TOYAH ON
THOMPSON'S LIVE
WITH CHRIS GOODE
16.5.2018

CHRIS: If you're new here then I should set this up by saying that I always begin these conversations in the same way, which is to ask my guests to talk to me about something they've seen or heard or read or otherwise encountered lately that either they're excited by or they want to raise a question about.

So that's how we began, we have exactly an hour from the moment Toyah sat down because she had a performance of “Jubilee” to go and get ready for. But as you'll see, we packed a lot into the hour. If you enjoy this episode, really a 10th as much as I enjoyed recording it … well, you're welcome. This is a true artist and a remarkable human being, this is my conversation with the one and only Toyah Willcox

TOYAH: There is actually so much because it's been a very special six months, especially working on “Jubilee” because the team are so in touch with theatre that they’ve opened that up to me very much. Again I love cinema and I'm very lucky where I live that there is a cinema 50 yards from my front door, that shows films 10.30 in the morning as well as in the evening -

CHRIS: It’s the best time to go to the pictures -

TOYAH: Most times I'm sitting there alone, and it’s like a personal screening -

CHRIS: That’s heaven

TOYAH: Love it! So I like to immerse myself in something and lose myself. I very rarely read a book and want to know about myself. So when I can find a book that totally steals my life away and locks it in a cupboard, to the point that my life doesn't exist anymore, I get very, very excited. And one of these books - there's actually many- the first to do that to me was “Under The Skin” Michel Faber (below, Toyah with another book by Faber). But I think that is now a very well established book. I've been sending that to friends for well over 10 years. But there was a book I read about five years ago, possibly more, called the “Raw Shark Texts”. It was the debut novel of Steven Hall, who I believe is a Canadian writer.

But what grabbed me about this was its dimensional writing. So within the book, the actual print work would take shapes. So you would be reading a page, and it would suddenly go into the shape of something falling down a pothole, or a shark. Being dyslexic part of my pattern of learning is I have to read and read and read a page, at least three times. Then I understand it, and also then I know it virtually off by heart.

So with the “Raw Shark Texts” to have a book that is designed visually for a dyslexic was so exciting! And the story was that the text could take physical form and kill you. So as you read through the book slowly these sharks started to appear in the shape of print. The excitement that that could come off the page and take your life made the whole book multidimensional for me.

And it was your usual kind of rough and tumble adventure, a love story with a mix of “Jaws” and also it had a mix of “Casablanca” and Kung fu (Chris laughs) It was very funny, it was very brilliant, but for me the big thing was this concept that the text could become visual. Of course it’s visual! Text for me can be very mathematic. I sometimes have to work out what a word is saying. And it's exactly the same when I have to do deal with maths, but for it to form into a picture I was just . . . whether I gullible or not I don’t know. I found it profoundly exciting.

CHRIS: It's really liberating, isn't it, when a printed text can have a different relationship with you than the orthodox one -

TOYAH: And it should!

CHRIS: It’s really joyous, yeah -

TOYAH: The Japanese and the Chinese and Hinduism can do that with text, then I don't see why we can't do it with Western text . . .

CHRIS: Absolutely. There's a poet, I'm very fond of called J. H. Prynne who has a very big following among Chinese readers and has written his own Mandarin poetry, has learned to do that. The way he says, which I really love, is how crude Western text is to force a choice between words and pictures. That's not something that appears in other cultures, that sort of division of the word and the graphic -

TOYAH: It’s quite exposing about us as a culture . . .

CHRIS: Really is, isn’t it! That sort of left or right, very orderly thing. I had an amazing experience a few years ago because I was really stuck, I got to a point where I was really stuck in my making and as a writer and as a director. I just felt like I needed a bit of a jolt and I was very lucky to get a bit of time at the National Theatre studio to do an attachment there. I had a tiny little writer's room, and they just let me be for about two months to just try and figure out what I was doing. I decided to use some of that time to interview some other people who I really admire, one of whom was a playwright and academic Dan Rebellato.

And I was talking with him about how constrained I felt by script, by printed scripts and how it seems, what you're saying, like the way that a script is on the page doesn't feel to me anything like the energy that I experience in the theatre when the theatre is really working. And I don't know how to make this connection as a playwright, between the script and the energy of the piece. And he said to me very brilliantly, instead of just abandoning scripts, maybe you need to be thinking about what our scripts could look like.

And this has really made me think about why we as playwrights don't use the sorts of techniques that you're talking about with texts. We could so easily incorporate pictorial images, or the text taking different shapes or there being a way of capturing movement or we never use colour, even in our scripts and it really makes me wonder what else we could be doing?

TOYAH: Is that because of the brutality of time?

CHRIS: Oh! Say something more about that, that’s interesting.

TOYAH: Well, everyone is under pressure to produce content, and everything is so formulated to control content. I find as a creative I just have to lock myself away in a house that has no technology, and that helps my relationship with colour, with sound, with the written word. It's not perfect but that isolation helps find everything that triggered me as a child to become what I am today.

