Dreamscape – Toyah Willcox Fansite

Rare, and amazing, photos of Toyah from 1980!! Photos from this session were used in a TV Times interview that year but these are all unpublished as far as I’m aware. (Thanks to Andi)

A 1991 report from ITV Calendar News, featuring rare footage of Toyah’s Cheap Thrills performance, has just been uploaded to You Tube. Toyah visited a number of British prisons, while simultaneously touring theatres with Amadeus, in 1991 in Cheap Thrills, a specially written play based on the life of Janis Joplin. Click below to view and here for larger caps.

Toyah’s appearance on BBC1’s Clean Slate, also from 1991, has been uploaded too.

The third ‘BBC America’ documentary special, The Timey-Wimey Of Doctor Who, airs tonight. No word on whether Toyah will be included, and there was no full-length preview trailer for this episode, but she is listed as a guest at the BBCA website: It’s The Timey-Wimey Of Doctor Who. Join celebrity Whovians – as they try to make sense of all the “wibbly wobbly, timey-wimey… stuff.

I’ve made a start on a new update to Dreamscape’s Gallery: Adding the numerous fantastic rarities that have surfaced over the last year or so, with other ‘new’ Toyah photos, as well as correcting some date errors etc. It’ll probably take a while to complete, I’ll keep you posted!

Toyah Willcox has chosen Middlesbrough Theatre to launch the latest leg of her tour, celebrating the thirtieth anniversary of The Changeling. The Changeling Resurrection II sees Toyah and her full band perform a selection of songs from the album alongside classic material as heard on the Warrior Rock live album.

The performance takes place on Wednesday 19th September at 7.30pm. Tickets are £18, concessions £16.

• Continue reading at Darlington For Culture.

Toyah visiting Wynne’s Cakes & Coffee Shop in Hanley, Stoke-on-Trent yesterday. She tweeted: “Just visiting john wain’s new cafe Wynnes and sampling the cakes . Yummy“. Click below to view larger photos. More info here. (Photos © Wynne’s Cakes/Toyah Willcox)

Pints and bottles have been replaced with cakes and chocolates at a new Stoke-on-Trent business.

John and Carl Wynne have spent £400,000 transforming the former Three Tuns pub on Bucknall New Road, Hanley into a specialist cake and chocolate shop and cafe. Wynne’s Cakes and Winnie Wonka Chocolate yesterday, hosted a VIP night to celebrate its opening, with guests including singer and actress Toyah Willcox, right with John and Carl.

John, aged 41, from Hanley, said: “I ran the pub for 15 years, and it was successful for most of that time, but with the decline of the market, I decided to do something different, and my friend suggested I open a cake shop.”

“Four years ago I’d never baked a cake, but I’ve been on lots of courses and it’s going really well. We’ve been open five weeks, and we’ve already got bookings for three weddings.”

The complete, four-part, late 70s version of Quatermass, starring John Mills and Simon MacCorkindale, in which Toyah also had a small role as Sal, is available to view in full at ‘You Tube’. This was made by Euston Films, filmed in 1978 and aired on ITV in October and November 1979: Chapter One: Ringstone Round; Chapter Two: Lovely Lightning; Chapter Three: What Lies Beneath; Chapter Four: An Endangered Species. View a photo of Toyah taken during the filming here. The series has previously been released on VHS and DVD but is currently unavailable. This was also released as a television film in 1979, The Quatermass Conclusion, an edited down version of these four episodes. View further info at Wikipedia.

Three more new reviews of The Tempest on Blu-ray.

• Ioncinema: The Tempest | Blu-ray Review: Difficult as ever, Jarman’s take on Shakespeare’s final lone play is definitely a product of his own imagining. Laced with homoeroticisms, cabaret iconography, extravagant but dirty set design, and overall unsettling imagery… Like the original story, the film centers around the magician and ex-Duke of Milan, Prospero (Heathecote Williams), along with his beautiful daughter Miranda (Toyah Willcox) and their downright scary servant, Caliban (Jack Birkett), all of which now live alone in a decrepit mansion on an island.

• Blu-ray.com: The Tempest Blu-ray Review: Stormy weather ends in sunshine: Where Jarman’s The Tempest really differentiates itself is in its unsettling oddities, its ghostly atmosphere and decayed visual style… Karl Johnson makes for a hypnotic Ariel—weird and effete, dressed all in white—and Toyah Willcox is far from the usual, virginal Miranda. Here she’s sensual and erratic, a life-sized wind-up toy doll.

