right. And it's nice to hear that you are saying that you want to do something a little bit different with that. That's your sort of your trademark really. Progressing through the years, doing something different through the years. I mean, just even going back to the early days, having such amazing hairstyles and the make-up and everything was very of the moment grabbing it while you could, but you changed and moved with the times and I think that's really good.

TOYAH: Yeah. There's two reasons for this. I'm auditioning for movies virtually every day. An I can't send a film in because at the moment because we’re all self- taping. I can't do that if I've got pink hair. You can't send a film to a world class director if you look like a punk rocker and you're reading for woman from the 18th century.   So I've I've had to kind of control my look and also I just didn't want to look or even attempt look how I did 42 years ago. It's not right. The only woman I know who can getaway with that is Sandra Rhodes because she is a designer. She's absolutely stunning. She's brilliant and that is her trademark. For me my trademark is energy and my voice so I just want to look good at 62. That's what I want. CAT: Yeah, absolutely. And don't you just, I have to say. I'm admiring your your your energy, your look and everything. You look wonderful to have to say. So I tell you what we're going to do. We're going to play “Sensational” just for you off your album “In The Court of The Crimson Queen” because you are. We will be right back in a moment.

CAT: (after the song) What I was going to talk about was about this idea of conformism and rebellion. Have you found that actually that has left you that feeling of wanting to rebel and you just held onto the energy and tapping into your experience? Or is there still something that you feel that you can rebel against?     TOYAH: I feel as though I rebel every day and it's purely that kind of theme of agesism and again I also feel I rebel every day because since I got married 34 years ago I've always been the little woman at home in the eyes of men. I rebel against that all the time, so my rebellion is ongoing. It's slightly more sophisticated.   I'm not a political person and I think where rebellion is very, very valuable is in the political field, but I just don't think that way. So my rebellion is is a lot more gentle, but it's definitely there and it's definitely a way of life.   And part of that is I just will not conform to someone else's view of what a woman should be and that will always be with me. Apart from that I think within my work my rebellion is still there because again, I just don't think I can conform. I don't fit in and this started when I moved into the outside world at the age of four and a half and went to school, I just realised I was never going to quite fit in.  

And if you're always a square peg trying to fit into a round hole, you're not in the right place. You find your place and for me it's by being observationally different. So I am just me and I won't kind of hone those edges ...

CAT: Yeah, I read some of the interviews you’ve obviously done before, saying you had like a violent childhood and you were sort of kicking back against everything. Do you look back at that now and think that you overreacted to things? Or was that just part and parcel of growing up and trying to hone this energy? TOYAH: OK, my background I wouldn't say was violent. It was mentally aggressive. It was psychologically cruel. So I didn't understand this until I was an adult. So my rebellion was I had to get out of that situation and I had to have my independence and that still remains. Whenever I feel trapped, that just still remains, I need my independence.   It made me very solitary and distrusting. I'm a bit better on the trust front. My background was an all girls school where the clever, clever girls attacked the non-clever girls. Slight physical disability that amused many people a lot of the time.

My nickname was Hopalong and an exceptionally unkind mother who thought she was being kind. So my reaction was over the top, but it was my way of surviving so I think that's definitely made me what I am today. My mother and I reconciled in the last two years of her life, but even two weeks before she died we were having ferocious shouting matches. We were just not made for each other and that happened but we still loved each other. I held her as she died. So you can still experience love for someone that you just will never ever agree with. CAT: Personalities, isn't it? Everybody is an individual and you've got have your own life that you need to lead. And people need to recognise that and give freedom, don't they?

TOYAH: Yeah, but I would also say for anyone out there that nurture above everything is all that counts. If you have a child and your child pisses you off - nurture is the only thing that works. The only time I feel I've ever really had nurture is when I met my husband, who is phenomenal at nurture. And he's taught me so much about giving nurture back. It's a very, very powerful creative thing to do. And mean, I remember I phoned my mother in 1982 when I won Best Female Vocalist in what is now the Brit Awards (above). And she said, "well don't boast about, it will never happen again". And I ignored it ... and I explained what the award looks like. She says "don't fall on it - it will kill you. I mean, she did not have one good thing to say to me in 55 years.     CAT: Sounds a bit like jealousy though, to be honest ... TOYAH: She had a similar background, I think something terrible happened to her when she was young. If she'd had therapy and could talk about it we would have got over it. But I am who I am because I have been in self-defence for so long.  

I think that's made me feel a lot of empathy towards those I work with and towards my audience because I just realise how damaging negativity is and it's why I kind of don't engage personally on a daily level on social media as I've had so many years of just being pushed back all the time that my tolerance is non existent so I lose myself in my work and by bringing other people joy and that's my way of nurturing and it's hugely important to me. Hugely import. CAT: Yeah, sounds lovely. Part of that nurturing of course is releasing material, isn't it that you know that is going to partly be your legacy, but it sounds to me like it's important that it moves somebody emotionally as well? 

