TOYAH ON
LIFE AND TIMES
WITH VANESSA FELTZ
BBC1
2000

VANESSA (voiceover) From punk rocker to Shakespearean actress, distinctive sounding singer to religious programmes presenter Toyah Willcox has had a surprisingly varied career. Toyah was born in 1958 into a middle class family in Birmingham and had a difficult start in life

TOYAH: When the midwife delivered me, apparently the first thing my mother said “is everything there?” and the midwife said “yes ... but” because the right side had developed and the left hadn't so it was just overdeveloped. I had longer legs, longer arms. Clawed feet

So everything was turning in like that (twists her arms) and a twisted spine, but relatively easy to deal with. I apparently went into plaster for six weeks. That was to set the spine and the legs. And then when all that came off, it hadn't worked. So it started 10 years of physiotherapy which my mother was taught to give me

VANESSA: It's quite amazing to hear somebody describe themselves as non-perfect. I think most people don't even have to grapple with the concept of whether they're perfect or not. They just are

TOYAH: I wasn't aware of it until I went to school and then I became known as Hopalong. Because of the gate how I walked and also because my speech impediment was very, very bad then. I could hardly speak at all

And apparently my tongue used to hang out of my mouth, which was comical. So people were very, very cruel and it was only when I was with other children that I was aware of my imperfections. Otherwise, I was quite happy (laughs)

VANESSA: What you are as a little kid, who, as you say, is not quite perfect and of course you were, as I suppose could have only been expected, quite badly bullied at school

TOYAH: I was badly bullied, but I was an incredible tomboy. I've always loathed being a girl. My fight against gender started very early. So at school I was incredibly boisterous. I was the one who was always breaking bones, always smashing my teeth

I can remember, at the age of five, climbing a climbing frame in pouring rain, mud below me and tight rope walking this climbing frame. I came off it, smashed my nose, smashed my teeth and then started to play with the blood. I really was a very weird kid. And I think even though people bullied me they were slightly wary of me

VANESSA (voiceover) Even at a tender age Toyah was starting to rebel against society's views of what the future held for her as a woman

TOYAH: I was brought up in a time when women had expectations about their future forced upon them. And I loathe every angle of those expectations. Marriage, children. If you're lucky you could be a secretary, or you may go to university and be a doctor, but you would retire and have children and you would settle down and you'd run the house. I'd rather be dead than have any of those things

VANESSA (voiceover) 1970: Toyah’s mother was taken into hospital with a serious illness

TOYAH: It was my 12th birthday. I got out of bed and no one could find her. She she wasn't in the house, which was completely unusual because she always drove me to school - otherwise I wouldn't go. And she always made us breakfast. She’d disappeared. Couldn't find her

VANESSA (voiceover) Toyah’s mother feared that she was dying and didn't want the children to see her in such pain

TOYAH: I got a phone call at the school. The headmistress called me into the office to tell me that my mother was possibly going to die. She'd been found hiding under my brother's bed where her bladder had burst because of a gallstone. Imagine the pain! So I wasn't allowed to visit her even though I was told that she was dying. And within the month or two months she was away I changed. I changed radically

By the time my mother got back she was unrecognisable. She'd probably gone down to about six and a half stone. Clothes were just hanging off and I walked in the house and dad came out of the kitchen and said “there's someone here to see you”. And Mum walked out and I really really wanted to hug her and I didn’t and that was the end of our relationship for a long time

VANESSA: Have you hugged her since? (Toyah shakes her head) Why not?

TOYAH: Umm … Not a hugging family. There's big barriers. (Toyah’s visibly upset) But we know we love each other. (Above, Toyah with her dad Beric and brother Kim)

VANESSA: So at this point punk arrives on the scene. For you it must have been a gift from heaven because it must have been all you were looking for in some kind of rebellious expression

TOYAH: It was fantastic because the first time in the world I realised that wasn't alone. I went to a club, I went to “Bogarts” - this was in Birmingham and I heard that the Sex Pistols were playing. I thought never heard of them but I'll go anyway and I walked into this club and there were 300 people in this club that all looked like me

VANESSA: How did you look at the time?