• Cultural Mente Incorrecto: “The Tempest” by Derek Jarman: A different and almost subversive Shakespeare classic: “The Tempest” by Derek Jarman is a different and almost subversive Shakespeare classic. Visually stunning, with that touch of indie with hints of neorealism but a literary question fabulesca, this is a historically important film in the film, required viewing for film fans Jarman, protesters and intellectuals.

• View links to numerous other reviews of The Tempest on Blu-ray here.

• Check out Toyah’s Official Twitter: Over the last couple of weeks she has tweeted about vistiting the National Portrait Gallery, Robert Fripp, tasty food from homegrown veg, the Olympics, recent gigs, traffic jams and more!

• Irenebrination: The (Blitz) Kids That Never Were (According to the Fashion Mainstream): A new mini-article on Melissa Caplan.

• Top Of The Pops: The Story Of 1976 is currently available to watch at BBC iPlayer.

• Samantha Fox mentions Toyah in a new article at The Quietus in which she chooses her 13 Favourite Albums: Eurythmics – Sweet Dreams: I remember when Annie Lennox first came out I just loved her voice and loved her image. She’s very androgynous and different to everyone else, other than someone like Toyah Willcox, who when I was younger I thought; ‘oh, she’s different.’

As mentioned a few times over the last week, Toyah guested on The Women Of Doctor Who on ‘BBC America’ at the weekend. Here is a full transcript of what she said during the 45-minute special.

Toyah on Rose Tyler: “She’s a wonderfully refreshing heroine, that sets the standard for heroines in other sci-fi series”; on Nu-Who: “Because I’ve watched Doctor Who for almost 50 years, I’m not used to this raw, human emotion that’s coming out in the modern version of the drama.”

Toyah on Martha Jones: “I love the moment when Martha Jones just turns to the Doctor and says ‘I’m not staying, I’m not gonna waste my time waiting for a man’, so good on her! Girl power!”; on the TARDIS/Idris: “Now you’d think the TARDIS, which is 700 years old, if it was to become flesh it would actually be a bloke, a man, in a boiler suit, covered in tar, covered in the muck of machinery, but no…”; on Donna Noble: “You get this scene, where they’re both kind of stuck. She’s great at Vaudeville, and that’s what this moment is. It’s classic comedy.”

Toyah on Sarah Jane Smith: “What is lovely about their bond, it’s not a sexual magnetism, it’s a genuine, eternal loving bond”; on Rose & Sarah Jane: “This moment where they realised they’re united in how special they are for having had those experiences, and they start laughing. Quite madly”; on River Song: “River Song is beautiful, glamourous… She is better at operating the TARDIS than the Doctor is, and for the first time you see him actually being quite put out at that… A lovely twist, is when River Song is about to be shot by Amy Pond, and suddenly she says ‘I’m doing this because I am your daughter’, and there’s this wonderful moment of recognition.”

Toyah on Lady Cassandra: “There’s this wonderful scene where all these dignitaries from around the universe are coming together, they’re converging to see the death of Planet Earth… She has been stretched so far that she is, literally, like a pinned piece of leather. Drying out… She arrives with all these medical staff who have to spray her and keep her moist”; on Joan Redfern: “You can see that for the first time the Doctor is falling in love as a human being, and he falls in love with her”; on female companions in general: “They have their vulnerabilities, and perhaps it’s because of those vulnerabilites that Doctor Who can experience human emotions a bit more.”

The Most Fertile Man In Ireland : Sky Movies Indie: Saturday 25th August: 8.00am
Satirical comedy with Kris Marshall, Kathy Keira Clarke, Bronagh Gallagher, James Nesbitt, Kenneth Cranham, Olivia Nash, Pauline McLynn, Tara Lynne O’Neill, Toyah Willcox, Harry Towb, Marc O’Shea and Paddy McCarney. Also airing on Sky Movies Indie HD.

The Tempest has just been released for the first time on Blu-ray. Here is the Time Out cover feature/interview from 1980 published the week that the film was originally released. View the magazine cover here.