TOYAH: Yeah, I think I definitely agree. I think it's very important when you're writing to be truthful to yourself, but also to remember someone is going to be listening to it and I feel very responsible about that. When I've written my most intensely emotional stuff – a song on my album last year “In The Court Of The Crimson Queen” is called “Dance In The Hurricane”, which is about the loss of my parents.   And when that came out, the response was huge and I think it was just holding a mirror up and people seeing themselves. And there was recognition. So I think it's really important to write about things that help people recognise in themselves and it's taken me a long time to get there. A long time, which is why I'm pretty determined to keep writing. CAT: And in your tour with Hazel are you going to be touching upon some of this kind of material? What's that going to look like when people actually come to see you? TOYAH: I think my tour with Hazel is going be a non-stop party (they both laugh) Because of circumstance and everything. Hazel and I have a lot of hits and we both agree we’re doing the hits! But luckily my album last year was a hit so we will be doing “Dance In The Hurricane” and “Sensational” which was a single off it and other tracks. But I've had well over 14 Top 40 hits. They're gonna be in there and the same with Hazel.  

So we've already rehearsed (below). I mean, obviously we're going to have to rehearse again. We didn't expect a 2 year break or whatever, so it will be our hits. Hazel wants to open because she works in a trio. And then my band will come on and work with her. There will be an interval, then I come on and that's nothing to do with star billing. It's just the way that the sonics work at the evening. And then Hazel and I do  a set together and it's going to be absolutely wonderful. It it is going to be riotous. 

CAT: It sounds amazing. I can't wait to see it actually, I have to say, you're sold out but you must put more dates on because people are going to be listening to this thinking I've got to go to that! TOYAH: There will be tickets available because obviously we're rescheduling so everyone that's got tickets those tickets are valid, but if you can't make the date we're rescheduled to those tickets become available so it's all on my website toyahwilcox.com, two L's in Willcox. All the information and the updates are there. So if you want to come, look at the venue and see if they have availability. Because this is a very fluid experience. Everything is changing weekly so just keep informed. CAT: Yeah, keep an eye there and in the meantime they can of course buy your DVD anthology for Toyah and The Humans, can't they?

TOYAH: On the 3rd of July Toyah and The Humans is a 3 CD box set that's also going to have accompanying vinyl coming out as well. This is my very experimental art rock band with Bill Rieflin, who was the drummer in REM. It's three albums that we made together. The first album is very stripped down. I wanted to do music that was completely stripped bare and then the second album “Sugar Rush” is really rocky and it’s phenomenal. And then the third album “Strange Tales” is melodic and beautiful. And so the whole 3 albums is a kind of harmonic journey.   Also out at the moment is Toyah "Solo” and that is albums that I have released since about 1985 and that is a beautiful package. So that is “Minx”, “Desire”, “Ophelia’s Shadow”, Take The Leap!, Velvet Lined Shell”. That's a real  fan collector’s piece and also we've got “In The Court of The Crismon Queen”, so there's a lot going on. All those are on Demon, which is part of the BBC and then next year all my early albums come out. So it's kind of a huge year for me. We've got “Blue Meaning”, “Anthem”, “Sheep Farming In Barnet”, “Toyah! Toyah! Toyah!”, “The Changeling”. They’re all being re-released.

CAT: Wow, that's brilliant. And what a treat for everybody to actually be able to get their hands on those and they look amazing from what I’ve seen and also you're doing some vinyl as well, aren't you?

TOYAH: The vinyl is beautiful. Everything that I'm rereleasing is multi coloured and the vinyls are just gorgeous! Every colour in the spectrum. There's quite a lot of vinyl out there. “In The Court Of The Crimson Queen” has crimson vinyl. Toyah “Solo” each CD has a different colour of the CD. With The Humans you've got a beautiful deep egg yolk yellow. You've got a wonderful kind of chaki bright olive green and then you've got a wonderful purple colour for “Strange Tales”. It is just the most beautiful packaging. CAT: I wouldn't expect anything less from you, Toyah. Let's be honest, you’re colourful in every single way. It's absolutely wonderful. So I think people need to go on your website and have a look at all that, because there's plenty to see. Plenty to watch and obviously with you on social media is very entertaining as well. TOYAH: And there's also a lovely website which is a fan site. It’s an archive site called   toyah.net and that's phenomenal. Davie, who runs that knows more about me than I do. He knows when I'm about to do TV before I know it ... He really is ahead of the game and I love that website. So you’ve got  toyahwillcox.com and toyah.net if you really want to stay informed that's all you need see