TOYAH: I had black hair but I had green and yellow at the front and the back was all yellow. So I was very punky and I was dressing in bustbin liners and I had a little kind of Andy Pandy (a 1950s children's TV series) suit which I dyed black and I was wearing that and up until this point I'd be laughed at in the street, buses wouldn't stop for me and taxes wouldn't take me home

VANESSA: Explain the appeal of something which is so, on the face of it, unattractive and repellent

TOYAH: I disagree!

VANESSA: Unappealing!

TOYAH: I just I thought I looked really beautiful

VANESSA: Oh, you thought you looked gorgeous?

TOYAH: Yeah, I thought it was the best way I could look. And up until that point I'd always wanted to look different because I felt different. My expression of punk was I wanted to show how I was feeling internally - that I didn't feel part of the norm. I didn't feel part of everyday life. So I wanted to express it. And this gave me a licence to do it and I did it with a vengeance and I felt extraordinarily beautiful

What I liked about this was it made the kind of gender statements that I have been desperate to make all the time. And that was I am not a woman. I am not a man. I am a person and it works

VANESSA: It's around this time in your teens that you become involved with the Old Rep Theatre and do you start thinking "I want to be an actress" yet? Have you sort of always had that thought?

TOYAH: I knew I wanted to act and sing the first time I saw "The Sound Of Music" with Julie Andrews running up that hill in that opening sequence. When I started the Birmingham Rep Theatre School I was 14. I started going Friday evenings for my dancing lessons. Saturday morning for drama

I knew exactly what I wanted by then and I wouldn't be swayed. Even a visit to the careers officer when I was 15 - I sat down in the office and she said “what do you want to be?” and I said “I'm going to be an actress and I'm going to be a singer.” And she said “yes, of course” and then put some leaflets about nursing in front of me. I just left the room and I said “just remember my name because one day everyone will know it”

VANESSA (voiceover) 1975: Toyah left school with one O-level and started full time at drama school and she soon got a job as a dresser to actress Sylvia Syms

TOYAH: I loved it. I'm very good at being subservient in a perverse sort of way. As soon as I walked into Sylvia Sym’s dressing room on the Monday - she was on tour, she arrived at the Alexandra Theatre in Birmingham and I walked in and I said “is there anything I can do for you, Miss Syms?” and she said “oh, I was starving!” So I went off and got her a sandwich and I said “when do you like your cup of tea? And how do you like it?”

So she always had a cup of tea at the beginning of the show, in the middle of the show and then at the end, and it was absolutely fine because I had the privilege of standing in the wings watching her work, which taught me more than any theatre school could ever teach me

I loved dressing. I dressed Simon Williams, Sylvia Syms, the whole of Dad’s Army, which was a difficult experience because I was madly in love with Ian Lavender, who would not wear clothes when I was in his dressing room. So that was my first experience of lust

VANESSA: There must have been something remarkable about you. I mean obviously there is because you were a dresser and suddenly you're kind of discovered. Somebody sees you and realises that you're not just going to be a dresser. You're going to be an actress

TOYAH: I was paying my way through drama school by dressing and also doing extra work. My very first day’s extra work at Pebble Mill BBC I made £12. And it was on a retro play about a 1950s rock band with Kate Nelligan starring in and all I had to do was sit at the cafe table watching the band. But little did I realise that everyone was watching me. And I was getting all the close ups in the scene even though I didn't have to talk

So the next day I get a call at the theatre school from a director who'd heard about me and wanted to meet me. He was called Nick Bicât and he was trying to cast a young girl in a play. The story was this young girl wanted to appear on Top Of The Pops so badly she breaks into the studio. So Nick came to the drama school to see me and that was it. I got the part, a lead in play ("Glitter", above)

