TOYAH ON
GET SET FOR SUMMER
WITH PETER POWELL
JULY 1982

PETER: Toyah, come and join us down here if you can

TOYAH: Hello! I like your microphone!

PETER: Do you want to hold this? Just sit down here. Take a seat. Folks, it’s “Pop A Question”. Thank you for the 1000s of cards on Toyah’s behalf that came in to this part of the programme. And it's when we put you under the thumb

TOYAH: Put to the test

PETER: Yes, we got to find out all about you

TOYAH: Oh no! (Peter laughs)

PETER: Steven has written in from Norfolk

TOYAH: (the kids next to her are restless) Be quiet there!

PETER: You keep them in order (Toyah laughs) Steven says “Dear Toyah, I'd like to know where you get all your energy from?” Here she is huffing and puffing! (Toyah pretends to collapse, the audience laughs) and “how do you keep yourself so fit?”

TOYAH: It takes takes a lot of sort of determination to get up very early or go out very late at night and do lots of running

PETER: You go to a gym, don't you?

TOYAH: Oh, yeah, I do lots of gymnastics. I'm sort of like very supple

PETER: And every time you do a tour you go and have a workout for three weeks to get yourself -

TOYAH: Oh, yeah. Really have to

PETER: Good for you. It's important we want to keep fit I think. Robert from London wrote “my question to Toyah is, which is more important to you - acting or singing careers? Or are they both equally important?" Thank you for the question

TOYAH: (Puts on a phoney 50’s American accent) Well sincerely folks, they're both very important. I mean, they really are important to me. I love doing both of them. I only believe you should do what you love doing. You shouldn't be forced into doing something you don't want to do

PETER: Alison here (points to girl next to him) has a question for you, don’t you? Let’s take the mike over here

ALISON: What was it like making “The Blue Marigold”? (above)

TOYAH: I made it well over a year ago, and actually made it when “It’s A Mystery” first hit the charts. So I was very sort of happy and very up but it was a challenge because I had to age considerably. I sort of had to like - don’t laugh at me (laughs) wear these great big wigs, which is always a challenge to wear a wig sometimes because it feels like a hat

PETER: (Touches Toyah’s hair) This is real, isn't it?

TOYAH: This is, yeah! People think this is a wig. I know it looks like one

PETER: Another question here I'd like to ask. This is Alison from Somersert. “I would like to ask Toyah if she wore outrageous clothes and had funny hair do’s when she was at school?” A lot of people wrote in about this question

TOYAH: Well, I don't want to get into trouble but basically yes. I started cutting my hair before I started wearing sort of weird clothing. I mean, teachers don't like it. I don’t think they ever will. But I think it's always very nice if you can sort of look normal for school and then come home from school and you can actually actually buy sprays to colour your hair that can wash off. And I advise kids to do that more than anything, but I was pretty outrageous at school

PETER: Your look is very hyper important to your image, isn't it?

TOYAH: It's not done totally for image. It's done because that's actually how I like to look

PETER: Can we do a close-up on Toyah’s eyes? They’ve changed haven’t they? Why did they change?

TOYAH: Well, the new album is called “The Changeling” and the changeling means when the elfin folk snatch a human being away from society and put a fairy there. Now, I'm not saying I'm a fairy (the audience laughs) I thought the only way to sort of portray that word is to have black eyes (pretends to hit herself) Bang!

PETER: Another question from Callum in Glasgow. “What inspires most of your songs, Toyah?”

TOYAH: Well, (with) the new album it's been mainly dreams. I have terrible nightmares and what I do is I wake up and I write everything down. And also I've been abroad a lot in the last year. I wrote a lot of songs while I was in Hamburg and places like that, which are very inspiring

PETER: That's good. Toyah, thanks for answering the questions

TOYAH: Pleasure

PETER: Do you want the rest of the cards that were sent to us?

TOYAH: Yeah!

PETER: You can look at them and find out what people really want to know about you

TOYAH: Yes, thank you!

Watch the interview here HERE