TOYAH ON
PRIVATE LIVES
WITH PAUL ROBINSON
11.6.2021

PAUL: I first met my next guest in 1980 when she gained massive UK attention with her “Four From Toyah” EP that included the much played hit “It's A Mystery.” In a career spanning five decades, she's had eight Top 40 singles, released 20 albums and expanded her work to include feature films, television presenting and voiceovers.

Her beginnings were not without struggle. Her drama assessor unkindly said she had a lisp and wasn't attractive. But, undeterred through a combination of talent and determination Toyah became very successfull.

So, Toyah, it's great to see you again, more than 40 years later, welcome to podcast radio. I mentioned your great versatility. How would you describe yourself?

TOYAH: I just like to work, and I've always felt that sticking to one thing has never ever been enough for me. People say I flit about like a butterfly creatively. Well, actually my best ideas for songwriting come up when I'm acting. And when I’m songwriting my best ideas for everything else come up as well.

I find that just being creative is something that I would like to be mentally 360 degrees when I'm doing it rather than being trapped in any one art form. At the moment I’m doing actually quite a lot of physical art, which I never expected. I'm sitting down with pen in hand, and I'm doing line drawing and I'm coming up with lyrics. So I've always found that just being creative leads to so many other things.

PAUL: It sounds like you're the ultimate multitasker. You're doing some art and you're thinking of song lyrics at the same time.

TOYAH: If you're on stage and you get a song idea, you're stuffed, because you can't leave the stage, you can't distract the show. You’ve got this idea and you're crossing your fingers. I always cross my fingers when I need to remember something. I cross my fingers for an hour and a half. There are very inconvenient times when ideas pop into your head -

PAUL: You've got to try and remember them. Do you carry a notebook and write things down furiously when you get a chance, just so you don't lose the moment?

TOYAH: I have notebooks everywhere. I even take one to bed and I write in the dark. It's very interesting trying to decipher what I was saying at four in the morning in the dark when you look at the handwriting. I don't know if you've ever seen a comedy called "League Of Gentlemen" where there is a woman called "Pauline" who's obsessed with pens? I'm sure that it's based on every writer in the world.

Because when someone comes into the house and takes my pens . . . I absolutely lose my temper. I have pen and paper on every surface, and that pen and paper is never to be touched. And if someone new comes into the house they have to be told "do not move or touch the pen and paper, we are writers, that's there for a reason". So I think anyone who writes will recognise the paranoia one suffers about a pen going missing.

PAUL: Because then you can't capture your magic. The good thing is I guess once you've written it down you've then got permission to forget about it and come back and develop it, haven’t you?

TOYAH: That is exactly it. Once it's written down, you can get on with cooking and cleaning and everything else.

PAUL: I’m glad to hear you live a normal life where there is a bit of cooking going on and the cleaning going on. Let's go right back to the very beginning. Your father was a joiner and your mother was a professional dancer?

TOYAH: My mother, as soon as she got married, was a professional housewife having children (above, with Toyah) So, from the age of 12 til the age of 19 my mother was a professional dancer, which was possible back then. She went to ballet school, she auditioned for movies, she auditioned for stage plays. Her first stage review was under her stage name, Barbara Courtland.

She was 12 years old and that was her first newspaper review, doing a vaudeville performance with a young boy and it would have been a kind of child boy and a child girl scene as part of the variety scene back then. So my mother was a touring artist from the age of 12 to 19. She met my father and immediately retired. My father was a joiner, his father - my grandfather was part of a very huge construction company called Willcox Lang.

PAUL: And were you aware of your mother's theatrical roots? Was any of that rubbing off on you at this stage?

TOYAH: I was never encouraged to be a performer by either of my parents. My mother talked about it but it was very very brief.

PAUL: You went to a private girls school and school wasn't really the best of days for you?

TOYAH: No. I should have been in a stage school. Like many children I just didn't fit into that particular system. I wasn't made for the three R's. I wasn’t academic, but I was incredibly creative, and much more interested in being creative. My interest has always only been acting, singing and art so I should have really gone to a drama school or a music school. I would have been much more productive in that kind of environment.

PAUL: But you did go to the Old Rep drama school in Birmingham later?

TOYAH: Yeah, at the age of 14. Very luckily a family friend was the head of BBC Pebble Mill and he said to my parents, “you are completely wasting this child's time, she needs to be in drama school”. So he nominated me into the Birmingham Old Rep Theatre School, which I went to on weekends til I was 17. Then I went full time for a year and immediately got work at BBC Pebble Mill and then the National Theatre.