And what I mean by the brutality of time is OK, here you are in a room in the National Theatre that they've kindly given you for two months, but you still have time ticking away. When I get sent a synopsis for film or film scripts very rarely do I get the storyboard with it. You just get the flat page.

And I think certain actors and producers and directors can lift that off the page and understand the script is brilliant where to other people it's just flat text. And I find that quite extraordinary in actors I work with, who can lift something off the page and manipulate it into another world. I mean the entire cast of “Jubilee” - I've seen them reinvent their characters almost nightly (Chris laughs) which is absolutely great but I think this whole brutality about time is very evident in creative’s lives. And the biggest example I can give you - when I wrote my first three albums and I'm a co-writer, I always have a team, because I'm mainly a lyricist. The first three albums “Sheep Farming In Barnet”, “Blue Meaning” and “Anthem” I had 24 years of experience to write those albums.

I then had six months to write “The Changeling”. And it was crippling. Terrifying! And resenting. I really was resentful about that I could not, I think as a woman specifically, give it a year or two years to mould that album into what I wanted it to be because my career will be gone. I was under huge pressure to be pregnant, which always offended me right up until I was 50 when people stopped asking me if I was ever going to have children. Even when I just had stated categorically, in my first interview when I was 18 I do not want children. It was always a priority over my creativity.

That whole thing - the golden rush of creativity through your teens and into your mid-20’s had a magnificent harmonal physicality about it. You are governed by your your soul growing into your physical body. And then you hit 30 and as a woman oh boy! 30 was tough because your hormones are trying to tell you to have babies. And I was just at war with myself. But that precious time to write those first three albums before I was 24, took a lifetime. And then suddenly, I was so successful, I was in a situation where my writing either became formulaic and I relied on past writing experiences to reissue things and rework things. It was extraordinarily difficult.

CHRIS: And how did you get yourself out of that, because it feels to me like before very long you then went into a different mode of working. How did you free yourself from it, how were you able to do that?

TOYAH: “The Changeling” was so difficult to write. It was hell on earth, the pressure I was under. I was one of the first artists to record on digital. And I was under pressure to do it first before any of the others. The first digital machines, which we used at the Roundhouse (studio) were so sensitive to female energy they'd break as soon as I came
in the room -

CHRIS: Gosh! Wow!

TOYAH: I was not near them. I was not allowed to touch them. Steve Lillywhite (above with Toyah in the studio) was producing, and he was wonderful. He was absolutely brilliant, but they became terrified of me going near the machines, because I think part of my distress of the pressure of this album I was setting everything off. Today if I pick up a Samsung phone it just flashes like a TV, it goes through all the channels. And this is something to do with female energy, and I'm absolutely fascinated that no one has picked up on this yet, that certain people when they're distressed can drive this digital programming.

So here I am, 1982, with the first two digital machines in the UK and I was breaking them every day. And it was really holding us up (Chris bursts out laughing) It was so frustrating! So what happened was we got on with “The Changeling” and halfway through I locked myself in Champneys health farm, which is this thing of locking yourself away, and going into total internalising about how you're going to be creative.

And what I learned to process by doing that is that when you start something, you don't intellectualise about it. You just write down what you like about it, put it away. Then go back to it. A week later, a year later, three months later, and then look at it with those eyes. It's never the same thing. And sometimes I can make things work that way, those glorious moments where you write a song in three minutes are very very rare, but they do happen.

And they're like a gift from God but normally what I have to do now, and in the past 30 years, is I piece things together. I never let an idea go, but I never overwork it. So I go back to it and I go back to it and that way I find a way of forming it and developing it. And because I'm not a world megastar, I'm not under that pressure to come up with things very quickly.

CHRIS: You have some space and time now -

TOYAH: And time is still very precious. But I'm in control.

CHRIS: You’re not being rushed.

TOYAH: I think, after about the age of 25 . . . perhaps it was a bit later, 28 . . . I've been able to be creative without A&R men telling me what to do. I always found A&R men the most destructive thing in the room, because they’ve always had an agenda that suits them. They're ticking boxes that suit them and the accountants and not the artist. So it's been very important to me to get all of that out of my life anyway. A huge blessing.

CHRIS: And it feels like that was there really from very early on with you. I was watching that ATV documentary from 1980 -

TOYAH: Oh my God it’s amazing!

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

TOYAH: Visual stimulants.

CHRIS: You're a very visual person, I know that.

TOYAH: And there's another link you've led me to - the power of colour. I’ve only really defined and honed this while working on “Jubilee” and what has helped me is you and the team talking to me. No one talks to me. This is the first experience I've had - my parents died 8- 10 years ago, and I had conversations with them because I looked after them for 10 years. Once they died they were the last people that really talked to me. Because absolutely no one else talks to me. I'm just some kind of driving force that gets the band from A to B, gets the musicians in the studio, but no one says “well, how are you today?” No one!

CHRIS: (laughs) That’s so awful!

