TOYAH ON
WOMAN'S HOUR
LIVING OUT LOUD
WITH MARTHA KEARNEY
BBC RADIO 4
29.8.2000

MARTHA: Toyah Willcox burst into the punk scene all orange hair and outrageous make-up at the end of the 70s but unlike many of her rebellious contemporaries she’s proved to have considerable staying power. In one shrewd career move after another she has moved effortlessly from pop to film to stage, TV presenting - often all at the same time

Toyah was born in posh Birmingham suburb. Her father owned three factories and fell for her mother, a beautiful dancer with “Flanagan and Allen”, after seeing her on stage in Weston-super-Mare

They sent their daughter to a private girl's school, where she was noted for absence from the class room and for setting of a series of alarm clocks during a speech by a visiting MP, one Margaret Thatcher

Leaving with one decent O Level in music Toyah was determined to make her mark as a singer and an actor. Since then she’s had 13 Top 40 singles and worked with the likes of Katherine Hepburn, Sir Laurence Olivier and Derek Jarman

Most recently she was at the Edinburgh Festival with "Picasso’s Women”. But perhaps the most famous lines she’s ever uttered are “over the hills and far away, Teletubbies come to play”

Now at the age of 42 Toyah’s written her autobiography “Living Out Loud” and she joins me. Toyah, 42 and writing your life story. It’s a bit soon isn’t?

TOYAH: I know, I do hope I have got another 40 years actually but I’m glad I did because I’d have forgotten if I was to write it at 80. I wouldn’t have the memories. And the time was right. It’s extraordinary when you're asked to do something, apart from the flattery, if the time isn’t right the energy doesn’t flow

I was asked a year ago to write this and I sat down and couldn’t stop writing for a year. Memories came back to me I’ve never even thought about. Memories of my mother putting my nappy on -

MARTHA: I can’t believe you remember having a nappy change, c'mon! (laughs)

TOYAH: I remember it so clearly because of the size of the safety pin! And how I could control my mother by controlling my bowels or by not controlling them as soon as that flannel nappy went on

MARTHA: I mean the impression I got was that you have packed an enormous amount into those 42 years and the bit that we just heard there ("I Want To Be Free" when the programe began) - the songs from the punk period ...  What do you think when you hear that now? Is that like another person or a long time ago?

TOYAH: It’s totally another person, it’s another time, another culture. I was playing some music to a friend the other day and I don’t often do this and he said “gosh, it’s very dramatic isn’t it?”

It was back then, the punk era and going into the New Romantic movement - it was very melodramatic, high drama, high expression. Almost Brechtian taken from that sort of German culture of extremism. It is another person because I just wouldn’t do that now

MARTHA: But the anger that was there in the punk movement although I personally think you were one of the more polite punks at the time. You didn’t seem quite as threatening as the others. But some of that anger and in the book you say you are an angry person, you would be lost without -

TOYAH: Oh, anger’s so important, as long as the anger doesn’t control you. I just didn’t think you could be creative without anger. Passivity and happiness, probably the worst things a creative person could have. Conflict is bliss - I hate to say it. I mean it does keep you awake at night but it does earn you an income

MARTHA: But the way you describe your childhood it sounds like you had a lot to be angry about because you had a lisp, you were dyslexic at school, you also had a slight disability - although you say it wasn’t until you actually started school that you realised -

TOYAH: I was not aware of my disability until I started school -

MARTHA: Which was ... one leg was -

TOYAH: Yeah, I’ve got one longer than the other so as a child I had quite a bad limp and I had a twisted spine as well. But it wasn’t until I got to school I realised I had a lisp and children are quick to point that out. They create a pecking order and I went straight to the bottom of that pecking order

MARTHA: Was it a miserable time?

TOYAH: Psychologically it was a very difficult time, I had a lot to work out. They say the building blocks of your life really happen from the day you’re born until you're about five

There was a lot to make me angry in that period. But if it hadn’t happened I wouldn’t be who I am today so I’m very grateful for all that bullying because it just made me tough

MARTHA: You also say that your parents were over protective and say their attitude left you lacking in confidence. But just listening to the description of yourself - they sounded like they needed to protect you?

