TOYAH ON
WORD IN YOUR ATTIC
WITH DAVID HEPWORTH
AND MARK ELLEN
15.7.2021

MARK: Welcome to another Word In Your Attic and we’re joined by somebody who’s records and film and stage roles have been eclipsed recently by her absolutely brilliant and riotously entertaining clips recorded in her kitchen in Worcestershire and it's the eternally terrific Toyah Willcox! Toyah, welcome! 

TOYAH: Thank you so much. Good to see you both. This is quite an event. I've never seen a record collection such as the one that's behind. You both look as though you spend all your time with the head in books or listening to records.

MARK: Well, that's pretty much true. Dave's aren't real, actually. It's just a wallpaper.

DAVID: It's green screen (Toyah laughs)

MARK: I can't tell you what fun we've had out of your clips. I can remember one you did the beginning of lockdown last year. You and your husband Robert Fripp, and you're dressed as bees and you're cavorting around the giant garden. And they have been so funny. Are they called "Toyah & Robert Sunday Lunch"?

TOYAH: Yes

MARK: And you've done a Stones cover. You've done a Bowie one and an Eurythmics one. How did they come about? What made you start doing them?

TOYAH: We've even done System Of A Down. With the beginning of lockdown - Robert says he was OK with it. He went kind of into an internal, very deep meditative condition. That's how he puts it and what I saw was someone who just wasn't moving and I needed to get him moving. So I started to teach him how to dance and what was absolutely extraordinary is this man, who can play music for 20 minutes, 11 notes a second and not drop a note, can not dance. He can't put one foot in front of the other and I realised he's as dyspraxic as me.

So I started to teach him to dance. Put these little clips out and really immediately we were getting 100,000 messages back and this was extraordinary considering we were in lockdown. So we started to do it regularly. Then we moved into music and all of this is being a bit of an uphill struggle because my husband felt it was going against his integrity and how he is represented in the world. What really kept him going was the amount of people that wrote back and said "thank you, you saved my life" and at that point we just never stopped

MARK: I saw one recently where he's got a mohican and he's painted all these fake tattoos all over

TOYAH: I do all that

MARK: I was thinking this is just not the Robert Fripp that I remember when I was a kid buying King Crimson albums (laughs)

TOYAH: No, but what he is is the Robert Fripp he really is. I think he created music that just put layers and layers and layers between him and who he really was. He's come out in lockdown as a serious hard rocker. That mohican is the real Robert Fripp (Mark and David laugh)

DAVID: So you produce and direct these efforts. You must spend a lot of time thinking about them? So you turn up every week “this week, we're going to do this theme” -

TOYAH: Yeah. Because we're so successful now we plan four weeks ahead. In lockdown we just turned up four in the afternoon and said let's do this. Now there’s incredible pre-planning, there's rehearsal.

DAVID: Really? Fantastic!

TOYAH: Yeah. Everything.

MARK: And you have another guitar player who wears strange masks?

TOYAH: Sidney Jake (above with Toyah) is my guitar teacher. He is the serious heavy rocker. He's the one that knows everything that's happened in the last 30 years. Whereas Robert and I know everything that's happened in the last 50 and 40 years. So you've brought together three people from very different backgrounds.

Sidney teaches me guitar and Sidney is Robert’s only face to face guitar student. So the dynamic is incredibly powerful in this house. I've gone from not being able to play piano or guitar to now composing on both. I will be playing guitar on stage in the autumn. In the last 15 months, all three of us just gone like that (makes an upwards movement)

DAVID: Really?

MARK: That’s really good. They are absolutely gripping. We traditionally start these encounters with talking about the record playing equipment that you can remember in the family home when you were growing up. You were born in Birmingham? Is that right?

TOYAH: Kings Heath in Birmingham, born 1958. We had the same Dansette mono record player from the day I was born probably until the day I left home at the age of 18.

DAVID: And what records were there? What records were around the family?