TOYAH: And I started on “Jubilee” and everyone says “how are you today?” So through these conversations it's helped me have internal conversations. And this whole thing about colour, and what you've just said about my home is that, actually, everything I do comes from colour.

CHRIS: That's really interesting -

TOYAH: And primary colour which is incredibly important to me. And I translate colour into words, emotions, and sound. So I've been looking at a way of developing that language that I can put it out into the creative space. It's so deeply embedded, I’ve got to find a way of getting it out.

CHRIS: That's such an interesting link between you and Derek as well because he absolutely was someone who thought through colour.

TOYAH: Derek's an interesting one because he was always quite a different person. There was obviously huge intellect. There was great technique. And there was also punk rocker. And they were three very different people -

CHRIS: Competing people in some ways -

TOYAH: I imagine the destructive, the physically destructive side of Derek, I never really knew. Occasionally he would give reference to it, if he'd been beaten up in Hampstead Heath or . . . But he enjoyed rough sex, which I found absolutely fascinating and very occasionally he would talk about it because I was just so dumbstruck by the thought of it. The Derek I knew was hugely spiritually developed but had incredible technique as a visual artist.

CHRIS: Extraordinary.

TOYAH: Extraordinary. His paintings were magnificent. He'd write to me and they'd be beautiful letters, beautifully handwritten with embossed silver or gold leaf on. Just a visual treat!

CHRIS: You wrote that beautiful short essay for the publication of his sketchbooks a few years ago. I've had the great joy of being able to spend some time in the BFA archive, looking through some of his sketchbooks. The raw materials, particularly the way that he was recording the process of coming into making and then recovering from making “Jubilee”.

And there are some amazing (ones) that he uses as scrapbooks and as a repository of just fragments of stuff. Collage in a way and it seems to me that you have an instinct for collage, in a way of putting things together, putting ideas together or ripping things up and putting them together in a really unexpected sort of way.

TOYAH: Thank you! (laughs) I don't know what I am actually (they both laugh) I'm permanently confused as to what I am, but perhaps that's a good thing.

CHRIS: It feels to me like you have a feel for materials and objects and as you say colours. It's not only about the ways in which those things are repositories of stories or memories or ideas but it's also what you leap off from them into, which might be something completely different or completely very individual to you. Very distinctive to you.

TOYAH: Yes, I see what you're saying. I think, for me, coming from a world where everything has to have a commercial value I realise now that actually the value is in the actual creating. So having been under huge pressure from very early in life to be commercially successful, even a weird kid like me, who was never normal I now feel the act of creating is the act of what you're supposed to be doing. Commerciality, success or not, that almost doesn't matter.

So the way I try and live my life today . . . I'm contradicting myself already, because I spend about 10 hours a day in the office doing contracts and email and negotiating anyway because I self-manage. But to put all that aside, and to put the materials on the table that you love, and there's a saying in my house “if you look at something and it doesn't make your life better, get rid of it”. So as you can see, you’ve been to my house - there's an awful lot of things that make our life better! There’s art everywhere.

So I put on the table things that are a visual joy and then I work from that to find something new and it's almost kindergarten. I remember (at) four and a half years old, going to school, where we had little wooden bricks that were brightly coloured and those bricks had a numeral value. So blue was 4, green was 2. And that's how we learned to add up. For me - I think I'm completely wired backwards - it became a way of building photographic memory.

So I now think in these colour textures, and those textures have numbers. And then I have to find a way of bringing that onto the page. And the page is almost the last thing that happens. But that first year at school at four and a half, it is so visually powerful for me that I was always touching colour and those colours had a number that I get very excited by objects because of that, because they translate into something else.

CHRIS: Yes, they become a system of their own. That's really fascinating. And of course, it means that by the time as you're saying - you're four and a half - there's already no difference in a sense in your head between work and play, they’re the same thing.

TOYAH: No difference at all. You can't live without either and they’re both the same. As I get older, I'm 60 this year - I'm not prepared to waste time on things I don't want to do. You must not do anything in your life - I think the only message I could give to people is do not do anything in your life that makes you die inside. (Chris laughs) And how many of us are doing that on a daily basis? Creativity and play and pleasure are all the same thing.

CHRIS: I mostly wanted to talk to you about your theatre career because I think it's the less told story about you obviously. You have a very distinguished career as an actor and I'm really interested to trace it a little bit. I know you went to drama school, didn't you, but where you doing school plays and things before that as a kid? (below, Toyah with her dad Beric and brother Kim)

TOYAH: Yes, at school, I was the naughtiest kid in school. I went to an all girl school. Hugely posh fee paying private school. Probably the best school that I could have gone to but then I would have rebelled against anything that told me what to do. So I directed the school plays. “Midsummer Night's Dream”, “Tobias And The Angel”. I did all the posters, I designed the programmes (Chris chuckles). And now in retrospect realise the school came to the conclusion that it was the only way they could control me -

CHRIS: Give you stuff to do -

TOYAH: And I loved it. Absolutely loved it! I always played the baddie or bottom (Chris laughs) Something I could really push the boundary out with.