VANESSA: Just like that

TOYAH: Just like that

VANESSA: I know the drama school kept saying “no, audition all the others” -

TOYAH: Yeah, they refused to tell Nick who I was. And they refused to let him see me singly because I wasn't the best student. And so Nick came. He knew who I was immediately. He said I just stood out in the crowd and I went down to London and auditioned but he just knew I'd got the part

A clip of “Glitter” plays

TOYAH: A wonderful irony from this was that when it showed on telly three months later, Kate Nelligan was watching it, not knowing who I was and that I'd been an extra that day in her play. And she said to Maximilian Schell, who was directing at the National Theatre - “that girl has to be in our play” So I was called down to the National Theatre and joined the company. I was the youngest member of the National Theatre Company in 1976

VANESSA (voiceover) Offers of work flowed thick and fast for Toyah. Derek Jarman cast her in the role of “Mad”, a pyromaniac in his punk film “Jubilee”. And in sharp contrast, she worked opposite Katharine Hepburn in the film “The Corn Is Green”

1979 was the year that Toyah played the part of “Monkey” in the film “Quadrophenia”, and on television the part of “Sal” (in "Quatermass")

TOYAH: When I got “Quatermass” I was finishing off “Quadrophenia”, so I was night shooting “Quadrophenia” and day shooting “Quartermass”. So I actually got pneumonia halfway through that. Sir John Mills was in it and I was playing this kind of tribal love child who was wanting to go to another planet in a spaceship

VANESSA (voiceover) Despite her success as an actress what Toyah really wanted was to be famous for her music. She formed a band but the rock and roll lifestyle took its toll on her health

TOYAH: I formed the band and I realised that if I wasn't sexually attractive to the audience, I wasn't going to be doing the band any favours

VANESSA: Through your teens you did balloon and get quite potch

TOYAH: Yeah. When I was 20 I was a good three stone heavier than I am now. Purely I think because I was lonely, therefore rather than doing what normal people do at night I was eating

VANESSA: Was it an effort to to lose weight ultimately?

TOYAH: I started taking diet pills but I've taken them recreationally. You could buy them in the bags and just you know, pop them away. And it would mean I'd go on average three days without eating, have a meal, three days about eating, have a meal

Why I'm still alive I think is a miracle. Because I was taking about five of these really strong amphetamines a day and not sleeping. Drinking an awful lot of alcohol to try and come down from it. And I went from being about 11 and a half stone - and I'm only five foot tall - to being seven stone

I was just a person of extremes and I do have an addictive nature. I like my habits. I like extremes. I like danger. I'm a real adrenaline junkie. So the whole attraction of popping amphetamine and frightening living daylights out of people because I’d do the most stupid things like climb roofs, climb cranes, steal cars. (It was a) really mad time in my life

VANESSA (voiceover) 1981 was the year that propelled Toyah to stardom with her first hit “It's A Mystery”. Finally her childhood dream became a reality

TOYAH: It was heaven. The day before, just lounging in the bath at midday, and the phone rang and it was the record company saying “you're on Top Of The Pops tomorrow” and I said “how?! Why?!” And they said “It's A Mystery" has gone straight into the Top 40” I was like “nooo!” (pulls a face) because I hated “It’s A Mystery”

I thought it was the worst song I've ever recorded. And they said “no, it's true.” And when I turned up, at BBC Wood Lane … oh, I was just so excited! I can't tell you how wonderful it was. And in retrospect, it was probably the most boring day of my life. You just sit around in the dressing room all day and then do your song

I was bullied about everything … Everyone ridiculed me for saying I wanted to sing. Here ... I had the flag and I was putting it on top of Everest for the first time. It was fantastic! (Below, performing "It's A Mystery" on Top Of The Pops 19.2.1981)

VANESSA (voiceover) In 1983 things went from strength to strength for Toyah. Her music career was booming and her fame began to escalate

