A new Region 1 DVD box set of Maigret: The Complete Collection is released by Acorn Media this week.
The 4-DVD set features all 12 episodes, starring Michael Gambon in the title role, which aired in 1992 and ’93, with English subtitles, plus an 8-page booklet featuring articles on Georges Simenon, Jules Maigret, and the television series.
Based on Georges Simenon’s classic detective novels! “Gambon is terrific.” – The Times (U.K.). Emmy nominee Michael Gambon (Harry Potter, The Singing Detective) is Jules Maigret, the “wonderfully entertaining sleuth” (Austin American-Statesman) at the heart of novelist Georges Simenon’s beloved detective series.
The new collection includes the eighth epsiode of the series in which Toyah had a guest role:
Maigret and the Hotel Majestic – A rich American (Michael Shannon) wife strangled in hotel kitchen. A prostitute (Toyah Willcox) attacks Maigret. Michael J. Jackson and John Kavanagh are guest stars.
BBC Breakfast Time went on air 30 years ago this morning. The original programme logo and memorable theme tune still remind me of getting ready for school.
Toyah has guested on the programme numerous times over the years: In 1983, talking about ‘Love Is The Law’ and The Ebony Tower; in 1985, around ‘Minx’ time, talking about a tour that didn’t happen (see below); in 1987, talking about ‘Desire’ and Cabaret; in 2007, talking about panto in Reading and in 2008, talking about Vampires Rock.
BBC Breakfast is celebrating 30 years of broadcasting with a trip down memory lane
Considered a “huge risk” when it launched on 17 January 1983, Breakfast Time was the UK’s first regular national breakfast show. Famous for its magazine-style approach, it combined news and lighter features. The 30th anniversary show will feature appearances from some of the original team.
Introduced two weeks before rival broadcaster ITV’s TV-am with David Frost, Breakfast Time hoped to lure audiences away from radio with a combination of news, travel information and lifestyle segments. Although breakfast TV had been the staple diet in the US for three decades, the British public was wary of the innovation in 1983.
• Continue reading at BBC News. View Toyah’s 1985 Breakfast Time appearance below.
Toyah’s full interview, recorded last week at The Marlowe Theatre, Canterbury, from this evening’s Channel 4 News. “I accidentally saw the Sex Pistols at a gig in Birmingham and it changed my life forever.” So Toyah Willcox told me this week, nearly four decades after punk exploded onto the British music scene, writes Channel 4 News Reporter Katie Razzall.
At that stage, in the late 1970s, she was a teenager from Birmingham who’d been told she must behave demurely and in a “feminine” way. At the gig, there were “people out there who were misbehaving“. As she puts it: “Suddenly I was in a room of spitting, shouting, angry people. I thought, right, I belong. I’ve found my voice.”
TheChannel 4 News feature on PUNK magazine’s forthcoming 40th anniversary, including interview footage with Toyah, aired earlier this evening on ‘Channel 4’. Click below to watch.
In the 1970s, Punk Magazine documented a scene which began in New York with bands like the Ramones, and then spread to Britain to produce the revolutionary sound of the Sex Pistols and the Clash.
Toyah is mentioned as being a guest, in the line-up for the new series of RTÉ Two’s Wagon’s Den, in an article by the RTÉ Press Centre.
Katherine Lynch’s hit comedy showbiz news show Wagon’s Den returns to RTE Two on Thursday January 10th with its usual thunderous cacophony of female wit and opinion on all the celebrity news issues of the week.
Amongst those appearing alongside Katherine Lynch’s anchor Sheila Chic character are wingman Brian Dowling plus model Sarah Morrisey, ‘Gossip Girl’ Siobhan O’Connor, Anthea Turner, ‘Doctor’ Gillian McKeith, Toyah Willcox and Model-turned-Super Injunction Poster Girl Natasha Giggs.
Keep an eye on Channel 4 News. Toyah tweeted yesterday that she was being interviewed this morning for the programme: “C4 news filming me in dressing room at 9am. How punk changed the role of women! ”
Channel 4 News airs in the UK at 7pm Monday to Saturday and 6.30pm on Sundays.
Toyah’s brief appearance, from early December, on ITV1’s Lorraine is still available to watch online at the ITV website.
More than half a million people have been checking out our Little Black Dress Diet – and there are just two days to go until our finale on Thursday! Today it’s all about last-minute tips, and to get us in the Christmas mood, Jane Wake has enlisted the help of panto stars Gareth Gates and Toyah Willcox to show us some great simple arm exercises.