CHRIS: That's really interesting.

TOYAH: Then after that, as soon as I walked out of the school gates - having failed nine O levels -

CHRIS: You got music, right?

TOYAH: I got music. I realised I had to get my shit together, and it literally was the moment I stepped out of the school gate - it was one of those oh fuck moments that I have really wasted 14 years of education -

CHRIS: You knew that already by then?

TOYAH: Yes.

CHRIS: Wow!

TOYAH: I realised I was on my on and I went straight into a company called Legal And General for a meeting about having a cleric job. I lied, I said I have nine O Levels but I couldn't find the results, and I went straight in at a high position. I was there for a month, I earned enough to go to drama school for three years and left. I think that's a pretty shitty thing to do.

CHRIS: It was a very resourceful thing to do -

TOYAH: As soon as I went to drama school, I started doing extra work at BBC Pebble Mill. I had to pay my way at drama school so I was dressing at the Alexander Theatre, the Hippodrome Theatre and the Birmingham Rep Theatre. So I’d do that in the evening and on very lucky days I'd do extra work at BBC Pebble Mill. By this time I was already making my own clothes, my hair was every colour of the rainbow because I was a hair model for my best friend at a department store called Rackhams.

So I was standing out as the only punk in the village before punk was even known. This was ‘74, and two brothers were looking to cast a girl in a play for BBC Two called “Glitter” about a young girl who wants to go on “Top Of The Pops”, who breaks into the studio, and they couldn't find anyone who hadn't been over educated at stage school -

CHRIS: Have all the interesting stuff squished out of them -

TOYAH: And were a bit too twinkly and had jazz hands. And they heard about me. They asked to come and see me at drama school and the principal at drama school said “you can’t see Toyah on her own, you have to see them all”. So they came along, they played ball, saw me, called me down to London to do a proper audition with Phil Daniels, and I got the part.

Very rough diamond. I mumbled my way through it and I had to sing and write the songs. It was fabulous! But I’m really shitting it . . . (Chris laughs) The most amazing thing was the night it was broadcast Kate Nelligan was watching TV with Maximilian Schell. They were casting for the National Theatre’s “Tales From The Vienna Woods” (below) and Kate said to Max “She’s Emma” -

CHRIS: “She’s the girl”. That’s amazing!

TOYAH: Isn’t that incredible?! Absolutely mind blowing.

CHRIS: Just to skip back a moment. What had your experience at drama school been? Did you feel rebellious there or did you feel like you’d found your space?

TOYAH: I was rebellious but I was a driving energy. The whole thing of having physical disability, and dyslexia . . . I just didn't fit in. They didn't know how to cast me. I was always the little Cockney girl or the maid or something, but I always drove the show. I couldn't stand in the background. I was working with other kids that were what I call your normal, social, polite, beautifully educated well spoken kids, and I was just bouncing off the walls with all this energy. But I was very liked. And when it came to doing live shows I just drove it. I made sure the costumes were there, I made sure the people were in the right place at the right time. So I got respect. But again, I didn't fit in.

And I was probably exactly as I was at school - “the least likely to succeed”, but because I knew that, and I was brought up by my family as "the least likely to succeed" it set off something in me that just drove like a war machine at every wall. I just never gave up. I never took no as an answer. But at the same time I never saw that I didn't fit in. It wasn't until went to the National Theatre - I was wild at the National, I'd stay there all night, I’d drink, I would have riotous parties in the green room -

CHRIS: They called you the animal, right? (laughs)

TOYAH: I absolutely was an animal! The energy, the environment, the beauty of it all, the productions, wonderful people. I must have been like a vampire, because I was drinking it all up and exploding like a human bomb wherever I went but I still didn't realise I didn't fit in. And there was an actress called Imogen Claire, who had been in the “Rocky Horror Picture Show” and at the time she was in “Valpone” with Sir John Gielgud. And she turned to me one day and she was very bitchy. And she just said “my God Toyah, you are so naive, you don’t know how much you’re hated” -

CHRIS: Oooh fuck!

TOYAH: It was an eye opener and I thought, okay -

CHRIS: What an amazing thing to do -

TOYAH: I thought about it for many years. She was one those kind of (does a luvvie voice) “Oh, darling!” and always had a cigarette in a holder, a haircut like Sally Bowles -

CHRIS: They don’t make them like that any more!

TOYAH: (in a luvvie voice) “Darling! You just don't know how much you're hated”. (Chris laughs) It's actually something I've thought about regularly for the last 40 years and it's been very valuable. What I didn’t have at that point was I couldn't see through other people's eyes and it taught me to do that.

CHRIS: But was there some strength in that for you as well? That speaks to a very kind of punk attitude in a way . . .

TOYAH: I think I’ve always been a coward, actually -

CHRIS: Really?