TOYAH: “It’s A Mystery” moved me into the league which was commercial success and being an international name. And not being able to drive down any road without seeing posters with my face on in every shop window

VANESSA (voiceover) Just when she thought it couldn't get any better she was offered a part alongside Sir Laurence Olivier in a TV drama (Below, "The Ebony Tower", Toyah with co-stars Laurence Olivier, Roger Rees and Greta Scacchi)

TOYAH: I wasn't in awe of working with Laurence Olivier because I'd worked with Katharine Hepburn so many years earlier, and I knew what to expect. That generation of actors has an etiquette that you must keep to. You either call them Sir or Madam or Lord Olivier

And with Lord Olivier ... we just sat and talked hour upon hour about when he formed the National Theatre, when he worked with Marilyn Monroe, when he met Joan Plowright, when he married Vivian Lee

We got on incredibly well and as for working with him, the hardest thing was that he and Katharine Hepburn worked at a different pace. Modern style of acting is much more natural, it's much more quicker, it's much more throwaway. So you had to just bear in mind that you're making those two generations meet. But it was a really fabulous film to work on. We were treated like stars

VANESSA (voiceover while a clip from “The Ebony Tower” plays) Toyah had to strip off completely during some of the scenes

TOYAH: As I was maturing, I wanted to be a sexier person. So part of me really wanted to do those naked scenes, yet the rest of me was aware that I was kind of kneeling, therefore my breasts weren’t going to be seen from the best point of view and my thighs weren't going to look good

So it was worrying and I starved myself two months to do those scenes. But once you're actually doing it and your director has actually kindly stripped off to be naked with you, there is a kind of enjoyment about it

VANESSA (voiceover) In 1985 at a charity lunch Princess Michael of Kent introduced Toyah to rock guitarist Robert Fripp from the band King Crimson (below with Toyah)

TOYAH: He approached me to do a charity album with him. So I moved down to his studio in his house near Bournemouth and worked with him and within a week he proposed!

VANESSA: What made you say yes to him so very quickly?

TOYAH: He is the most extraordinary human being I've ever known. He's kind, spiritual, super intelligent and does not manipulate you in any way through fear or intellectualism. He straight down the line. He's truthful, to the point of hurting but you can't help but admire someone like that

And I knew as soon as I met him that this was someone that I could take that journey with where you grow, where everything is an event. I thought this will make a really good marriage

VANESSA (voiceover) And on “This Is Your Life” Toyah’s husband made his feelings for her extremely clear after hearing “Freedom”, the track they wrote together

(Clip of “This Is Your Life” plays: MICHAEL PARKINSON: Robert, that music really did come from the heart ROBERT: (tearfully) I fell in love with my little wife when she sang that and I haven’t fallen out of love with her since)

VANESSA: They look like tears are the most acute love. I've never seen anything like it! (Toyah laughs) He's just sobbing at the sheer vista of you being, there, isn’t he?

TOYAH: He's extraordinary. He really really loves me. At the same time he’ll go go off on tour for a year and he will phone me up in tears every day telling me how much he loves me. He's an extraordinary pot of juxtapositions. He really loves me, but we see very little of each other

VANESSA: I was just going to ask you about that because this is a dynamic that fascinates everybody whoever holds fort about the subject of your marriage. Why does he have to be away so much?

TOYAH: He’ll never be at home! He'll never do it

VANESSA: What's he doing all the time? Why is he always away and why don't you just go with him? And why aren't you together more? What’s it all about? (Toyah laughs)

TOYAH: I refuse to be a rock and roll wife. My career has always been my priority. And it's the same with him. We're nomadic, basically. We are both nomadic and the distance between us actually holds us together

VANESSA: You don’t want to be separate! You want to be together!