TOYAH: Yes, they didn’t let me go out much at night. And this is a warning to all parents - how far do you take that protection? If you stop a child being confident and independent ... that happened with me a lot

There was an episode where someone tried to abduct my sister (Nicola, above with Toyah), a man, and they just would not let me out of their sight after that happened

Which is understandable but I was still being kept in at the age of 14. I think people have to spread their wings, they have to make mistakes, they have to learn by those mistakes. You can’t do that in your bedroom

MARTHA: And you did have huge battles with your mum (below with Toyah) which you go into in the book. The two of you were often sparring with each other but if you look at her life and the way you describe it - she gave up this successful career, she was married terribly young - what (at) 19, wasn't it?

TOYAH: 19

MARTHA: And she ended up with three kids in the suburbs - 

TOYAH: Yeah

MARTHA: - but still managed to drive around in a pink Triumph convertible (laughs) with leopard skin seats. Do you think she must’ve been kicking the walls sometimes with frustration?

TOYAH: Totally! But I think also that - I say in the book I sipped her frustrations while I was in the womb. My mother is a wonderful mother, she’s the one that taught me how to walk. She was one that was trained to give me the physio therapy to straighten my own spine so twice a day we would go through this routine

So she was the disciplinarian figure in my life from a very - well, right from when I can remember. So it was natural she was the first person I should rebel against. And I regret that our relationship was very often violent. Very uncivil, very cruel and unkind -

MARTHA: What’s it like now?

TOYAH: It’s good, it’s good now. We learned to compromise with each other. We’re still opposites, we’re still polarised but at the same time I would go to war to protect my parents. I have such love and loyalty towards them

That incompatibility has nothing to do with it, the bond is beyond that. I feel very strongly towards my mum but she sacrificed everything to give me the freedom I have today

MARTHA: You also talk a lot about your battles with your weight, this pressure on you. In fact you starved yourself and you popped pills to try to conform to the ideal body -

TOYAH: Yes

MARTHA: But I remember seeing you play “Trafford Tanzi” on stage and you were very small, very muscular and strong and it was such a joy to see another body shape for women. Did you actually feel confident at the time or did you still feel you had to be thinner?

TOYAH: At the time of “Trafford Tanzi” I felt great because that show was like doing a 4 hour workout every day. I felt fantastic during that show but I am a muscular person by nature. I still tend to starve myself. There’s a difference between anorexic starvation and not over eating

If you over eat you’re encouraging the body to age quicker and you just not suppose to over eat. I’ve had to learn over the years to only eat enough to stop feeling hungry

MARTHA: It’s denial?

TOYAH: Well, it is slightly but I do think as a society we gorge ourselves. But back in the rock days I would starve myself. I mean it was wrong. I would go without food for three days and that’s ludicrous. The pressure was to be a young sexual creature. How many overweight people get to the Top 4 in the charts? They just don’t

MARTHA: Women?

TOYAH: Well, women especially, yes

MARTHA: One of the nice episodes in the book that you talk about is the unlikely friendship you struck up with Katherine Hepburn (below with Toyah) when you were working on one of your very first film roles “The Corn Is Green”

TOYAH: Yeah

MARTHA: That seemed an unlikely partnership?

TOYAH: I had a brilliant agent that managed to persuade the casting director that I had to be seen for this film and Katherine said she fell in love with me as soon I walked into the room. She loved my eyes, she said they were full of fire. She explained to be while we were filming that she was ridiculed so badly for being different at the beginning of her career

She said she looked and sounded like a man, she was masculine, she had no grace and yet ironically that is what we remember and love her for. And she had a terrible time with the critics and someone asked me what’s the best thing Katherine could be remembered for and I’d say she proved her critics wrong. Stunning woman. A true feminist in every way

MARTHA: You’ve taken some tough decisions in your career and in your life. One of them you talk about openly in the book is the decision not to have children. The fact that you said there was pressure on you but you had no maternal instincts whatsoever and in fact you were sterilised while still in your twenties. Is that a decision you’ve ever had any regrets about?

TOYAH: No. The morning I woke up from the operation I was in tears. I felt I’d interfered with my femininity but since then no. You don’t have a child just because a woman, you have a child because you have calling

I did not want to be put in a position of terminating a birth when I felt so strongly that actually psychologically being pregnant would damage me. It was something that I really really thought about. I perhaps suffered for six weeks after but since then it's been a liberation

MARTHA: And briefly ... 42, middle-aged (laughs) you call yourself - what does the furture hold?

TOYAH: Am I middle aged though? If we're going to live to a hundred, I’m approaching middle age!

MARTHA: Well, we look forward to hearing back (from you) as you say in the next 40 years. Toyah, thank you very much for joining us and that biography, “Living Out Loud" is published today

TOYAH: Thank you

You can listen to the interview HERE