CAT: It's all there for the taking, isn’t it? It's been a pleasure speaking to you, you’re an absolute sensation, let’s say it that way and I'm sure this is going to be a very very popular interview. So can't wait to see you when you're on tour again. I'll be there. TOYAH: Thank you! CAT: Have a lovely day and stay safe! TOYAH: OK, bye for now! CAT: Take care, bye bye! You can listen to the interview here

[toyahinterviews]

WOMEN'S HEALTH - BREAKING THE TABOOS 27.7.2022

CHERRY: Hello, I'm Cherry Healey and welcome to Women's Health - Breaking The Taboos, a podcast series from Channel Five. When it comes to women's health, there's one thing that we are really bad at and that's talking about it. Half the world is female. And yet our bodies, our body parts and our health issues are still somehow embarrassing, a little bit taboo Well, in this podcast we're going to hear different celebrities opening up about a range of issues that can affect all of us, for menstruation to menopause, sleep to our sex lives. Nothing is off limits in this podcast So off we go. My main qualification for hosting this podcast is being a woman, but sitting beside me, as ever, is someone who is way more qualified. She's been a GP for over 30 years, and a woman for even longer - Dr. Dawn Harper   Today we're joined by a woman who was at the vanguard of punk, acted alongside Katharine Hepburn and Laurence Olivier, has penned two books, presented programmes as diverse as “The Good Sex Guide” and “Songs Of Praise”, introduced the “Teletubbies” and became a YouTube sensation with her husband during lockdown, which gave me so much joy to watch

I'm referring of course to the living legend that is Toyah Willcox. She's with us, but she's not sadly with us in person, but we are lucky enough to be able to see her lovely face. Toyah. I know you're on tour at the moment. Where are you in the world right now? TOYAH: At the moment I'm in the Midlands. I'm getting ready to play the Isle of Wight Festival. I'm on the road with Lene Lovich and Saffron from Republica. It's a woman's tour. It's called Electric Ladies (below). And funnily enough, we share a lot of information with each other CHERRY: I've got some really close girlfriends but actually I'll be honest, I've never told them about vaginal discharge. This is not a conversation we've ever had or anything really intimate about sex even though we do talk a lot. Do you go there with your girlfriends? Are you really honest, is anything off the table?

TOYAH: There is nothing that is banned from conversation but I'd say the biggest conversation is menopause because I'm 63 and I was forced into menopause by hysterectomies when I was 51. And I know quite a few women who are still going through menopause and I even know women who cannot get HRT So it's a big conversation about how to deal with it, how to live with it, how to use a natural diet as a way to improve the condition. So it is a very big subject amongst my friends on my cell phone DAWN: Can ask why you were forced into a hysterectomy. What happened? TOYAH: I had a condition called flooding. It was called flooding where you’re losing amazing amounts of blood very, very quickly. And I was giving a lecture at Leicester University on showbiz when it started. I managed to get to the car and I phoned my husband and I said “do I call an ambulance?” and he said “can you get home?” And through quite an amazing GP I was linked to a female gynaecologist at Cheltenham General Hospital, Helen Reddy. She saw me immediately

I had to have an internal scan which was not fun, but she was so fantastic about it and she said “right, tomorrow you have to have a radical hysterectomy, you're in trouble. There's a tumour growing into your bowel.” And it was the most frightening news I'd ever been given. And I said “I have three more shows to do on a tour. Can I do those three shows?” CHERRY: Wow! TOYAH: Yeah. Work comes first. And so within five days I was in the operating theatre and this absolutely gorgeous woman, who had done 3000 hysterectomies up to that date, leant over me as the anaesthetist put me out, and she said “I promise you when you come around, you're going to feel the best you've ever felt in your life” Now, I don't know if that was a placebo or, you know, a great deep bit of hypnotism, but I've never felt better since and it was an enormous operation. I had to be kept unconscious for 24 hours. I couldn't be moved. I recovered from it really well. Within three weeks I was making a movie. But it was a very testing time in my life DAWN: Did you remove your ovaries as well? So were you pushed into menopause sort of overnight?

TOYAH: No uterus, no ovaries, everything gone

DAWN: Interestingly a lot of people don't know this - if you have your womb removed but you leave your ovaries in place you would think that your ovaries will carry on functioning normally and they will for a while     But women who have just had them removed tend to go through an earlier menopause and it's almost like nature knows there’s no point trying because there's no room there. So there's nothing to keep going for. But if you have your ovaries removed, you are effectively plummeted into menopause overnight. So how did that manifest itself for you? TOYAH: Well, they brought me back into consciousness about 24 hours later, no pain whatsoever. But the nurse was begging me to let go off the morphine drip. She said I was just pumping it every minute. As soon as I came around, I was put on patches which are HRT. They put me on a low dosage of 25 and I'm now up to 75 But I can’t get them so I'm actually doing that trick of cutting my patches into quarters to keep them going. But I was immediately put on HRT within 24 hours of the hysterectomy CHERRY: And you've had quite a lot of interaction with medical professionals over the years, haven't you?