TOYAH: Even though I'm very quick into an altercation. If someone trespasses into me physically there will be a full fist fight, but I still think I'm a coward. And what I mean by that is the cast of “Jubilee” (above) are not cowards. They are brave. They are politically astute. They fight for their politics. I’ve always avoided that. I’ve learned that about myself doing this show. So I think I've always been a coward. I have never used a political voice. I think I've used the feminist voice. So you say was that wonderful being a punk, being told you’re hated? Well . . . I went with it, and I didn't change.

CHRIS: That’s what I mean really, because that would crush some people but I can't imagine it devastating you in that way . . .

TOYAH: I didn’t understand it for quite a few years. I always felt I was God and I was right so it took a long time to understand it.

CHRIS: And did you realise how exceptional it was for somebody to be making their professional debut on the stage of the National? On the Olivier stage?

TOYAH: No!!! I tell you why … Forgive me for saying this, and this is how naive I was and Imogen Claire was right. I just saw it as a stepping stone.

CHRIS: Wow! (laughs) Brilliant!

TOYAH: I apologise for saying that now. ITV is next door and the day I went down to meet Maximilian Schell and Kate Nelligan, I had an audition at ITV. I knew if I got that job I'd take ITV. I already knew that. I didn't get it so I was just . . . oh well, I'll just do the National. I mean … what a cunt! (Chris cackles) What. A. Cunt! I would pay the National, I would buy the National to get work like that now! I admit! Imogen Claire was right!

CHRIS: Yeah, but didn't know what you were doing or you knew at some level, but you didn't know the bigger picture maybe -

TOYAH: The bigger picture was a hugely ambitious bitch. I was hugely ambitious.

CHRIS: So the ambition would have been about reaching lots of people? Was that why it was TV over theatre?

TOYAH: That’s exactly it! I wanted to be an arena artist, I wanted to play arenas, do movies, reach as many people as possible. Fame fame fame. If I came into the industry now I would be a reality star -

CHRIS: Really?! That’s so interesting! That would be the route you would go through?

TOYAH: I think so. I would go for the biggest - it's like when Derek Jarman handed me the script to “Jubilee” I picked the part with the most lines. So, if I was 19 today, or even 12 - like Taylor Swift knew at 12 what she was going to do - I would go straight to the reality arena, and change that world. I think I was just brazen. That's not who I am today.

CHRIS: No.

TOYAH: I’m defending myself (they both laugh)

CHRIS: Well, you don't need to but it's such an interesting trajectory, isn't it?

TOYAH: Today I only want to be seen from my work. I'm consciously avoiding being seen walking out of the Chiltern Firehouse or Soho House or Nobu (restaurants). I don't want to be known for doing that. I only want to be known for the work I do and what I put into the creative space. And that's become a very conscious decision in the last four years.

CHRIS: That’s interesting. Did something in particular spark that or . . ?

TOYAH: It’s monetary. I look at what drives perfumes, makeups, fashion. It's all manipulative, and I don't like it, it makes me very uncomfortable. I would feel I'm walking straight back into the hands of the A&R men and I don't want to go back to there . . .

CHRIS: There's something really interesting about you Toyah, that I didn't know was going to be true. When I reached out to you to say do you want to come and do "Jubilee" I had a sense of you as someone who was fiercely individual in their vision, in their sense of themselves. What I didn't know was that you would be an extraordinary company member and that you would be able to do both those things at the same time.

So I thought, for example, I don't mean this in a remotely disrespectful way but I thought you might be someone who would not muck in with the company particularly. Or you might be a bit reluctant to be one of the gang. That's been an extraordinary thing about working with you as I've never seen anyone come from the sort of space that you normally work in and be so ready to be one of the company -

TOYAH: I knew as soon as you sent me the cast list that if I didn't get my shit together I wouldn't be part of the company because I come from such a different world. My world is so outrageously privileged. And these are young people entering the world with very defined passionate politics. They have to think about money, they have to think about where they live. They have to think about how they're going to spend their time and stay true to themselves. You sent me the cast list and I researched every one of them.

CHRIS: Did you really? (surprised)

TOYAH: Oh God yeah! And I thought my God I'm out of touch! I am a dinosaur. I like to be part of an ensemble. If you look at my theatre in the past, it's all ensemble work. I came in knowing that I had a very steep learning curve. Because wherever I go - I could go into a petrol station at Newcastle at two in the morning and have a conversation with someone as if they know me. That's a hell of a privilege. And what was really interesting was to come into rehearsals of“Jubilee” and none of the knew me -

CHRIS: One or two definitely did but -

TOYAH: It was amazing! I can't walk down the street up north because everyone knows me, and that's because I play all the time, and stop and talk to people. People know who I am, but in London . . .  it's been very freeing.

CHRIS: That's really nice.

TOYAH: It’s been great!