PAUL: You've always had a very distinctive look, and I think, maybe in school that might have been to disadvantage. Actually, your distinctive look and your style has been very much a part of what made you so successful.

TOYAH: Yeah, I think I went to be distinctive deliberately because I was a very small child, and certainly not a tall adult. I knew I had a lot to do and a lot to say and I had a lot of natural energy. Performance is where I belong. So I realised that I was never going to be a sex symbol like Sophia Loren or (Farrah) Fawcett-Majors so I realised I just had to make my mark with individuality. So I used it by making my own clothes, I was a hair model from the age of 14, and had very unusual haircuts and hair colour. That got me noticed and it worked for me.

PAUL: And in those days hair colour like you had wasn't really the norm at all. It's pretty much normal now, it's mainstream but wasn't then

TOYAH: It was considered completely outrageous then. I was treated appallingly, and this was about 1974-75. I wasn't allowed on buses -

PAUL: You weren’t allowed on buses?! Really?

TOYAH: No. The bus would close the doors on me.

PAUL: How ridiculous

TOYAH: Taxi drivers wouldn't pick me up, they thought there was something wrong with me. And people used to shout very impolitely . . . I won't say it on your show, but if you can imagine the expletives. “Who do you think you are?! A clown? Are you completely mad? What's wrong with you?!” Just the most bizarre reactions.

PAUL: Outrageous and appalling but I guess, maybe different times. Thank goodness times have changed

TOYAH: Very different times. I think women and men can be who and what they want to be now but back then - absolutely no way. 

PAUL: You were ahead of your time in many ways. You signed to Safari Records (the Toyah Band in 1979, above) and that was a very important pivotal moment for you?

TOYAH: Yeah, we were really the last band in the punk movement to be signed, so it was quite worrying that by 1978-79, we hadn't been signed, and we were playing to 2000 kids a night. So we were very lucky that Safari took us seriously and they signed us after a showcase. And none of us ever looked back after point.

PAUL: The “Sheep Farming In Barnet” EP has been rereleased but let's move to “Four From Toyah” which produced, of course, “It's A Mystery” and that's the first time I came across you because it was playlisted on the radio stations up and down the country. That’s when you and I first met for an interview in 1980. It must have been amazing! You had a Top 5 hit with that “Four From Toyah” EP

TOYAH: It was glorious! It was everything I ever wanted. Up until this point, I’d spent every Thursday of my life watching "Top Of The Pops" with my family. And on Christmas Day, we had Christmas lunch, so it finished in time to see Christmas "Top of the Pops". And suddenly there I was on this show (below). And even though I had phenomenal success up until this point as an actress and musician it wasn't til I was on "Top Of The Pops" that my family realised I was a serious career musician. It was glorious. It was an absolutely beautiful year.

PAUL: That’s the beautiful thing about families, isn't it, you're doing all this fantastic stuff and then the tradition is you eat your roast turkey or whatever and then you turn on "Top Of The Pops", after the Queen and there's Toyah there singing a song. Were they all “My daughter's a proper a popstar now”?

TOYAH: It was absolute joy, and that show was so powerful. You had to be on it. You just hadn't arrived unless you were on that show.

PAUL: How did that change your life having that big hit and obviously doing television, doing "Top Of The Pops"?

TOYAH: It changed my life absolutely 100%. My life was both glorious and very scary. I couldn't be driven down any road in the UK without seeing posters of myself in every shop window. My image greatly affected people in a positive way. So I'd be driving down any High Street and there were posters in the dry cleaners, posters in grocers, posters in newsagents. My image was everywhere.

It meant that I was followed a lot, but also the shows were very well attended, every show was sold out. I had a very positive effect on people, I was probably seen as the friendly punk rocker.

PAUL: Yeah, you must’ve also loved the fact that people were coming to see you and they liked you having had all that horrible negative feedback in the past. Suddenly, people go "wow! This girl's really cool" and people are paying to come and see you -

TOYAH: Well, people always pay to come and see me but I'd say that my punk days were very divided. I don't think Clash fans would ever come to see me or Sex Pistols fans would ever come see me. But the thing about the huge success from 1981 onwards is I really found my dedicated hard core, general audience. I mean audience from all walks of life.

Up until that point I definitely had the Toyah Barmy Army that followed me everywhere in the punk days and defended me, but suddenly in 81’ my audience was very, very broad and they've tended to stay with me. These audiences now bring their children see me or they bring their grandparents to see me. My audiences, when I look out across the auditoriums now are very, very broad and this was the moment that created that broadness

PAUL: You mentioned the Sex Pistols there and I think it was suggested to you at some point you should see the Sex Pistols, but you did get in fact some work through an association with John Lydon?