TOYAH: I just think I inherited quite dodgy DNA. I was born with what I believe is called W legs. Most people's can cross their legs, mine go the other way. Shallow sockets, shallow hip joints, pelvic dysplasia, and twisted spine Really susceptible to any stomach bug going. I can remember - and I apologise for saying this - but I would be the child that would sit in class and projectile vomit without any kind of warning whatsoever. I'd be unconscious for days And I think because of that I've had to work really, really hard to stay healthy. Really hard and I’m vegan. I hardly drink. I just drink tonnes of water - five litres a day, exercise all the time and I'm keenly aware of anything very odd going on in my body CHERRY: I mean, you’ve got the reputation as the punk rock wild child. I saw a video of you in this kind of school girl wedding get-up and smashing a bride and groom at the top of the cake. “I refuse to be neat and pretty”    (Video of "I Want To Be Free") And so the reality is you've had a 36 year old marriage to this wonderful man. You're a vegan, you don't drink. It sounds like because of these medical issues you've had to be very in touch with your body

TOYAH: I think we can have very good ageing processes. And I had my hysterectomy around the age of 51. And then I had to have a total hip replacement on my right side the following year. So two major surgeries in quite a close time and then two years after that I got Lyme disease, which paralysed me. So I was determined not to lose the rest of my life to medical conditions   So around the age of about 55 I was vegetarian. I'm now vegan. I went to see a naturopath. I wear vitamin patches every day, highly intensive vitamins. So everything for me is about nutrition and absorption of nutrition to the max because I want to live until I die. So I've put a lot of work and a lot of research into how to have a really great old age

DAWN: You know, I love hearing you say that. In my practice we have a Christmas party for our over 75s and of course more people are living longer. We're all living longer and one of my (GP) partners said, “well, we're not really, are we? We're just taking longer to die”. And I was absolutely horrified but actually he did have a point You want to live your life to the fullest. And you're beautifully open and that's absolute manna from heaven for me to hear because the more people like yourself with a high profile talk openly about medical issues, the easier it is for everybody else. You seem to be very at home talking about your medical history TOYAH: I'm absolutely fine about it if it helps someone else. As a live performer, I get so many people come up to me and they tell me what they're going through. They discover that they're about having a mastectomy. They tell me these things and I tell them my history and the best way to recover and mind over matter. And also researching your surgeons Dr Reddy said I had to have this emergency hysterectomy but she said “go away and research me” because I was terrified. I was really terrified of this 50/50 chance of surviving the operation because it was a big one because I was carrying a five pound tumour in me

She said “go away and research and tell me when you're happy” and I came back a day later and I said “I'm very happy with you. I have total respect for everything you've ever done”. And its taught me to research a lot and when I do go and see a GP and I hope I don't go too often, I do go fully researched. I write a page of the history of what I'm experiencing, about 10 key points. So my GP can go straight in there and understand what I'm going through CHERRY: What I love about Toyah is that she's not just chat. You can see it and never more than in the most wonderful YouTube sensation videos, the Sunday Lunch series that you did with Robert (Fripp) over (below with Toyah) lockdown, which just blew me away. So you are energetic, you are creative There's a real self confidence in the way you move. So whatever you're doing is working, you are living, you're vibrant. So can you tell me a bit about how that series came about? Why did you decide to do that YouTube series?

TOYAH: Robert is, I think, the biggest link to why we did it and slightly subconsciously we became very aware of people's mental health during lockdown and talking to my husband about this. I feel he was treating lockdown as an excuse not to move, he said he was just studying and it's a very, very sour subject now I thought, well, I'm going to teach you to dance, I'm going to teach you to cook and we're going to film it. And it grew and grew from there. We went from 100,000 views on our very first film, which was me teaching my husband to jive, to now - we're up to about 67 million views online CHERRY: 67 million views, in your kitchen. Although at one point you did wrap yourself in in clingfilm, I think we can call it clean. I mean that's not giving anyone else a chance. No one else can do anything. That's it. You've won. You've won YouTube TOYAH: Well, there's so many things in the kitchen that you can do. You know, we use the tradition of British humour to explore rock music and explore themes CHERRY: They're very open and you can see this beautiful relationship between you and Robert. Are there any tips for a close, intimate, vibrant relationship? You’ve been together for 36 years?