CHRIS: I don’t think some of them still really know who you were in 1981 (Toyah cackles)

TOYAH: No idea! Love it! But you ask, why am I a company member? Because I think theatre can only work when people choose the company. I've very rarely worked in anything where one person's ego has put the brakes on. Very rarely in 40 years. I've been very lucky, I’ve worked with great companies.

CHRIS: Just to get back to your time with Derek Jarman for a moment - I think one of the things that always really attracted me to Derek's work was his sense of ensemble. That he was absolutely about building ensembles and building gangs, rather than doing star vehicles or anything like that -

TOYAH: He did do a star vehicle, for years he was trying to get Bowie to do “Neutron”. It was very tricky because Tilda was on board. I was on board. I don't know what role I'd have played, but trying to get Bowie pinned down was difficult. I think Derek tried but apart from that he was phenomenal at holding a team together.

CHRIS: One of of slightly oblique connections I made was meeting one of my theatrical heroes Ken Campbell. Towards the end of the 90’s I worked with him briefly, extraordinary man. He had some good stories about the filming of “The Tempest”, about you being snowed in at Stoneleigh Abbey -

TOYAH: It was incredible!

CHRIS: Tell us the story because I'm not sure everyone will know - I'm sure people know that you were in “The Tempest” but -

TOYAH: I play “Miranda” in Derek Jarman’s “The Tempest” (above)

CHRIS: It’s extraordinary, I watched it again the other day in preparation. The poise of that performance. It’s really hard to think of examples of someone doing consecutive films with the same director where their performances are so different. The difference between “Mad” ricocheting of the walls in “Jubilee” going into the poise and the subtlety you have as “Miranda” is extraordinary and apart from anything else I’m just so blown away that Derek saw that in you and knew that that was another note that you could play with . . . 

TOYAH: He really had to persuade me to do it. I was terrified. I didn't understand Shakespeare and there’s times when I look at text and I can't see words. I just see black stripes. At that point, Shakespeare looked like that to me and Derek said “I will help you learn it. I'll help you have the rhythm. And if we need to we’ll edit.” He just totally believed in me. At the same time we were making “The Tempest” I suddenly became a huge star. A massive star. My ego was huge, but I loved Derek so much and I loved the team so much that I behaved (Chris laughs) I went into that team and became part of the ensemble.

So we were filming and how Derek managed to do this I don't know - we were given Stoneleigh Abbey in Coventry to film. A burnt down stately home that still had the remnants of curtains hanging up. No one had touched it. The only problem was it was February. And we got snowed in. We were stuck, and we just lived it. It was quite interesting, I had a wonderful boyfriend at the time called Gem, who was just stunning and wonderful and he looked after me, he got me from A to B.

I think we were the only straight people in the building. Heathcote Williams possibly went any way that he chose but there was a lot of men around and a lot of time to kill (Chris cackles) It was like a major cottaging industry but so wonderful! Absolutely wonderful. Going back to Ken Campbell, he was always fun. I was at the National
with him -

CHRIS: Oh, were you? What he do at the National?

TOYAH: He was doing Hitchhiker's Guide (To The Galaxy) -

CHRIS: Of course, yeah!

TOYAH: And I was doing “Tales From The Vienna Wooods”. So our paths crossed all the time. I commissioned him to write a play for me and he came back with “Toyah The Annoyah” (Chris bursts out laughing) And I was livid! And I said “Ken! I’m not fucking investing in something called "Toyah The Annoyah"! Fuck off and write something else!”

CHRIS: (laughs) That's brilliant!

TOYAH: I wanted “Beryl The Peril”. I should have gone with him because it would’ve been extraordinary, and I would probably now own a material right to something that would have gone on to have its own cartoon film series -

CHRIS: Wow, that's amazing. I did not know any of that, that's beautiful. It's such a lovely picture all of you snowed up together in that place -

TOYAH: Heathcote was amazing because at that time we had two rats living in his hair -

CHRIS: (absolutely dying with laughter) Please tell me they were called AC and DC?

TOYAH: I can’t remember. The had the collars to the leads around his neck, and then the leads went round the rats necks and they were in his hair. I have such respect for rats, they’re super intelligent, but I could not fathom this man at all.

And this is a man that wrote one of the best songs ever for Marianne Faithfull, “Why D'ya Do It”. Why did it take a man to sum up female jealousy? And the way Marianne performed it is just incredible. Now, Marianne and I had the same manager at this time, Anne Seaford. We're all linked with 6 degrees of separation.

So anyway, Heathcote was playing my father “Prospero” (below). What a wonderful actor to work with. He was kind, passionate, intelligent, he tuned into me. I found it very hard to tune into him, his charisma . . . I imagine if I ever met Aleister Crowley (an English occultist and magician), it would be similar charisma. It was something that could implode you. He was just fabulous!

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

TOYAH: You couldn’t talk to him! He went beyond. Everything you said exposed you -

CHRIS: Yes, exactly!

TOYAH: I’ve since become friends with his widow Polly who is now married to Dave Gilmour of Pink Floyd. I got to know her without knowing she was married to Heathcote and she has the same power of words. Just extraordinary. Wow wow wow. I'm so glad I met these people.