TOYAH: You do in the beginning, and I think then children come and children hold that mesh together. But we we didn't have that in the equation of our relationship

VANESSA: It's not an accident that there are no children. You took the decision to be sterilised and it's what you wanted to do and yet having done it, you immediately felt, you say, robbed of your femininity

TOYAH: Yeah. Very, very odd feeling. Knowing I didn't want children, knowing I didn't want to accidentally get pregnant and go through all those decisions of whether you keep it or lose it. And there was another factor - because I don't have a full socket in the hip on the right side that can dislocate. I have to be very, very careful with dislocation

So pregnancy would have meant that I'd have to spend the last three months of the pregnancy kind of in a chair or lying down. So I got sterilised. There's no problem in me making that decision, but when I woke up after the sterilisation I thought “what have I done? I've I've actually played with God's decision of who and what I am”. I felt very strange about it. Now I don't at all, but for the first year of being sterilised, I felt weird

VANESSA: So no part of you now thinks, oh gosh, I wish I’d just left it to chance or happenstance?

TOYAH: (Shakes her head) I really am very, very firm in knowing that I don't want children. Obviously now I'm 42 ... I mean, I suppose I could, but I've never had those feelings or that calling never

VANESSA (voiceover) In 1991 Toyah started presenting television programmes. (Back at the interview) This is yet another unexpected incarnation. By this time you've been so many people and done so many things. Classical Shakespearian actress, you've been an absolute top selling singer and suddenly you’re a TV presenter. Did you ever dream of doing something like that?

TOYAH: No! Never dreamed of doing Panto either! (Vanessa laughs) What happened was I was in Los Angeles visiting Robert who was working on an album and a phone call came from England. And it was my agent and she said, “Oh, you really don't want to do this. But there's this programme that's asked you to present it” and I said, “well, actually yes, I do!”

Because I'd never done it and I wanted the experience and it was the Midlands version of “01-For London”. It was called “First Night” and I spent a year doing that. It taught me how to present, taught me how to interview. taught me how to write as a journalist, and I haven't looked back since then

VANESSA (voiceover) For the next 10 years Toyah went on to present a rich variety of television and radio programmes. (Back at the interview) Nobody can say you're not a grafter, you're extremely hard working and always have been

TOYAH: I love my work. I live for my work, and nothing can substitute my work. I'm very, very honest about that and my friends understand that and my husband understands that in a way that he's the same. I only get any sense of calm or satisfaction when I'm working

If I'm not working, I'm almost a manic depressive. I'm just not worth knowing. But now I'm slowly moving back towards being a film actress and TV actress with doing “Barmy Aunt Boomerang”, which is a BBC children's programme (Below with Richard Madden)

VANESSA: By the way my children say congratulations on your Australian accent - it’s magnificent

TOYAH: (in a thick Aussie accent) Oh, bless them sweetheart. I think that's just so kind, dear little Sheilas (Back to normal accent) I do “Aunt Boomerang”, which I based on Barry Humphries (who plays "Dame Edna Everage") (they both laugh) I just finished the feature film “Most Fertile Man In Ireland”

VANESSA: Tell me about that

TOYAH: I was working in Malaysia, got a phone call - could I do a day's filming in Dublin? So I got the next plane to Dublin. Shot all my scenes in one day and a miniscule role but the pivotal role in the whole story

I play a fertility doctor who cannot have children in Northern Ireland who finds a man that is so fertile he can make sterile women pregnant. It’s a comedy (they both laugh) And there you have it. A day's filming and I'm in, really, one of the best films that will be out next year

VANESSA: What do you think the future holds? How would you like it to pan out?

TOYAH: How I’d like it is very different probably what it holds. I would still like to sing but it's got to be on my terms. I can't handle huge fame like that ever again. I love my independence. I love being able to walk into a supermarket and browse but I want to be a film actress, a TV actress and I want to sing and I want to write books but I know I will not be sitting at home being idle

VANESSA: I have a feeling all those things will happen and more. I would not be surprised if you were suddenly an astronaut. I really wouldn't! (Toyah laughs) Toyah Willcox, thank you very much indeed

TOYAH: Thank you

You can watch the programme HERE