TOYAH: I was approached by the director of “Quadrophenia” Franc Roddam to get John Lydon through the screen test for the lead in “Quadrophenia”. So I played the Leslie Ashe role and John Lydon played what was to become the Phil Daniels role. I have to say he was a phenomenal actor and I'm surprised he hasn't tried his hand at acting. He was a natural. Because he was in the Sex Pistols investors wouldn't touch the film if he was in it, which was very unfair, but it did allow Phil Daniels to create the iconic role of “Jimmy” in “Quadrophenia”, and then I went on to have the role of “Monkey” in “Quadrophenia.”

PAUL: Did you enjoy that? I mean - it's a great role?

TOYAH: Well, it's a pivotal film in the history of movies. Franc Roddam directed it as a documentary. It’s a groundbreaking movie with many brilliant performances in it from Phil Daniels right through to Phil Davis. You've just got the most amazing cast in that film. The future of film is in “Quadrophenia” - it was a nucleus, it was a beginning.

PAUL: So we've been talking about the Sex Pistols, talking about your acting, and your music, and let's just get back to Safari records. The “Four From Toyah” EP was the start of a run of hit records for you.

TOYAH: Yeah, it was phenomenal. The very first “Four From Toyah” was featured on a drama series called “Shoestring” with Trevor Eve, and I mean what better advert can you get for your music than to have a whole of an EP used within a very brilliant drama episode in which I was playing a rock star. So, from that moment on we never looked back. Extraordinary things happened.

ITV made an hour long documentary about me that went out primetime on a Thursday 9pm called “Toyah! Toyah! Toyah!”, and it was one of the most glorious documentaries I've ever experienced. It featured all of my music. It featured my acting. And when they were making it I was at the Royal Court (Theatre) working Stephen Poliakoff and Nigel Williams. They covered all this era in my life which was hugely critically acclaimed, so it just launched me into the stratosphere

PAUL: And that title of “Toyah! Toyah! Toyah!” was of course the title of one of your live albums?

TOYAH: Yes. Well, that was made for the documentary. It was shot live in a venue in Wolverhampton (above), so it's a live rock show and that's going to be rereleased as well. I remember that day because I was starving. I was so busy. The thing about being the main act, and the main name of the main act is, no matter how many people you have helping you, everyone will ask you the questions first.

And I remember on that day I just needed to eat so badly before the show, and the line of people asking me questions meant that we shot that and I hadn't eaten for 24 hours. And that's probably one of the negatives of being famous - people forget that you are a human being, and you need nutrition. I lost so much weight that year . . . 

PAUL: You should have said to these people "please, I need to go and have something to eat now", but you didn't, you carried on answering the questions which is very, very impressive but obviously not good for you

TOYAH: It never had any effect. Telling people what you need had no effect. Now there's two rules that I'll let you in on: don't touch my pens! And do not talk to me when I'm eating. I would never talk to an artist when they're eating because you know how little time they get to do that.

PAUL: Great tips and duly noted (Toyah laughs), in case we ever do anything at your house - don't touch, and don't interrupt you when you're eating. The follow-up to “Four From Toyah” was “I Want To Be Free”. This song I guess was, to some extent, autobiographical?

TOYAH: Oh, totally autobiographical. I'm severely dyslexic and dyslexicia is not something you can cure, but it has many benefits. I believe all dyslexics excel. We excel, we have talents, we are the most incredible problem solvers because we have to learn to bluff our way through this present society. So “I Want To Be Free” was very much saying here I am stuck in the school system when I know I belong on stage and I'm not dumb.

But the beautiful thing about the song - when it first came out it was treated ever so slightly as a novelty song but 40 years on . . . it's treated as a political song, and I'm so passionate about the song. I love singing it. Two years ago it was used on stage at the Lyric Hammersmith (Theatre) in the stage version of Derek Jarman's “Jubilee”. In the movie I was playing “Mad”, but in this stage version I was playing Queen Elizabeth the 1st (below) It was used as the encore song by a gender neutral cast, and I have never been so proud as that moment

PAUL: Great to see now that gender neutral is really getting into the mainstream -

TOYAH: I can't take any of the credit, because Chris Goode made the decision to have gender neutral cast, and it was just so right. Derek Jarman would have just whooped with joy on hearing that and seeing this show. Very forward thinking and for me, a very steep, beautiful learning curve because I'm part of the generation where I go "come on guys let's do this! You're a beautiful girl". I am very gender specific when I talk, and the cast didn't want any of that. They wanted neutrality if that's the right word.