TOYAH: As a child there was a lot of brass bands. There was lot of Coldstream Guard music, which my father sang to every morning.

DAVID: Really?

TOYAH: Yeah

MARK: He sang to you?

TOYAH: Yeah, he sang and he'd march up and down the stairs.

MARK: So he’d be doing “Men of Harlech” or something?

TOYAH: I have no idea what music it was. I couldn't name any of it, but my father was tone deaf and he sang one note all the way through it. There was a lot of Tommy Steele in the house, “Little White Bull”. A lot of very early Cliff Richard and that kind of music. Julie Andrews. So I bought my first album . . .

DAVID: Oh, here we go . . .

TOYAH: I believe my very first album I bought was "Electric Warrior" (shows the record)

MARK AND DAVID: Oh OK

TOYAH: And that’s 71'. (In) Kings Heath for about 12 and six (12 shillings and sixpence), but I found this in my warehouse yesterday because we don't have attics here, everything's in the warehouse. This one in Birmingham . . . (shows the album) So this is a reggae album. This is 1970. In Birmingham every Saturday morning, The Locarno (dance hall/ballroom) would open to children from 10 in the morning till about 12:30, and we'd have disco’s.

There would be thousands of us dancing to reggae every Saturday morning and then when they chucked us out at 12:30 in the afternoon we would all run amok around Birmingham City centre. We’d be stealing shoes from shoe displays, we’d be stealing food from the market stalls. No one could stop us because there were so many of us an it was joyous. So I learnt to dance to -

DAVID: "Nebuchadnezzar and the Pharaohs", is that right? Wow!

MARK: That's fantastic.

DAVID: Never seen that before.

MARK: Your mum your mum was a dancer, wasn’t she? Didn’t she dance with Flanagan and Allen (a British singing and comedy double act in the 1930's and 40's)?

TOYAH: My mother - they gave her away at her wedding. My mother was on stage professionally from the age of 12. Her first newspaper review was she was 12. Barbara Courtland. And she was a professional dancer until she was 19 and she toured with Max Wall.

MARK: Wow!

DAVID: That’s incredible!

TOYAH: She was his opening act.

MARK: Did she give all that up when she became a mum? (Toyah with her mum, below)

TOYAH: Yeah, it's a very complex story with my mother that I only learned last Christmas and no one knew anything about her past. So she had a chaperone. She never had parents with her. Part of the reason for this and I can only verify this from what I've been told by ancestry.com . . . Her father murdered her mother. My mother witnessed this so my mother was completely disowned and disowned her father very early on. And so when my father saw her on stage and instantly fell in love with her, my mother was a very cosseted protected girl who had a chaperone, who never left her side.

When my mother accepted my father's proposal, she gave everything up and I can only imagine a child that was born during the war who had lost her mother in such terrible circumstances and disowned her father . . .  I would have thought the best thing that could have happened for her at that time was to be married to a wealthy man who would have protected her for the rest of her life. And that's what happened.

DAVID: Sorry, did you say that Flanagan and Allen gave her away?

TOYAH: At the wedding - she was given away, I believe - I've got no verification - all the kind of vaudeville acts she was working with at the time, and I think it was either Weston-super-Mare where she got married because she was performing there on the pier or it would have been Blackpool.

MARK: Do you remember her still? Could you see the old onstage hoofer in her when you were growing up? Was she doing routines in the kitchen?

TOYAH: No, she was never a hoofer. She was very secretive. We never knew this had happened to her. She wouldn't talk about her past at all. There was only one time she talked about her mother to me is when I found a little charm bracelet and she said “that was my mother’s” and that was it. She just gave me the charm bracelet but then in one of the videos I made for the new album “Posh Pop” I wear this locket (shows the locket) After her death I found this locket. It's got a picture of her mother in it, and it's probably what her mother wore when she died.