TOYAH: Yeah, but out of that 36 years (Toyah and Robert on their weeding day, below) we've probably only physically been together for two years as we were both touring musicians. And in lockdown we were suddenly together for 24 hours a day. We've always been great talkers. Robert and I are really great friends. And we're very, very different psychologically and intellectually I'm instinctively very bright. He's intellectually very bright. And I think we complement each other. He is very good explaining something to me when I make terrible malapropisms, which I do virtually every other day. I think our secret of talking is incredibly important. And sensing that someone is bottling something up. I really do know when he's hiding something from somebody, and he's sitting on a stressful event that's coming in through email and I say, “come on, tell me what's going on”   We both live and work in an industry that demands a lot of constant observation and surveillance of what is going on. And a lot of contact with fans and it can be as rewarding and stressful in equal measures. During lockdown a lot of regular fans were passing away because of COVID or suicide. And we just felt that our communication with each other had to have a certain quality that enrich the people who are interested in us. And believe me, we are capable of big rows

CHERRY: Well, that's a passionate relationship that is active, isn't it? When you don't do it, there's something numb about it, I think. So you have a very intimate, close relationship. And what about sex in menopause? How are you finding that? How's that side of your relationship? TOYAH: It's a really interesting one. I mean, it's a fantastic question because obviously, having had a hysterectomy, I thought sex would stop. So I went around all my girlfriends who admitted having had a hysterectomies and said the sex was great because it was without complications. So I had to kind of relearn all of that because of the scar tissue after my surgeries, not only the hysterectomy, but also the hip replacement I had to have a lot of physio to get mobility back and to trust what my body was going through. And I'm carrying a lot of scar tissue which can be treated with massage and stuff like that. So it was relearning, and our sex life became more communicative in that I had to tell my husband what the experience was like and that he didn't have to be a superhero in bed

We had to find new ways around intimacy. And he was very good about that. And I think if ever we've had a problem, the problem is we have to stop laughing CHERRY: Because there's something … so as you get older, Dawn, I think there's there's a real myth that once you hit a certain age, if you go through menopause, sex is over and it doesn't seem to be the case. What are your experiences of women talking to you about sex and menopause? DAWN: I think sex in menopause is as individual to a woman as pregnancy, as periods, we all experience things very differently. Toyah, you touched on something there that is so relevant, though. A lot of women, over half postmenopausal women will suffer with vaginal dryness, which will make sex uncomfortable And Toyah was talking about her scar tissue from her operations and how that meant they had to rethink. And of course, for most of us - not everybody - some people enjoy a bit of pain during sex - but for most people, pain is not an enjoyable sexual sensation

And so if it hurts, if you're not talking and I think the absolute success of your wonderful marriage is absolutely the communication because if you're not talking, the natural thing to do - if sex is uncomfortable, is to try and avoid any form of penetration. And the next step on from that is to avoid any kind of intimacy in case it leads to penetration. And then you can find that you're in a sexless marriage Now there are lots of very happy sexless marriages. And I think that there is nothing wrong with having no sex in your 50s 60s and 70s. And there's nothing wrong with having sex every day in your 50s 60s and 70s. As long as you are both enjoying it at the same time, and what we often find, and I'm generalising hideously - I know that most men need to have sexual contact in order to be loving, and most women need to feel loved in order to feel sexy and so you can see that once that starts to go the wrong way ... CHERRY: I do relate to that. Do you enjoy that physical nature of relationship?

TOYAH: We had to rediscover a way of being intimate and we discovered it by just kind of very tender tickling finger stroking, which we both really love CHERRY: Isn't that the most divine form of physical communication when you get that, when you're really intimate with someone and you're that close and they're just stroking you and it feels amazing? TOYAH: And it's very animalistic and we discovered that that form of intimacy led to almost much more enriching sexual experience. It's brought us closer together and I'd say that physically we're closer now than we ever have been   Nothing is perfect, timing isn't always perfect but I never want him to feel that he isn't attractive to me. We are really, really tactile with each other DAWN: It's so good to hear that you're enjoying that. How is your sex life - has it changed over the years because that's a 30 year period where you've kind of watched and observed how it changes within a relationship? TOYAH: It changes hugely and I also want to add I really enjoy exploring him for lumps, because every man must explore their genital area and he doesn't so I do it DAWN: You provide a service 

TOYAH: Another thing we just laugh our heads off about, but I explore every part of him intimately for anything that's wrong. And then I tell the doctor, so I just wanted to add that. I mean, my doctor knows when they get a call from me, it's usually about my husband And I say “my husband will not tell you this, but I found this or, you know, his bodily functions are not what they should be”. I really do keep a check on him because he is 76 and I want him around while I'm alive DAWN: Your intimacy is multipurposed. Does he even realise that this is what you're doing? TOYAH: He just thinks he’s having the best time. “Oh, God, is it that time of the day?” No, he does realise CHERRY: You’re very bossy, good TOYAH: I'm very controlling of his health. And he does realise it but I think he enjoys it. It always leads to other things