Toyah reflects… stage actress, rock singer, icon of the New Wave, star of ‘Quadrophenia’ and now Derek Jarman’s ‘The Tempest’, Toyah Willcox on creating her own image. Next Thursday Derek Jarman’s film of ‘The Tempest’ opens. Toyah Willcox, late of ‘Jubilee’ and ‘Quadrophenia’ plays Miranda. Chris Auty went in search of Ms Willcox… 

Click here to read at Dreamscape’s Press Archive. View all of our recent retro Classic Toyah press articles & interviews here. (Thanks to Andi)

Celebrity Ghost Stories UK: Bio: Sunday 26th August: 11.00pm
Sue Cook reveals creepy encounters with a malevolent nutcracker and a UFO, Toyah Willcox speaks of a spooky apparation, and Alex Fearns discusses sinister sounds he caught on tape.

Screen caps from last night’s The Women Of Doctor Who, which aired on ‘BBC America’. Toyah appeared numerous times throughout the 45-minute docu special, talking about Rose Tyler, the TARDIS, Martha Jones, Sarah-Jane Smith and Donna Noble. No word as yet on whether Toyah will apear in the next two specials: The Timey-Wimey of Doctor Who (18th August), and The Destinations of Doctor Who (25th August). (Thanks to Niall)

• Jelly, the band which includes Stevie Bray of the original Toyah (Sheep Farming/Blue Meaning/Toyah! Toyah! Toyah!) line up, have been playing gigs recently. They are revisiting The Water Rats in Kings Cross for another date later this month (Friday 31st August). Visit the events page at Facebook for more info. Check out Jelly’s Facebook page for links to some of their songs.

• New Wave Photos: Toyah: An excellent selection of photos of Toyah from an appearance on Belgian TV in 1981. (Thanks to Dawn)

• DVD Beaver: Quadrophenia (Blu-ray): Quadrophenia looks highly impressive on Blu-ray from Criterion. Textured grain is prominent and establishes a strong image quality through the 1080P. I can easily state that this is the best I have seen Quadrophenia look. Sweet.

• Spy Vibe: Mod Movie Returns: The long out-of-print Mod classic, Quadrophenia (1979), will be released on DVD and Blu-ray by the Criterion Collection on August 28th.

This has always been one of my favourite Toyah TV appearances, especially as there is very little footage from 1982 of live performances of songs from ‘The Changeling’: It’s BBC1’s Get Set For Summer from July 1982. The band perform ‘Castaways’, ‘Street Creature’ and ‘Brave New World’ and Toyah is also interviewed by Peter Powell. View all at Dreamscape’s You Tube playlist. (Thanks to Andi)

Another retro Toyah magazine interview. This one is from ‘Cosmopolitan’ magazine, published in 1983 (Main photo by Brian Aris): Amazing and unclassifiable, Toyah – rebel and bizarre pop star – is also an accomplished actress, starring opposite Lord Olivier in a TV film of The Ebony Tower. Click below to read, and here for part two. View all of our recent retro Classic Toyah press articles & interviews here. There are yet more here. (Thanks to Andi)

A couple of Toyah magazine items from the early 80’s: ‘With Love From Toyah!’; a mini article on Toyah’s make-up range, which had just gone on sale at the time, and ‘Four From Toyah’; four classic early 80’s Toyah photos. Click below to view larger. (Thanks to Andi)

Toyah is the cover star of the Autumn 2012 edition of ‘MT’, the Middlesbrough Theatre brochure. The much-anticipated Changeling Resurrection II tour plays at the venue on Wednesday 19th September, the first gig of the 12-date UK tour. Click below to view larger or here to read the full brochure online. (Thanks to Andrew Moore)

A preview of tomorrow night’s The Women Of Doctor Who special, airing on ‘BBC America’, is now available to view at You Tube. Guests discuss the character Donna Noble, including a brief clip of Toyah.

Click below to watch and here for larger versions of the screen caps. There’s also another, shorter, preview trailer. View that here (This doesn’t feature Toyah).

Revisit the Tenth Doctor’s beloved companion Donna Noble in this exclusive sneak peek at BBC America’s All New Special The Women Of Doctor Who. Don’t miss the World Premiere, Saturday Aug 11 at 9/8c. Who’s the greatest woman of Doctor Who? Vote here!

NB: Toyah may also have guested in last week’s The Science Of Doctor Who. I’ll let you know when I’ve watched it. If she does it probably means she will be appearing in all four specials.