It's a very heavy story, but my mother would just would not – you’d say “what was it like? What did you do?” And she said, “don't ask me. Never ask me”. Right to the end she would not tell us anything and then last Christmas ancestry.com got in touch with me and said we need to talk to you and we need to have someone in the room with you when we tell you this and they said what happened and produced the paper cuttings. It's a very heavy story that has really influenced song on the new album called “Barefoot On Mars”, about the fact love is always there when you think it isn't it. Very very heavy . . .

DAVID: So let’s get back to talking about pop records! (they all laugh)

MARK: On a lighter note!

DAVID: So you learned to dance at the The Locarno in Birmingham. So you started with reggae. How did your musical taste, your particular musical interest developed from there?

TOYAH: Well, funnily enough going from reggae it went to Black Sabbath, “Paranoid”, Hawkwind "Silver Machine". I mean Birmingham, how could it not be so? I found this yesterday. This is 67’. I was nine in 67' so this must have been my brother’s - my brother is 5 years older. I have loved this album ever since I heard it and I thought I heard it on the tour bus going to Berlin 1979 as a punk performer and this was on the tour bus along with Peter Gabriel's “So” (NB "So" was released in 1986)

I've always had a passion for music that links together, so when I was at school and dealing with my dyslexia, I was always played Holst’s “Planet Suite” to get up and dance to so I could understand the movement of music and the barring of music - because of my dyslexia I was taught it through movement. So this for me was the modern version of Holst’s “Planet Suite". Moody Blues “Days Of Future Dreaming”.

But when I got that – “Electric Warrior” in 71’ which I bought with my pocket money - his was the real introduction for me to the music I loved and I just adored the guitar work of Marc Bolan, which remained pretty underrated until after his death and now look, you know that man has just influenced the hook line of guitar so much. But then I discovered – 72’  . . . I love this album!

DAVID: Alright! “School’s Out” Alice Cooper

MARK: With the knickers?

TOYAH: Paper knickers! (shows them) And my initials are on it so my brother wouldn't nick the album.

DAVID: So is that the original …? Wow!

TOYAH: These are all original!

DAVID: You autographed the pants?

TOYAH: I did so my brother wouldn't nick them (David laughs)

MARK: That is great! That’s got to be worth some money because how many of the pairs of pants would have survived?

TOYAH: And I've never worn them! But this is really big for me. 73’ Roxy Music and “For Your Pleasure”. This is one of the first and only times rock music has altered me as a person without me thinking of the artist image. So you ask me what is my favourite album of all time and I love Bowie. I love Alice Cooper. Absolutely adore Roxy Music. But this album affected me creatively without the image of the band influencing me. It's a complete piece of music that breaks every rule for me and that for me is what music should be about. Rule breaking.

DAVID: Right. Did you go and see these bands when you were a kid?

MARK: Who was the first – can you remember the first group you ever saw?

TOYAH: Yeah, I broke into a Black Sabbath show at the age of 11. I got in through the fire exit. It was bloody loud! It hurt. It wasn't terribly full. It was again something like The Locarno or the Top Rank in the Bullring Shopping Centre. And I got in and I just stood there like an only girl with all these headbangers. Made my own clothes as I did back then and I was in this kind of felt smock thingy with an elephant transfer I made and I just stood there watching the audience who were very, very intense.

But I'd say it was only half full. It was blisteringly loud. And then I got the night bus home without my parents knowing I've done this. And then really quite quickly after that I did the same routine - in through the fire exit, same location, and saw Hawkwind. And Hawkwind for me was an eye opener because of Marcia.

MARK AND DAVID: Stacia

TOYAH: Stacia! Stacia was in the auditorium, completely naked, body painted and I was thinking I ain't going near that woman and I knew nothing about her, but in retrospect she has really given me courage in the last 45 years because she was groundbreaking in what she did and I loved the theatre of Hawkwind

MARK: It's incredible. Fantastic light show. Brilliant!

TOYAH: Again, I was there on my own and I couldn't understand why these skinheads, because there was a lot of skinheads around back then, kept coming up to me offering what looked like aspirin, and I was a child and they come up and they said “take that, take that” and I said “no I’m fine, I don’t have a headache”.