DAWN: You know, I said earlier I thought you were the perfect patient. I think you're the perfect relative as well, Toyah, because so often actually it is the wives, girlfriends, partners who report issues with the men in their lives TOYAH: We just have such a phenomenal health system. I'm having a mammogram tomorrow on the NHS. We have sent bowel testing kits in regularly. I do mine as soon as they arrive and it takes me a month to get my husband to do his. I actually have to sit with him and make him do it. And I think we are so blessed with the NHS and how they still care for the elderly. You know, don't take it for granted DAWN: Toyah, thank you so much for that. Would you believe that those tests that we send out and all we ask is you to give us a sample of your poo … OK, there might be nicer things to do with your mornings than collect your poo but over half of those tests don't get returned. And it's the simplest test to do and it really could save your life CHERRY: So why do people come back again to the embarrassment of it? 

DAWN: I think there are a number of factors. Some of it is embarrassment, not wanting to physically collect your own thing. The other thing is we're all incredibly busy. And sometimes we put our own health on the back burner. But one thing about the NHS and I'm so with you, Toyah, we are so lucky to have the NHS, but we all know that it's under strain and it's under financial pressure If the NHS is offering you a test, whether it be a smear test and a bowel screening test and mammogram, just a health check - it is worth doing it because we know there's good evidence that it's well worth doing. So actually, this is a really lovely thing to be talking about because we should all be prioritising those things TOYAH: Can I just add, I've seen three people pass away from bowel cancer and you don't want to go there. You really don't want to go there. Don't let anything hang on so long that you can't be saved from it. A cancer is curable if you catch it earl CHERRY: Yeah, that's such an important message. I think there is an element perhaps that people don't want to know TOYAH: But that's really scary. I actually find it really scary checking my own breasts

CHERRY: I understand that. You know, sometimes we can all do the ostrich can't we? 

DAWN: But it's curable if it's found early, and bowel cancer absolutely falls into that category. So however frightening that may be, if you've got symptoms like bleeding from passage or alternating diarrhoea and constipation or abdominal pain or unexplained weight loss, those sorts of symptoms mustn't be ignored because if we can make a diagnosis early, we can cure you I would say this is down to the embarrassment thing as well. If you delay seeking help, you potentially might make it more difficult to be treated and at worst you might find that actually you're in an incurable situation CHERRY: I wonder if talking to a friend and saying “I'm worried about this, I've got the poo test. Can we do it together in different rooms but let's do it together” … Maybe there's strength in numbers and there's probably ways of breaking that fear. Dawn, I just want to talk to you about some of these stats we've got This is about the frequency of the sex women are having before and after menopause. And it says that 24% of postmenopausal and menopausal women reported that they never really felt like they wanted sex and 41% in frequently felt sexual desire. Is that something you're seeing in your surgery?

DAWN: Yes, and I think female libido in particular is very complicated. Sometimes it will be a relationship problem. Sometimes it will be a time problem. You know, if you're up all night with night sweats and you've got poor sleep pattern because of the menopause bed very much becomes for sleeping in and you're tired and you don't feel like it. I mean, you said Toyah, that after you'd had a hysterectomy you felt the best you'd ever felt - CHERRY: Why is it that? Why she felt the best she ever found? DAWN: There will be lots of different reasons. First of all, if you were losing that kind of amount of blood, you would have been anaemic and so therefore lacking in energy, perhaps there was a baseline worry in the back of your mind that this is what had happened You know, what's going on? Why is this happening? And you've alleviated that because you've had a diagnosis. You've had treatment and you've been given a cure, but also suddenly you were put on HRT What we do know for a lot of ladies going on HRT can really give them that emotional and physical boost that they feel is lacking and so I think probably for you, Toyah, there were a whole load of influencing factors that suddenly went wow! I feel like a woman again and I feel I've got a zest for life again and I feel energised and I feel ready to tackle the world and it's a lovely story to hear that you were looked after like that

CHERRY: I think there's another myth that as you get to a certain age, you have to give up the joy in your body. The idea of feeling sexy and wild and free and Toyah, obviously when you were younger, that's one of the things that you were known for But that seems to have stayed in your YouTube videos. You you dress up, you enjoy yourself, you're physically free, you're sexy, you're sexy as hell. How have you maintained that part of the videos? TOYAH: I only do this in the kitchen with my husband. I'm not on Fan Zone, I don't don't do it privately on camera for anyone else CHERRY: There should be nothing wrong with a woman's body whatever age she is

TOYAH: Age is an extraordinary experience. It should be a spiritual path as well as a physical path. And I really believe that if we have more visibility of age in every area of life, from advertising of makeup, clothes, etc etc people won't be so afraid of the process of ageing CHERRY: Absolutely. One thing I really want to talk to you about - because I stand with you on this subject very closely - high fiving you loudly and in a big way - is you are quoted to have said and you told me about having a facelift. You talk openly about all these things     And there's a story about when you had your facelift and a sort of famous supermodel, having laser treatment, and she was just about to do a shoot for skin cream, even though she was getting her face lasered and resurfaced and you talk about how the beauty industry lies to women. How people don't talk about having filler, or having facial treatments and then they bring out a tub of olive oil and say this is why (they look like that) but it’s a lie