They want it to be "them"," they", even "it". I found it very hard to refer to a human being as "it" because there's obvious connotations about that going back centuries of disrespect. So it was a very steep learning curve. There are people out there who prefer not to be recognised by gender. I was like that in the late 70’s, early 80’s. I preferred to be Toyah the person rather than Toyah the gender, because to be addressed as a woman 40 years ago also had chauvinism. So I had complete sympathy for this cast and did everything possible to address their requests to be gender neutral, but it kept slipping out. "Come on guys! Let's go and have tea". They were very kind, very tolerant towards me.

PAUL: It’s sort of come full circle, you talk to people who are in their 20's - the word “guys” is actually really useful as a collective noun. It's almost acceptable now I think. People you're talking to could be any gender, any background, "come on guys!" it’s a sort of rallying call

TOYAH: Well, yes, but this young generation, and let's throw light on the fact that this generation have never had it harder. They've now got Covid ruining their careers as well as lack of work and those in college having to pay for their education. So this cast had every right to demand what they wanted to feel respected. They had all of my sympathy. It's a really tough life, this generation, and I'm a constant learner and I think the beauty of life is you do constantly learn. Life is very fluid, therefore why can't we be fluid as a race. So it's a fascinating time to be alive in but I think particularly for this younger generation, they need all the support they get from us - an older generation, who've had a lot of privilege.

PAUL: Let’s talk a little bit about your theatre. You've been in about 40 plays. Are there particular moments which you think . . . yeah, that was just amazing?

TOYAH: Well, yeah, the serious stage plays - I've loved everything I've done from “Thérèse Raquin” can at Nottingham Playhouse, right through to working with Peter Shaffer on “Amadeus”, where he extended the role of “Constanze”, Mozart's wife, for me to play in 1990, right through to “Jubilee” with Chris Goode. I'm immensely proud of all the theatre I've done.

I spent 18 years in pantomine, and I approach pantomime the same way I approach Shakespeare. It's a show for people. A lot of Shakespeare was developed for people to respond or to hold people’s attention when there was a culture of going to the theatre to meet your friends back then, rather than be silent and watch. So for me, the auditorium, the proscenium arch, the theatre in the round is just an absolute sacred event. I really have loved every moment I've spent on stage.

PAUL: You also starred with some big names - Laurence Olivier, for example in the “Ebony Tower” (below)?

TOYAH: Yeah, that was a TV film for Grenada, about 1983. Yeah I mean what can you say? Thank goodness I got a chance to work with him. I worked with Katharine Hepburn as well in a TV film, and Sir John Mills and Diana Dors! Tell me when you’re bored?

PAUL: No, keep going! These are amazing names.

TOYAH: This was the golden generation of stars, and I feel very lucky that I got to work with them.

PAUL: Did you get to learn from them?

TOYAH: I think what I learnt most of all from them is ambition never dies. Ambition, the need to express yourself, the need to be continuing your art, you don't hit an age and put it on the shelf. All of these people were working right til the end, and were in love with their work. That taught me that you treat every decade as if you have the right to work, and that every decade counts.

PAUL: And you’ve also done a huge amount of TV and it's as varied as your theatre - from “Watchdog Healthcheck” to “The Heaven and Earth Show”, “Songs Of Praise”, “The Good Sex Guide”. You can’t get much more varied than that.

TOYAH: I know. I had a very phenomenal agent in the 90’s called the "über agent", and he managed people like Fern Britton and Jill Dando. Those two top names weren't always available for jobs because they were booked 24/7 which meant I got the top jobs they weren't available for. I don't mind saying this because the same happens in acting. If Helen Mirren is not available then the next big name is, and this is how the industry works.

It meant that I got a lot of real top notch A-lister lister work. I’m good at it. I'm still good at it, but I was not too proud to say yes to a job that I wasn't the first name to do. I think you will have seen many stories in the papers this week of "Rodney" in “Oly Fools And Horsers”? The actor (Nicholas Lyndhurst) that got that wasn't the first name, he was the fifth on the list. And this is how the industry works.

PAUL: And it's interesting that people who were first actually are not necessarily the best either. Sometimes the second, third or fourth choice  is the one that really clicks with the audience  -

TOYAH: That's the message that counts. Your first choice isn't always right. I think parts belong to people, and a part will find you. In my case that definitely happened.

PAUL: Let's talk about your partner, because you are married to Robert Fripp from King Crimson (below with Toyah in 2012). You married him in 1986?