DAVID: You were 11 or 12 - is this right? How old were you? You go out on your own at the age of 11?

MARK: It’s credible courage to have done that. It’s phenomenal!

TOYAH: All of my circle of friends did this and we’d go off to the strangest places. By the time I was 14 I was running off and sleeping rough. If my parents went on holiday, I'd just go off and sleep rough here where I live now and sleep in the barns and I wouldn't go home until my parents came back off holiday because no one could find you back then (laughs) (Toyah as a teenager, above)

MARK: That’s true

DAVID: People couldn't find you before the mobile phone. You were off-grid very quickly. So did you ever do that traditional girls thing - you're getting dressed respectfully, so called, to go out and then getting changed round the friend's house or something like that?

TOYAH: When I went to see T Rex at the Birmingham Odeon, which would have been about 1972, I went to an all girls school so a friend and I, we went to a ladies toilet at Five Ways, which is a huge roundabout with public loos underneath it. We went in there, we put on our glitter teardrops, we put on our satin trousers and shirts. And as we walked out of the ladies there was that bitch of a maths teacher. I mean she really was a cow and she walked us back to the school. She made us wash our faces and get back in the uniform and then what we did was we ran all the way back to Five Ways. Got changed again and got to the Odeon just in time.

And I was on the front row with my friend and we were standing and back then it was that dance (does the shoulders back and forth dance) I remember us getting punched by security because they didn't want us standing and they kept punching us in the back and this did nothing but just fire my independence and rebellion.

And I'm literally about 10 feet from Marc Bolan when he sat cross legged next to Mickey Finn and sang “Cosmic Dancer”. And it was breathtaking. It's probably the only time that evening I shut up because everyone in the room was screaming and then about five years later, I headlined the Birmingham Odeon myself. No, no, no! About 12 years later! It was magnificent!

MARK: Incredible. So have you got more to show us? Because I think you went to see the Pistols in . . . ?

TOYAH: Yeah, I did and I saw David Bowie’s Ziggy Stardust in Coventry about 72’ - 73’. But the Pristols …. (rolls eyes) the Pistols! (Toyah and Mark laugh) By the time the Pistols were about I had been dying my hair for at least two years and making my own clothes. I was a hair model for a department store in Birmingham called Rackhams. I was about 14 and someone said to me “you need to go and see this band called the Sex Pistols” because I felt that - I was inspired by the Rocky Horror Picture Show - the movie. Little Nell. I knew I wanted to be of that ilk. That breed of person.

I was making my own clothes. Hair model, travelling the country for Wella, doing hair shows and someone said “you should go and see the Sex Pistols because I think you belong with that generation” and I walked into a club called Bogarts, on my own, in my homemade clothes with my yellow and green hair and I just literally looked around the audience and I thought fuck! There's more people like me in Birmingham!

And we all kind of looked at each other and thought where the hell have you come from? And that was it. There was no turning back. The show itself was challenging. We as Brummies didn't know how to transition into the London thinking of the Sex Pistols so all we Brummies would have come from Bowie, Alice Cooper, Black Sabbath, Led Zeppelin. That's our roots and suddenly we were watching the Sex Pistols thinking what is this and how do we respond?

And I remember Johnny Rotten being really angry with us. He walked off about three times saying we were absolutely fucking boring, but I found it mesmerising. It was the most mesmerising night and very quickly I got spotted by a TV director. Starred in the play at Pebble Mill called “Glitter” (below) where I had to write music with a band Bilbo Baggins and perform it and immediately - I mean literally a couple of months later I was at the National Theatre

MARK: Phil Daniels was in (“Glitter”) wasn’t he?

TOYAH: Phil Daniels and Noel Edmonds.

DAVID: Noel Edmunds?

MARK: Noel Edmunds – playing what part?