TOYAH: Plastic surgery 40 years ago was something that was expected of women to prolong their career. And I was first taught to get surgery under my eyes to get rid of my wrinkles when I was 25. And I was quite insulted by that but it wasn't as insulting as not being able to find the surgeon to do it because no woman would tell me about it And I think we have to be very, very open about who is best at it. Who doesn't rip people off, absolutely loves after care. And you need surgeons who tell you to stop DAWN: I couldn't agree more. That's so so true. But I really applaud you for being so honest because I am increasingly seeing young women in particular but men as well, young young lads, who are putting filters (in photos) on and so on That young people are constantly bombarded with this sort of body beautiful perfect imagery, which means that they are almost trying to achieve the impossible all the time and the impact that has on their mental health. If you're using a filter, you look better than you do in real life

TOYAH: So I've had two facelifts (Toyah in 2005, just after the 2nd facelift, below) My last one was very, very major. I had reconstruction on my cheekbones and around my eye sockets. Major major surgery, and the reason I did that is so I will age better. I won't ever look younger, I will age better. And I wouldn't recommend anyone ever goes through that kind of surgery. It was brutal     But my surgeon is the best in the world. And I'm so grateful for what he did for me. But I still have wrinkles and I still have ageing skin. And I think I look 64 but I look a good 64 and it's the filters that I feel are doing the damage because the filtered image is not realistic DAWN: I couldn't agree more. I also agree with about recommendations so that people go to registered practitioners who are good, who have a good body of work behind them. And we can only do that if we're honest. There's also an idea that everyone who gets fillers and botox goes extreme whereas actually you often don't notice people who've had a little bit and that's good

The whole point is to most people, I think, get these treatments in a balanced and good way and they feel better about themselves. And of course good skincare, sleep, a good diet exercise, looking after your mental health. These are all part and parcel - you can't go and get a facelift and then smoke 20 cigarettes a day and drink five pints and wake up and expect to look good

CHERRY: You've got it, it's got to be the whole package. But little things with registered practitioners and people doing their research. It does make a big difference, a huge difference to how you feel about yourself. Toyah, how do you feel - you're in your 60s now ... What is this decade going to be like for you? What is being a sixty year old woman like nowadays? TOYAH: Strangely, and I never expected this – I’m at my most successful and I didn't expect that. And the great irony of not knowing about lockdown going on for two years. It's given me the time to reinvent myself And that's extraordinary because out of this very terrifying event of never knowing if I’ll perform live again as a musician has allowed me to write a Top 30 album. It's allowed me to create. I usually trend in the Top 30 worldwide with Sunday Lunch every week   CHERRY: I’ll just say right now - obviously the people listening to this can't see eye to eye but I can and you can see on YouTube - you look amazing. And also the energy coming from you is joyful. The myth that as we get older we have to sit down and shut up. No, no, we do not have to sit down and shut up  

TOYAH: Thank you very much CHERRY: I have to say I think you're living proof of that phrase 60 is the new 40 and good on you and you clearly know how to look after yourself 

TOYAH: The greatest healer I've discovered is water and always just drink pure water. I find there’s two things that reset my body - no, three things: sleep, I try and drink five litres of water a day. I don't always manage it - and apples. When I need to reset my blood sugars or if I'm just feeling low energy, I eat an apple and it really does keep a doctor away. It's the most incredible thing DAWN: I'm going to add to that list and you've got it in bucketfuls and that's a positive mindset. And I really do think that has a massive influence on our our overall physical and mental health. You come across as a very physically and emotionally confident lady. As a young woman did you feel that strong? And if not, what would you say to your younger self? TOYAH: Thank you for asking that question. I don't feel that strong in myself now. But what I realised is it's my body. And deeper inside me is the truth of who I am. So when I was a young woman, when I felt physically confident I was always knocked down by people who didn't find me attractive

And in the music industry and even in the acting world if people see you're not confident they manipulate you and I've realised quite late in life that having inner confidence gives you power. I don't feel I look like Kim Kardashian or Madonna. I don't like my legs, they could look a lot better. But you know, the confidence is something that has to be very deep inside and I say to everyone beauty is deep inside It's deeper than skin and you deserve to feel confident and you deserve to believe in yourself and you deserve a place in the world. And if you have that confidence, it doesn't matter. The body you're born in, just be blessed by the body you're born in and look after it CHERRY: I absolutely love that message

