 After performing in Frome,
former punk princess Toyah Willcox tells us why
she loves Bath and why she owes her success to
looking strange
Charismatic, outspoken and impossible to
categorise, former punk princess Toyah Willcox is
one of Britain’s iconic household names.
When she visited Frome to perform at the Cheese
and Grain this month, she told Lisa Evans why she
adores Bath and why she owes her success to
looking ‘strange’.Toyah Willcox has
always liked to surprise. She is, she admits,
‘a bit of an attention-seeker’ and was
a rebellious extrovert who knew what she had to
do to be noticed. During her 20s, with her shock
of bright pink hair and unconventional outfits,
she was the most outrageous and most successful
punk rocker of her age, and she tells me that she
thinks her alternative look was the reason she
found success.
“I always wanted to be noticed,” says
Toyah. “And, for me, dying my hair crazy
colours and wearing different clothes from
everyone else helped me to break free from the
mould which women were put into at the time. I
wanted to be different and not judged by the same
book as everyone else was.
“And to be honest with you, if I hadn’t
have looked a bit strange, I don’t think I
would have been noticed in the first place. I owe
my career to that colourful hair – I was a
punk rocker at a time when no other woman was
doing anything like that.”
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