TOYAH: The irony of the story of “Glitter” - there's so many ironies in this half hour production. One is the story of a girl who breaks into the Top Of The Pops studios to perform a song she's written. The whole play was about that. I had to go to London and audition with Phil Daniels not knowing that a couple of years later I'd be in “Quadrophenia” with him and that play “Glitter” at that time is what got me through into “Quadrophenia” because when I met Franc Roddam - which is another Sex Pistol story, I'm going to try and string
together -

DAVID AND MARK: Yeah, good

TOYAH: OK. So I get “Glitter”. First professional job of my life. Noel Edmonds playing himself. Premise - we're in the Top Of The Pops studios. There's a band there called Bilbo Baggins, gorgeous boys, who helped me write and compose the songs and they actually perform the songs with me. And at the time they were like the big brother to Bay City Rollers. I moved to London, (I was) in the National Theatre, formed the Toyah band, and two years later Franc Roddam, the director, huge documentary maker, says could I get John Lydon - Johnny Rotten through a screen test for a movie called “Quadrophenia”?

So I did a few kind of meetings John Lydon. He was delightful. He was a gentleman, utterly brilliant, super intelligent. We went to Shepperton (studios). He played “Jimmy”, the role of “Quadrophenia”. I played “Steph” and I never heard another thing. Eventually I was in a studio in Wembley, making a movie with Katherine Hepburn and I knew the production studio of “Quadrophenia” had set up and Franc Roddam’s office was on the ground floor.

So I just went and banged on his window and I said “give me a job!” and he said, “well, there's nothing I can give you” and I said “I know you haven't cast “Monkey”. We’re in the same building. I know what's going on.” So he said, “come on in” and there was Phil Daniels and Franc Roddam said to me “if you can perform this scene with Phil Daniels - you have the role of “Monkey”. Well, Phil and I were like brother and sister.

MARK: Old pals

TOYAH: Yeah and we did the scene and I got the job.

DAVID: Extraordinary! I’ve got to just take you back a second. Katherine Hepburn!

TOYAH: Yeah

DAVID: What did you do with Katherine Hepburn?

TOYAH: “The Corn Is Green" (below). (Written by) Emlyn Williams

DAVID: A stage play?

TOYAH: No, it was movie. It was a TV film made by Lorimar, who I believe did something like “Dallas” or “Knott’s Landing”. And it was directed by George Cukor, who directed Judy Garland in “A Star Is Born”

DAVID: Of course! Katherine Hepburn. So have you got a Katharine Hepburn story?

TOYAH: I've got many!

DAVID: Oh go on, give us one!

TOYAH: She took to me big time. When I was sent for the audition I had just left the National Theatre and I had bright red hair. But when I was appearing at the National Theatre they made me a wig because I was playing a 13 year old girl and the wig was long brown hair. So my agent phoned me and said “you're going to go and meet Katherine Hepburn and George Cukor in the morning to read the role of “Bessie Watty”. Please can you look normal?” No irony in her voice. “You will look normal”.

So I went along in the brown wig. Adored this gorgeous American elderly couple, knew nothing about them and I got the job and I was asked to go back the next day. So I went back with my red hair. And George Cukor opened the door and he looked at my hair and he said would I like to take my hat off? And I said “this is my hair”. And George could lose his temper and you could see the face get redder and redder. And he marched me into the lounge.

So it became pretty obvious it's Katherine that wanted me to play “Bessie Watty” and not George. And Geroge Cukor said “can you see this girl's hair?! It’s bright red!” and Katherine stood up and she put her fingers through my hair and went (does an American accent) “George! If I could have done this when I was her age I'd have done it!

MARK: “I would have done.”

DAVID: So when you met them you didn't really realise that they were absolute Hollywood royalty?

TOYAH: No. I recognised Katherine Hepburn, but you know the arrogance of youth?

DAVID: No . . .