TOYAH: I have a very wise auntie who I was speaking to recently and we were talking about how freedom is being able to go on holiday and having tonnes of money is freedom and she said “no, freedom is inside you. It's mental. It's about being able to feel that you can handle situations and that comes with therapy, sleep, a good diet and conversation and knowing yourself" and I thought how that is freedom, mental freedom and self confidence CHERRY: You're right, that does give you a power, Toyah. It absolutely does. Now we have to wrap up, sadly. I feel like you've given us so much wisdom and so much joy and insight. Is there one more nugget of wisdom or one tip that you can give to our listeners about how to live a good healthy life mentally, spiritually, emotionally TOYAH: I have a lot of people contacting me who have no confidence and I always say to them that every single human being born onto this planet is unique. We're all a miracle. We are on a planet in the middle of a universe we know nothing about. There's no such thing as an insignificant life. You are all utterly unique So I give that as a nugget of wisdom. But I also say drink water. Don't add anything to it. Just drink pure water. Your body is begging for it all the time  

DAWN:   I'd like to add something to that which actually I think links in to your self confidence comment and that is be kind to yourself. I think sometimes we're all a bit too self critical. So yeah, be kind to yourself and do something to make yourself smile every day

CHERRY: So water therapy, good sleep, intimacy. It's lots of stroking. Check your poo. Check your breasts. Be conscious. And that's the whole ticket, isn't it? TOYAH: And talk about death. Because it's a really scary subject CHERRY: I think that's a really interesting tip because it is a scary subject, but if we will talk about it a bit more maybe we'll break the taboo and that's the whole point of this podcast, too. You’ve been the most fabulous guest, thank you so much for your time and your energy and your wisdom and I can't wait to see what's next for you     TOYAH: Thank you so much. I've really enjoyed it, really good fun DAWN: Thank you so much, Toyah

CHERRY: So that's it for this episode of Women's Health - Breaking The Taboos. Dawn? What did you think of Toyah? Wasn't she a sheer tour de force, positive energy and actually just such a voice of reason and reassurance to not actually women of her age but to younger women as well

DAWN: Yeah, she's really grounded and going to go and drink a huge pint of water after this

[rockzone]

Gig Guide: 23 - 29 Oct 2019

Wednesday, October 23, Lissie at The Stoller Hall, Manchester. American folk-rock singer discovered by Lenny Kravitz in 2008.

Thursday, October 24, Cher at Manchester Arena. Iconic superstar for more than five decades with more than 100 million records sold worldwide. Support from Paul Young, soulful 80s chart-topper, best known for the hits Wherever I Lay My Hat, Everytime You Go Away and Love Of The Common People.

Thursday, October 24, The Cult at O2 Apollo Manchester. A band that have existed just outside the mainstream since the '80s with a mix of goth-rock and heavy metal.

Friday, October 25, Midge Ure at Albert Hall, Manchester. Ultravox frontman who has produced a consistently innovative and excellent style of pop music.

Friday, October 25, Toyah Willcox at Factory 251, Manchester. Part of the '80s post-punk New Wave scene with hits It's A Mystery, I Want To Be Free and Brave New World.

Friday, October 25, The Selecter at O2 Ritz, Manchester. Formed in Coventry in 1979 and part of the 2-tone movement. Support from Rhoda Dakar, former frontwoman of ska legends 'The Bodysnatchers' and ex-Special AKA.

Friday, October 25, Kris Barras at Manchester Academy 3. One of the U.K's most exciting Blues-Rock Guitarists. Support from Elles Bailey, who has a talent for crafting rootsy blues, country, and soulful rock.

Saturday, October 26, The Macc Lads at O2 Ritz, Manchester. Punk rock band from Macclesfield, famous for their politically incorrect lyrics.

Saturday, October 26, Lisa Stansfield at The Lowry, Salford. R&B singer from Rochdale with a career spanning over four decades. Best known for her single 'All Around The World'.

Sunday, October 27, Black Star Riders at O2 Ritz, Manchester. The next step in the evolution of Thin Lizzy, with a sound that retains that classic feel. Support from Stone Broken, a four-piece hard rock band from the Midlands, and Wayward Sons, fronted by Toby Jepson, former vocalist of Little Angels.

Monday, October 28, Rickie Lee Jones at Royal Northern College of Music (RNCM), Manchester. Two-time Grammy Award-winning singer, musician, songwriter, playing R&B, blues, pop, soul, and jazz standards. Best known for her 1979 single 'Chuck E.'s In Love'.

Tuesday, October 29, The Stylistics at The Plaza, Stockport. Iconic Soul group with hits 'Stop, Look, Listen to your Heart', 'You Are Everything' and 'Betcha By Golly Wow'.

* Alan Ovington’s Rock Zone Podcast is available at https://www.questmedianetwork.co.uk/on-air/podcasts/the-rock-zone/