CHRIS: There’s another theatre hero of mine that you worked with who we haven't talked about off the record. Annie Castledine that you worked with a couple of times. How did that come about? How did you find each other?

TOYAH: I think my agent at the time was Sally Hope and Sally sent me for a casting to play “Dora Carrington”. I think it was the first time I worked with Annie -

CHRIS: Hadn’t you done “The Chance” before that?

TOYAH: Yes! “The Choice”

CHRIS: “The Choice”, sorry -

TOYAH: It must’ve been “The Choice” that we did first at the Salisbury Playhouse in the Studio Theatre and took us all by surprise. It was Claire who'd written “Trafford Tanzi”. So, that was the link. I think Claire asked if I could do “The Choice”, and that's how I met Annie -

CHRIS: “Trafford Tazi” had been huge. That was the first time I remember hearing about you as an actor. That must’ve been … 80 . . .

TOYAH: It was 83' . . .

CHRIS: I remember hearing you on Radio One on “Newsbeat” or something, doing a little interview about it and that was the wrestling play which sounded like huge fun -

TOYAH: A fight between man and wife that took place in the wrestling ring. Absolutely stunning! Loved it. So that led me to Annie. Now, with “The Choice”, written by Claire - can you tell me Claire’s surname again?

CHRIS: I don't know actually. That’s naughty. (NB Claire Luckham)

TOYAH: Forgive me, Claire. Claire had written play about her brother. Her brother at the time was 50, which is a very long time for a Down's Syndrome person to live, at that point. And it was about the fact that if you have a choice to abort Down's Syndrome we will lose that forever as mankind. And “The Choice” was about this woman who discovers through her amniocentesis test that she has Down's Syndrome child in the womb. Does she keep it or does she lose it? And I think, from what I remember she chooses to lose it.

And at the end of the play … (her voice breaks) . . . Oh . . . almost made me cry just thinking about it … The screen would come up and there was Claire's brother saying “if my mother aborted me, I wouldn't be here saying this.” It was so emotive I can’t tell you. I was in tears every night. And the audience - it was completely sold out . . . was 99% midwives.

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

CHRIS: Yeah! You’re not the first person I’ve heard say that!

TOYAH: I love her to death! “Fucking do this! What the fuck?! What the fuck are you thinking about?!” I mean it was exhilarating, exciting and she then asked me to play “Dora Carrington”, at the Minerva Theatre in Chichester (above with co-star Robert Picavance as "Lytton Strachey"). It was extraordinary. I adored working with her, you never knew where you were going to go each day, and she would let you drive the car full throttle and take responsibility not matter what happened in the end. Very exciting.

CHRIS: She was something else.

TOYAH: Is she still around?

CHRIS: No, she died a couple years ago I think, maybe 18 months ago, not that long ago.

TOYAH: I knew she’d been poorly because there was a time when people were raising funds to help support her but I didn’t know she’d passed away. I apologise.

CHRIS: She was clearly a very special figure and I'm really sorry our paths didn't cross but I didn't know that about you until fairly recently that that was an experience that you'd had -

TOYAH: Adorable.

CHRIS: How lovely. I read you talking about how you wanted to keep your music and your acting fairly separate and I’m wondering the extent to which that's possible at a certain level where you're an ideas person and you're able to express yourself in so many different forms. I can understand the thing about keeping those things separate professionally, but I'm interested in whether your sense of theatre and a performance have impacted on who you are as a stage presence because that's always been very extraordinary . . . 

TOYAH: It would impact it but you also have to put a layer of protection around yourself in a concert. Derek Jarman was very aware that when I was on stage singing I’d put a boundary wall around myself in the form of a character.

CHRIS: Every bit of footage I've ever seen of you in front of a live audience, particularly around that time (late 70's) . . . just the sense of it being a bear pit where you’re very exposed to a heavily male audience that at that time - and probably still to a certain extent - wouldn't have thought twice about grabbing at you -

TOYAH: I had my fanny grabbed and tits grabbed. There must be a few men out there thinking “God! With this assault thing going on . . . I did that to an artist on stage!”. It was extraordinary. I think to go on stage and not have a barrier around you and I'm talking about a persona barrier is a very special thing to do, and I think I’ve done it very rarely. I remember two weeks after my father died I was so utterly raw. To go on stage and sing in that state was probably the first time I went on stage as me.

I was just so lost, broken. And then again, when my mother died two years later, I felt that every bit of security in the world was being stripped away. And I was doing concerts. I was touring “Vampire’s Rock” going straight into pantomime at Sheffield Lyceum. And I was just raw and I was going on stage, trying not to shake and cry. I think those are the only times I've ever been me on stage. So, when you do come across artists – I think Kate Bush can be that raw - I really respect them for it but with me I think I've always built barriers around me -

CHRIS: But she's really interesting actually, isn't she, as an example because she’s obviously given a lot of thought to it. For example she had the link with Lindsay Kemp, that Bowie also had. Lindsay Kemp, someone who we haven't much talked about in relation to “Jubilee” but of course he's in that mix as well. I know Lucy Ellinson who plays “Viv” in “Jubilee” gave a lot of thought to what Lindsay Kemp was doing in that role. Did you ever have anyone who had a similar role for you in terms of as a mentor, as an inspiration, who gave you a way of thinking about what a stage persona might be or . . .?