TOYAH: Well, the arrogance of youth is the world is yours and you’re bigger than everyone you meet and that was me. I recognised her off black and white movies I watched on a Saturday afternoon. I had no idea of her history and how hard she fought for sanity and recognition. When she started her career at the age of 18 on stage, she was reviewed as ugly, manly, with a voice that should never be heard by women or men ever again. And she was purely judged on her appearance.

And then very quickly she started to star in movies and I think she's the only actress to win five Oscars in her film career. Utterly remarkable woman, who pushed that ceiling up so everyone could come – in a Hollywood that was a loose disguise for the porn industry at the time. Because behind the scenes within Howard Hughes’ Hollywood there was mass brothels where young actresses had to sleep with everyone and Katherine really kind of pushed it away to create very, very brilliant movies.

DAVID: So “Quadrophenia” has just had an anniversary, hasn’t it?

TOYAH: Yes!

DAVID: How many years …

TOYAH: Two years ago.

DAVID: Is it really? Sorry . . .

TOYAH: Lockdown, I mean, where's that year gone?

MARK: Timothy Spall? Ray Winston? Who were pretty much unknown weren’t they?

TOYAH: Yeah, there's absolutely everyone in that film!

MARK: Sting, wasn’t it, I think? Leslie Ash -

TOYAH: Phil Daniels, Mark Wingett, Trevor Laird, Gary Shail. I mean, it's just an absolute gem of actors.

MARK: Have you watched it recently?

TOYAH: Have I? I've had no time to do anything! Lockdown has been the busiest time of my life! It’s endless! Filming for Toyah YouTube . . . I watched it when we did the anniversary documentary for Sky (above). We all sat down and watched it again. I thought it was magnificent. It's a brilliant piece of acting from everyone on screen and stunning, stunning directing and editing.

It's a masterpiece that was critically panned when it came out, but every generation around the world has discovered it for themselves and what makes me really happy is in LA they take it really seriously as a masterful piece of film making.

MARK: So you’d done all that before you kind of got signed up as a pop musician?

TOYAH: I got signed as a pop musician while doing “Quadrophenia”

MARK: It must’ve made in complicated for the press kind of work out who you were because they had you down as an actress and all of sudden you were -

TOYAH: Still is! The press is still confused to a certain degree. I put it down to my own autonomy and independence. Back then it was pretty unusual for someone to sing and act. Barbra Streisand did it really really well. Lulu did it. “To Sir With Love” is a staggering movie. So a few women have managed it. Cher was definitely managing it but it was till frowned upon

DAVID: What do you remember of those early days? Those early 80’s when you were a regular cover star on Smash Hits -

TOYAH: I loved it -

MARK: I just dog out an old copy this morning (shows the Smash Hits with the “Brave New World” cover, below) There it is! What a huge seller though. Do you remember that?

DAVID: There’s the girl! There’s the kind of regular hairdo you can always count on -

MARK: You have seagulls painted on your face. How long did that session take?

TOYAH: 12 hours

MARK: It was worth it!

TOYAH: We used Caroline Cowan, who was an actual water colour artist. She came in and used water colour paints on my face so she was actually doing a real painting. Then the shoot itself took about half an hour. But the hair and makeup - because back then there was no Photoshop - you did everything for real. If something wasn't symmetrical you had to start again, it was quite a long day

DAVID: But honestly, you prepared for that from your time as a hair model. I didn't realise.

TOYAH: Oh yeah, I loved being a hair model. I travelled up and down the country being utterly anarchic and also with the hair being created in the department store late at night, which is what we often did. Rackhams would close at about 6:00 and then we were allowed to stay in the hair salon til 8.

Well, we’d all disappear so the security couldn't lock up. They could never find us. We'd be rummaging through the bedding department, through the food department. We'd be rummaging everywhere and I can remember sometimes they couldn't get us out of there until midnight. We were so anarchic back then.

MARK: What do you remember about being on Top Of The Pops? Can you member any times you were on and who you were on with? What it was like?

