Dreamscape – Toyah Willcox Fansite

Quadrophenia – Our Generation: Sky Arts: Sunday 14th July: 0.25am
Celebrity fans and cast members come together to shed light on the making of Quadrophenia and explore the legacy that the cult film has left behind, 40 years after its release.

Quadrophenia Reunited – 40 Years On: Sky Arts: Sunday 14th July: 1.25am
Lauren Laverne hosts a one-off special bringing the stars of Quadrophenia together. Featuring reminiscing, interviews, a table-read of the script and plenty of surprises. (Photo © Sky Arts)

Tales Of The Unexpected: Sky Arts: Thursday 18th July: 6pm
Tales Of The Unexpected: Sky Arts: Sunday 21st July: 9am
Tales Of The Unexpected: Sky Arts: Monday 22nd July: 8.55am
Blue Marigold. Series 5, Episode 1. Dropped by her agency for her diva-like behaviour, supermodel Marigold’s mental health deteriorates. Years later, she plots a comeback. Director: Giles Foster. Starring: Toyah Willcox, Ralph Bates, Sharon Duce, Helen Fraser, Billy Hamon, Edward Jewesbury.

These Are All The Celebrities Who’ve Been Rumoured For Strictly Come Dancing 2024 So Far

Stars from across the world of TV, sport, music and beyond have already been tipped to be taking part this year.

With the summer only just starting to get underway, it might seem like the new series of Strictly Come Dancing is still aaaaages away – but we’re actually only just over a month away from the first of this year’s celebrities being revealed. In the past few weeks, rumours have been coming in thick and fast about which stars will be getting their dancing shoes on for a very special series of Strictly, commemorating 20 years since the show first began airing on BBC One.

Celebrities from across the world of TV, sport, music and beyond have already being tipped to be in the pipeline, ahead of the first announcements in August. So, to get you in the Strictly spirit, here are all the rumours about the 2024 line-up that have been reported so far…

Toyah Willcox: In June, The Sun reported that British music legend Toyah Wilcox had signed up for Strictly, after being impressed by her friend and colleague Angela Rippon’s performance a year earlier.

She previously joked to The Mirror: “I’d have to do it sooner rather than later, because I’m not gonna be able to move. I do understand how hard they work. I’m friends with Angela Rippon and she was extraordinary,” she continued. “But they’re rehearsing 10 hours a day every day. And then on Saturday, they do two shows.”

She added: “If I’m going to do it, it’s gonna have to happen within the next few years because I don’t think I’ll be able to move like that in two years’ time. But, you know, the whole world wants to do Strictly, I wouldn’t say no.”

• Continue reading at the Huff Post. See also Yahoo! News.

Toyah’s Sack The Stylist?! Top 30: NOW 80s: Tuesday 9th July: 9pm
Pop legend Toyah brings 30 memorable videos featuring a cavalcade of clothing calamities from superstars including Visage, Five Star, Divine, Cher, The Jam, Bananarama, Dead Or Alive, Bucks Fizz, ABC, Depeche Mode, David Bowie, Madonna, Adam & The Ants, A Flock Of Seagulls, Roxy Music, Kajagoogoo, Duran Duran, Grace Jones, Su Pollard, Toyah herself and more in this crazy countdown!

Toyah & Robert have just completed their set at Glastonbury‘s Field Of Avalon stage, following the premiere of today’s Sunday Lunch and a great live performance of Roses In Chains… Click blow to watch/listen to Sunday Lunch and here for Glastonbury photos.

Isle of Wight Festival return for Toyah and Robert Fripp

Making a return to the Isle of Wight Festival following their successful show at last year’s event, husband and wife musical partnership of Toyah Willcox and Robert Fripp entertained again in the Big Top.

The musical partnership of singer Toyah and King Crimson’s legendary guitarist Fripp — both from strangely different, but equally experimental musical backgrounds — reinvented themselves in the industry with their popular Sunday Lunch performances on YouTube.

Sunday’s afternoon show was a blend of Fripp’s musical precision and Toyah’s charismatic, spellbinding pop/punk-influenced enthusiasm.

She performed a set which included some of her solo classics, It’s a Mystery and I Want to Be Free, together with some great pop throwbacks, such as Echo Beach, a 70s hit for Martha and the Muffins.