TOYAH: Oh, that's a good question. Musically it was Bowie, purely because of the charisma of the man, and also the very focused, concentrated period of time of coming up with pure genius from about 72’ right through to 81’. He had such an incredibly creative decade. Picasso did the same. He was a huge influence on me that way. I can't say that I knew him. I'm married to a man who played on his albums but I can't say that Bowie personally helped me but his career helped me.

With acting it's such a good question because I don't feel female and genetically I’m female. So it's always been a battle of how I do a character. And I’ve always tried to add both arguments into my characters, the feminine and the male side. So I feel that I’ve done that truly on my own .

CHRIS: Absolutely. That feels true. For example, just your facility with persona that becomes, I think for me, the most spikiest experience I've had of your work really testing those things - there's an album of yours called “Prostitute”, which I think is extraordinary. It's in some way unprecedented from circa late 80’s . . .?

TOYAH: I recorded it in 86’ or 87’ . . .

CHRIS: That's such a theatrical space that that album opens up. It's so about theatre and about performance. It's about power play. There are so many voices layered on top of each other, so many different voices that we hear you use. It's a really extraordinary conception. And that was one of the reasons I wanted to ask you the question because it feels like a musical expression of something that must be about your theatrical instincts?

TOYAH: Well, yes! I did it completely on my own. I think “Prostitute” came about because I surprised everyone and got married quite young. I think I was 28 or 27. And as soon as I got married, I went from being one of the most famous females in Europe . . . to being invisible. Bank managers wouldn't talk to me, they’d only talk to my husband. My manager would only talk to my husband . . .

CHRIS: How weird -

TOYAH: I thought I haven't been through everything I've been through and choose privately to get married . . . to be cast aside

CHRIS: Just to disappear -

TOYAH: Yeah, and I felt as I’d become a prostitute. And I just needed to get the anger out. It’s very odd to go into a relationship with your partner for life and have everyone battle against it. People were loathsome towards us, they hated us being married. So I hired a drummer/programmer called Steve Sidelnyc, who was fantastic. And I said to Steve “I'm just going to ask you to create sounds in bars. So I want this emotion here, that emotion there for 32 bars,16 bars, 8 bars”, and we just cut and pasted all that together. And then I would go home and I would write the song over that.

CHRIS: Oh, right! Interesting!

TOYAH: So we came up with the rhythms first. I would then go into the studio, put all the voices down, and all the sounds that I could play myself. And then Steve would come and play live over it. It was very organic, very experimental, and done in the heat of the moment, but that is a very real moment and I used all my theatrical experience to make it a story.

CHRIS: I'd forgotten that it even has stage calls -

TOYAH: Yes!

CHRIS: Stuff like that, it's a completely sort of theatrical presentation, isn't it?

TOYAH: The rewarding thing about that is it was my biggest hit in America -

CHRIS: Was it really? That’s interesting -

TOYAH: Billboard (magazine) gave it five stars, and said it was the most exciting thing they'd ever heard. They called it an “antidote to Madonna”, and what I find funny about that is I wrote it because I felt a woman being swallowed up in a man's world. I didn't write it to diss another woman. I have more fan mail from that album than any other album.

CHRIS: I think I have to let you go, get ready for tonight (Toyah backstage of "Jubilee", above) I just have one final question, as you know, which is that I ask everyone to nominate someone for me to go and talk to next?

TOYAH: Tilda Swinton. Good luck! (Chris cackles) You have to go either to Aberdeen or to New York.

CHRIS: Yeah, okay. I'll do my best. Why did you think of Tilda?

TOYAH: I think it's an obvious choice. She lived with Derek Jarman, they were very close. I think her talent as an actress helped move Derek to the next level because Derek had someone with him 24 hours a day, who had a natural talent, but had also honed her technical talent beyond anything else. I think she was so important in his life, and has continued to be important within the world of acting for 40 years. I think it would be very exciting for you having done this to meet her.

CHRIS: Yeah, it really would. Alright, well, we’ll see. Toyah! What an absolute joy. Thank you so much.

TOYAH: Thank you and thank you for letting me be part of “Jubilee”. It’s been a game changer for me -

CHRIS: It's really nice to know. Me too.

TOYAH: Someone wrote to me yesterday and they said “did you know this is the most important thing you've done in your life?”

CHRIS: Wow! Goodness gracious me!

TOYAH: It’s good.

CHRIS: I’ll take it! Alright, have a good show tonight.

TOYAH: Thank you!

You can listen to the interview HERE