TOYAH: Yes, we've been married for 34 or 35 years. I can't quite put my finger on that number

PAUL: Congratulations

TOYAH: Thank you. Yes, so what do you want to know?

PAUL: He is a mainstay of King Crimson, he's the force that has kept King Crimson together. But you're doing things together, for example on your Facebook page, you're offering personal video messages together

TOYAH: Well, yeah, we do three broadcasts a week on Toyah Official (Youtube). I do “Toyah At Home” on Saturday morning at 11 o'clock, which anyone can access, we do all of this for free. Then we do “Agony Aunts” at six o'clock, which is both Robert and myself. And then we do “Toyah and Robert’s Sunday Lunch” at 12 noon on Sunday, which are all good fun things to connect people, to let people know that COVID is the great equaliser.

We are all equal in this together and our thoughts are that we want to put out positive messages, where people can reach out, don't suffer in silence, reach out and talk. So with the video messaging, you've got to keep in mind, the political side of this is that live performers, live technicians, live venues have not had any income for seven months. I think my company has taken £48 in seven months.

So to do select messaging not only connects us with our fans, it’s actually helping us to pay the bills. We also do personalised art, which is just hugely successful. People write in for their favourite quote or favourite line of a lyric and I do line drawings, so that's available as well. All of this is us in lockdown - and you have to remember, Robert and I are still in lockdown because of his vulnerability - surviving as artists.

We love doing this, we absolutely adore the messages we get that were requested to send to people. I sent one yesterday to a young girl from Latvia who flew to Guernsey and had to isolate in a room for 14 days, and her family were concerned and they asked me to reach out and connect to her so I sent a really, I think beautiful message telling her about a song called “Sensational”. The responsibility you have when you're doing this - this is not me going, “Oh, look at me, I'm a star” - it's me saying we are equal in this, we are connected, don't suffer alone. It's very very powerful and emotive and very, very rewarding emotionally.

PAUL: I'm sure it helps lots of people. Will you carry on doing it once we're out of this? We don't quite know what the end date is but will you stop once we’re back to normal?

TOYAH: I will definitely continue doing it because I'm not great on Twitter, where you've got to answer everything because my dyslexia is that bad. With doing the broadcasts and with doing the celebrity messaging, I can work how I work. When I do celebrity messaging I do about 10 runs of each message so that I fully understand what they're asking me to do, because sometimes I have to look at the written word again and again and again and that's dyslexia. I can do that and I will keep doing that.

Would I ever pick up Twitter and respond in the moment? No, because I don't understand everything I see. And when I learn a script - I read that script 130 times. That's how I learn it, that's how I understand the sense. So I found a way of working in lockdown that is so precious to me that I would never have been able to learn if I wasn't in lockdown.

PAUL: There’s the third rule maybe - I don't interrupt you when you're reading the script a 130 times. That's really hard work. That's real dedication.

TOYAH: I’m totally dedicated to what I do.

PAUL: You are.

TOYAH: I think you'll find Judi Dench does the same.

PAUL: That’s why you're both successful. You're hard workers as well as being good.

TOYAH: When you've got film script in your hand, you have to open your mouth without thinking. And the process of reading that script 130 times is you could actually recite it backwards after you’ve done that.

PAUL: Amazing. Robert Fripp - your music styles are very different. You have worked together, you have done music together. Will there be more collaborations of Toyah and Robert Fripp together musically?

TOYAH: We had a band together in the late 80’s called Sunday All Over The World (above), and the album “Kneeling At The Shrine” is being remastered now. I'm on my solo album now with my co-writer Simon Darlow, and that's called “Posh Pop”. Robert is playing on that, but it doesn't mean it's a Robert Fripp collaboration or a Robert Fripp album and I have to be quite forceful about that because I put an awful lot into writing my music.

PAUL: He's playing on your album, that's the way it is ?

TOYAH: Yes.

PAUL: Just quickly, what's the future? What are you planning for the rest of this year and next year?

TOYAH: Well, the solo album is going take a good five months to complete, we want it out by April. So that is my number one priority. And then around that I have been managing to make movies. I've got three movies coming out. One is called “Heckle”, which is part of Frightfest, which you can look up online, that's now going to be running as a streaming festival. It's a horror festival. And then I have “Give Them Wings” coming out, I have “To Be Someone” coming out and “Swiperight” coming out so I have managed to keep the day job up.

PAUL: It's a real pleasure to speak to you 40 years after the last time we spoke. Keep doing the fantastic work, and thank you very very much.

TOYAH: Paul, don't leave it another 40 years.

PAUL: I promise not.

You can listen to the interview HERE