• Continue reading at the Isle Of Wight County Press. (Photo © Isle Of Wight County Press)

Celebrity Help! My House Is Haunted: Really: Tuesday 9th July: 11pm
Toyah Willcox. Series 1, episode 5. The team undergoes one of the most terrifying investigations yet when visiting Toyah Willcox, who has experienced strange activity in her home ever since she moved in. (Photo © Discovery)

EdFringe | Trafford Tanzi starring Toyah Willcox! The play that changed my life – Kevin Maguire

Having given Andrew Pierce the opportunity to share the story of the musical that changed his life – it was Mamma Mia! you may recall – it seemed only fair to offer Kevin Maguire the same courtesy, especially as the pair’s Edinburgh Fringe show, Andrew Pierce vs Kevin Maguire (Assembly Rooms, 8-10 August), pits them against each other. So, in the interest of maintaining an even playing field, here, Maguire shares the piece of theatre that ‘changed his life’… Toyah Willcox in Trafford Tanzi.

‘Time erased exactly why I went to see punk princess Toyah Willcox hitting a wrestling ring’s canvass during 10 rounds over three hours, yet the exhilaration – mine, not hers, just to be clear – is as fresh today as that evening 41 years ago and counting. You never forget the magical impact of your first play, the memory sticking like first day at school, first day at work, first football game, first kiss.
I was a late debutant to the theatre, growing up in a Tyneside working class home where money was tight and the stage a social world away from our life. There’s no need to get out an unfeasibly small violin. Childhood is recalled happily even if now I recognise it could’ve been enriched culturally.

Never going to the York Theatre Royal during three years at the city’s university is explained blushingly by hanging with a group, at least one of whom subsequently came to see Willcox in her cartoonish outfit, who, like me, preferred football, playing the fool and doing nothing.

• Continue reading at Must See Theatre.

Born with club feet, a twisted spine and a lisp, all too often Toyah Willcox found herself the butt of the joke. But having exploited this outsider status to find fame as an actress and singer, she had the last laugh. And she’s still chuckling…

In a remarkably eclectic career spanning almost 50 years, peroxide princess Toyah Willcox has topped the pop charts, illuminated the silver screen with movie legend Katharine Hepburn and even dressed up as a giant vegetable with members of the Royal Family. And today, as she celebrates her newfound status as an unexpected social media sensation, with more than 120 million views of her YouTube channel, the 66-year-old is in a characteristically defiant mood.

“My rebellion has always been that I just don’t fit into the norm,” she says from the once-haunted Dorset home she shares with her online partner in crime, King Crimson guitarist and husband of 38 years, Robert Fripp. “And I never will. I don’t think like other people. I don’t move like other people. I’m unique.”

And for Toyah, who first came to public attention in 1979 as the party-loving Monkey in the iconic British mod film Quadrophenia, before launching a hugely successful pop career in the early 1980s, the roots of her distinctive, often-confrontational creativity lie firmly in her challenging childhood.

“Growing up in Birmingham I was disabled and I was treated as disabled, even though I was physically very, very strong,” she explains. “I had a twisted spine, my legs were twisted, I had club feet, and my family referred to me as ‘Hopalong’. I also had a very bad lisp and dyslexia, but even though people would laugh at me, I had grand ambitions and grand ideas from day one.”

Toyah recalls always being the butt of the joke to the people around her. “And that made me grow into a monster – and that monster grew daily,” she states with the ghost of a smile. “My ambitions grew daily because I was being set up for failure from the moment I could speak, but people didn’t see the person I knew.

• The full interview is available to read online here.

Toyah performing It’s A Mystery at Let’s Rock Leeds last weekend.

• Saturday Song: Roses In Chains (Official Video) – Watch… • Toyah & Robert: UpBeat Moments (and Roses In Chains) – Watch… • Toyah & Robert’s Sunday Lunch – Sunshine Of My Life – Watch… (Image © Toyah Willcox)

Secret Diary Of A Call Girl: That’s TV 2: Wednesday 3rd July: 1.45am
Series 1. Episode 1. Adult drama based on the journals of Belle de Jour, starring Billie Piper as a high-class escort who enjoys what she does but has to keep it a secret from everyone in her personal life. Belle entertains two new clients – one of whom gets too close for comfort. With Toyah Willcox and Cherie Lunghi.