TOYAH: The first time I was on Adam Ant was number one. So I was on with Adam Ant and there was also a man who sung "Shaddap You Face" -

MARK: Joe Dolce

TOYAH: Joe Dolce. Lovely man. So I remember that really well. I was utterly terrified. We got there at 10:30 in the morning and we did five rehearsals out of costume. Then we went into costume at about 5:00 o'clock and rehearsed as real and then come seven o'clock we were all in the studio, ready to go.

The first one for me was not only a dream come true, it was terrifying because I was still establishing and I was there with stars who had established, and I've always really felt that kind of layer system. I've always been aware (of it) but I can remember later in the year I did a Christmas special with Human League and then I did a Christmas special with Midge Ure. They were all on! It was just classic. Heritage.

DAVID: You must bump into those people nowadays. Do you? Do you all get on?

TOYAH: Yeah, of course we get on. I'm about to go on a ship with Carol Decker, ABC, Clare Grogan (below with Toyah in 2015), The Christians -

MARK: What a hoot! That sounds a lot of fun!

TOYAH: China Crisis -

MARK: Any ship with Clare Grogan and Carol Decker on it’s got to be an absolute hoot -

TOYAH: My favourite thing to do with with China Crisis - they never get into their stage costume until they're called to the stage. So I sew up the arms in their jackets and I sew up the end of the legs of their trousers so they are running to the dressing room to get changed as they are being announced and all you can hear “Shit! Fuck! Bollocks! Toyah - you fucking cow!” They really are absolutely swearing their heads off going “we’ll get you Willcox!”

MARK: So you’re on a boat with a load of 80’s pop fans?

TOYAH: Yeah.

MARK: Are you besieged all day by people just remembering you, seeing you and . . . ?

TOYAH: Well, you've got to remember this is the first time out of lockdown that we're doing this, so I think there's going to be segregation for the first time ever between the 80’s stars and the audience. Usually yes, you are on the ship, you eat with everyone, you go to the gym with everyone, you're walking the decks with everyone. Lots and lots of selfies, lots of stories about how they dyed their hair pink and all of that. On this particular event, which is in two weeks - I have no idea if we're even allowed to mingle at this point.

DAVID: So how long is the cruise?

TOYAH: I’m doing two. I'm on one for 12 days and doing 12 shows. Then I come off and do quite a lot of festivals and go back on in September and I'm doing two shows a night so it's pretty non stop.

MARK: So it's not a package bill? You get Toyah on Tuesday night, it's not like you follow China Crisis -

TOYAH: It is

MARK: So it’s three songs each? That kind of thing?

TOYAH: Yeah. Except on the first cruise, I am doing a 50 minute set.

MARK: Boy, that must be fun. Where’s the cruise to?

TOYAH: Well, this was booked before we knew about lockdown opening up, so it's doing the British Isles. I'm wondering if it's going to change because we might be able to let the people off at certain ports. Initially the ship could not stop anywhere so it’s all change from now on. I have no idea where we're going.

DAVID: So then you're doing your own tour in September?

TOYAH: Yes

DAVID: When you’re playing nowadays do you still get the old fans of come along? How’s that work?

TOYAH: It's incredibly mixed. I have the broadest audience I've ever seen. It can be from five years old to 80 years old. I actually did a show last Friday at Eastbourne Congress Theatre. Huge theatre - 1600 people. But because of social distancing, they could only allow 500 in and I was looking out over this audience and I'd say the youngest was 12 and the oldest was in her 80’s.

Very, very mixed and because of YouTube my rock audiences - it’s the youngest it's ever been, probably 20 -25. They really honour me as a cult artist because the early albums was so ground breaking. I would say my audience in a rock club averages 30 and in a theatre averages anything from from 20 to 80.

DAVID: The YouTube adventure over the last year, has made a significant difference?

TOYAH: Well, not to my audience. My audiences have been huge from 2000 when the 80’s phenomena started again. So from 2002 right up to the first lockdown I would be playing from 250 in a Georgian theatre, 500 in a small rock club to 60,000 at a festival to 2000 in a larger theatre.

Every show sold out and it's going to be the same September onwards. Every show sold out trying to book double nights. Everything changed for me with Toyah YouTube globally in the last 15 months where I now have 50 million views a month. Its enormous, really enormous.

MARK: When you realised you couldn't go out to perform any more, you must have missed that so much . . . You can see why that the whole YouTube thing was such a -

TOYAH: Yeah. The first lockdown we thought would be for three weeks. So the first lockdown I really had time to think and I was thinking when we're out of this lockdown in three weeks time, we're going to make up for those lost shows, we’re going to do everything and then boom boom boom boom! It just extended. At that point, I felt this was a huge opportunity.

Massive opportunity to get a new album written, to work on camera, to study camera, to study editing, to study sound. I took up guitar, took up piano and it was the year out to go to university that I never did. I started making these little films and they grew and grew and grew and last January we hit 40 million views. It's been a really big year and I'm now content driven.

MARK: Did you see any of the Sophie Ellis-Bextor ones? I'm trying to think is there any competition?

TOYAH: Sophie and I apparently - with the work - we’re the equal hits of lockdown. I knew about them, I read about them, I saw one where her little baby ran in and joined her. So I totally get that, how the joy of kitchen disco has been for everyone. What Robert and I did … I think slightly more adult (laughs)

DAVID: But still there’s something about the kitchen that is just very appealing, isn't it?

MARK: It is! It’s homely and you feel you get insight to what people's lives are like. Well, as normal as you can be when people are dressed up doing David Bowie songs

TOYAH: I think what will be interesting if anyone does a movie of our lives, they're going to have to build that kitchen in a movie set. And I find that rather intriguing because our kitchen is really down to earth.

DAVID: Right, right, right. Oh well, look, so it is traditional at these things that we - I don't know if you've already told us -

MARK: I think you may have already mentioned it. The Roxy Music album -

DAVID: What is the greatest record of all time?

TOYAH: (holds up the Roxy Music album) And there's a reason. I mean, the songs are brilliant, they’re groundbreaking. They break every rule. There was no sound like it at the time. This was a groundbreaking influential album, but I still put it on today and the music alters my state and it alters my state without seeing the boys in their suits and their makeup. It's a stand alone piece of music for me.

MARK: Brilliant choice. There’s so much going on. The tour is in September?

TOYAH: “Posh Pop Tour” starts in September. I have two films out at the moment. “The Ghosts of Borley Rectory” is going to be out on Halloween, which I've been nominated for Best Supporting Actress in. “To Be Someone” is in cinemas 9th of July onwards for a month, (then) DVD, and that's got the cast of “Quadrophenia” in it. “Give Them Wings” is going to be out in the autumn. I've managed to make movies in lockdown

MARK: Very good. And your husband is billed as Bobby Willcox on the album. What’s his part of the recording and the creative process?

TOYAH: We didn't want the endless endless paragraphs of writing about King Crimson because there is nothing about King Crimson on “Posh Pop”. Simon Darwlow, my co-writer (above with Robert and Toyah) and I went into the studio. We wrote songs. We wrote 10 songs. We put the vocals, did all the arrangements, completed them, then we got Robert in. We gave him a chord chart and we said “play whatever you want over these songs”. 

He did half an hour every week for about 10 weeks, probably a little less than that, and he played in the moment and we said "this is nothing to do with your history but if you want to feel what you love about Talking Heads and Blondie and all that era, you can but you can also be completely in the moment."

So we call him Bobby Willcox because this is not Robert Fripp and King Crimson, and we’re so tired of everything he does today because he's innovative. He's of the moment. Like me and Simon. It doesn't need back referencing. This album stands alone, it's exceptional because of how and where it was created.

MARK: Absolutely. Well, good for you. It's been lovely talking to you. Been highly entertaining.

TOYAH: Have I come up to the grade?

DAVID: Absolutely!

MARK: Absolutely! It’s been brilliant!

You can watch thew interview on Youtube HERE