• Series One of Secret Diary Of A Call Girl first aired in 2007 on ITV. Toyah appeared in Episodes 1,2 and 8 (Photos © ITV)

Roses In Chains, Toyah’s new single is out now! The video premieres on Facebook / YouTube at 11am, Saturday 22nd June. (Photo © Toyah Willcox)

“I was summoned to have tea with the Queen Mother and Princess Margaret. We talked about the philosophy of punk.” In 1980, when Britain’s royal family wanted “to see what a punk rocker looks like” they invited Toyah Willcox to St James’s Palace

Toyah recalls the day she talked punk rock with royalty

In the summer of 1977, punk rock gatecrashed into the mainstream consciousness in Britain when the Sex Pistols’ second single, God Save The Queen, entered the UK charts at number 2 during the week of the official observation of Queen Elizabeth II’s Silver Jubilee: it’s widely believed that the single was actually the UK’s highest-selling single that week, but the official chart stats were deliberately ‘adjusted’ to ensure that the nation’s most infamous punk band were kept from reaching number one.

As controversial as the song was, however, it seems that it didn’t necessarily alarm the monarchy, for three years later, punk starlet Toyah Willcox was summoned to one of London’s royal palaces so that Queen Elizabeth’s mother and sister could see at close quarters “what a punk rocker looks like,” according to a new [paywalled] interview the singer has given to The Telegraph.

• Continue reading at Louder.

Toyah Willcox: ‘I had tea with Princess Margaret – she wanted to see what a punk rocker looked like’

The singer, actress and presenter talks royal encounters, Judi Dench playing pranks, and an £80,000 bank forgery

Best and worst is a regular interview in which a celebrity reflects on the highs and lows of their life

Born in Birmingham in 1958, Toyah Willcox’s breakthrough role was in Quadrophenia in 1979. From there, she juggled acting with a pop career, selling millions of records. She has continued to sing and act throughout her career with roles in Casualty and Secret Diary of a Call Girl, and she also narrated the children’s TV series Teletubbies. She lives in Dorset with her husband, the King Crimson guitarist Robert Fripp, with whom she presents the popular YouTube show Sunday Lunch…

• Continue reading at The Telegraph. (Registration required)

Celebrity Money For Nothing: Really: Thursday 27th June: 8am
Series 1, Episode 1. Sarah Moore and Jay Blades search the homes of celebrities to uncover unloved and unused gems for charity. Sarah and Jay look through the homes of 1980s pop stars Sinitta and Toyah Willcox in the hope of uncovering four pieces of junk to transform and sell on for a profit. Woodworking wizard Norman Wilkinson is tasked with taking on Toyah’s tired chairs, while robot-mad Mark Haig gives Sinitta’s broken fan a steampunk-inspired makeover. But will Sarah and Jay find new homes for their revamped items? (Photo © BBC)

Secret Diary of a Call Girl cast – where are they now?

What happened to Billie Piper’s co-stars?

ITV2 drama Secret Diary of a Call Girl is enjoying a second wind, courtesy of Netflix.

The series, which was created by Lucy Prebble (Succession, I Hate Suzie) and ran for four seasons between 2007 and 2011, starred Billie Piper as a high-end escort working in London who kept her lucrative double life hidden from her family.

A number of recognisable faces also appeared alongside Piper.

Toyah Willcox played Gail, Hannah’s mother. She didn’t know what her daughter did for a living.

Willcox was an established singer before Secret Diary and continues to perform.

• Continue reading at Radio Times. As well as Netflix, all four series of Secret Diary Of A Call Girl recently aired on That’s TV.

Portrait Artist Of The Year: Sky Arts: Saturday 22nd June: 1pm
Portrait Artist Of The Year: Sky Arts: Sunday 23rd June: 9am
Portrait Artist Of The Year: Sky Arts: Wednesday 26th June: 3pm
Celebrities V Kids Special. Nitin Ganatra, Anita Mangan, Laurence Llewelyn-Bowen, Toyah Willcox, Leigh Francis and Gemma Cairney join six school pupils selected as part of Sky Arts Access All Arts initiative to paint portraits of Konnie Huq, Lee Ridley and Chi-Chi Nwanoku.

• Saturday Song: World In Action – Watch… • Toyah & Robert: UpBeat Moments – Watch… • Toyah & Robert’s Sunday Lunch – Black Dog – Watch… (Image © Toyah Willcox)

The Footage Detectives: Talking Pictures TV: Monday 1st July: 7pm
Quadrophenia. Featuring a look behind the scenes on Quadrophenia. Plus, rescued cinema advertising slides from the Second World War and memories of Smedley’s Sausage Rolls.

On the eve of her 44th single being released… Toyah will be joining Jackie Brambles on Greatest Hits Radio tonight for a Great Conversation from 8pm, ahead of her & Robert Fripp’s performance at the legendary Isle of Wight Festival this weekend. There may be a surprise too. Post-airing listen to the show here…