Toyah’s fantastic track ‘Sensational’, from the much loved 2008 album ‘In The Court Of The Crimson Queen’, debuted on UK television on Boxing Day in a new high profile advertising campaign by Weight Watchers.
Weight Watchers – New Approach features Patsy Kensit in one of the first adverts and is expected to run for most of 2013.
View the 40 second ad at You Tube. There’s also a 30 second version. View here.
‘TV Ad Music’ have also reported on the advert. View here.
Yesterday’s Pointless Celebrities is now available to watch at BBC iPlayer. The programme, which included Toyah and Cheryl Baker, will remain online until next Tuesday. Host, Alexander Armstrong revealed that ‘Anthem’ was the second album he bought. Click below for iPlayer.
An advert for Sleeping Beauty at The Marlowe Theatre, Canterbury aired last night on ITV1 in the Meridian region (Kent). It was shown in the ad breaks of I’m A Celebrity… Get Me Out Of Here! View the full ad here or by clicking on the screen caps below. (Thanks to Michael)
• Unfortunately in the age of the internet negative news seems to attract far more attention and interest than positive (funny that!). The Herne Bay Christmas lights switch-on story has went “viral” and been “trending” over the last 24 hours, with even the big media guns giving it coverage, including The Sun, Daily Mail and BBC News.
The full transcript of Toyah and Robert’s Love and Marriage interview, which aired on BBC4 earlier this month, is available at The Toyah Willcox Interview Archive. The full episode is also available to view online at You Tube. (Thanks to Lärwi)
The BBC have released the official synopsis for episode three of Love and Marriage.
To Have and to Hold (Episode 3 of 3)
The effects of the sexual revolution, the empowerment of women and the growth of a global consumer society based on individual choice were only fully played out in the last decades of the 20th century, when the divorce rate increased to an all-time high of one in three marriages.
This final episode explores how marriage has adapted to these pressures by looking at the ups and downs of five couples whose relationships personify modern marriage. It looks at the mixed-race marriage of Mo and Ann Chaudry and their rags-to-riches journey which resulted in a millionaire lifestyle and a happy family. Kate and Harry Benson had a glamorous Lady Di-style wedding but their marriage almost followed suit, nearly ending in divorce. They both became marriage guidance counsellors and Harry now heads up the new Marriage Foundation.
Rock stars Toyah Willcox and Robert Fripp reveal their romantic love story, their ups and downs and how they have kept their 25-year marriage strong.
The Love and Marriage series that Toyah and Robert Fripp participate in begins airing on ‘BBC Four’ next Tuesday.
This three part series follows the ups and downs of marriage in Britain from the 1900s to the present day using the deeply moving personal stories of couples, and their children, from all walks of life. This first film looks at the period between the 1900s and the late 1950s, an era when the ideal of romantic love in marriage had to withstand the harsh realities of a world very different to today.
Love and Marriage: A 20th Century Romance: BBC Four: Tue 18th September: 9.00pm
Three part series. This first episode considers the strengths and weaknesses of the Victorian marriage ideal. Despite mass unemployment and the tragedy of two world wars, most marriages not only survived, some became even stronger. Denise Robertson, Hetty Bower, Diana Athill and others tell their stories.
Very sad news. Terry Nutkins, presenter of Animal Magic and bona fide kid”s TV legend, passed away yesterday. Toyah appeared on Animal Magic in 1982, alongside presenters Johnny Morris and Terry, when a mischievious monkey was named after her. Rest in Peace, Terry.
The ‘Vintage TV’ September newsletter has been emailed to subscribers, and again Toyah is mentioned in one of their updates.
Three is a magic number: Excitement is in the air as we begin our third year of broadcasting. Our audience continues to grow like our enthusiasm for bringing you the best in classic music television programming. Thanks to you, our viewers, our own independent productions continue to swell, giving the artists and celebrities you care about a chance to talk directly about the vintage music that we love. Toyah Willcox, Janice Long, Mike Hurst, Pat Sharp, Nik Kershaw and many others in the coming months will appear exclusively on Vintage TV, here and even further afield as we premiere internationally. The third time is a charm it seems, and we look forward to discovering more vintage music with you in 2013.
• It’s already been confirmed that Toyah will present a new (possibly 12-part) music series on ‘Vintage TV’, beginning later this year.
Screen caps of Toyah from Saturday night’s The Timey-Wimey Of Doctor Who, which aired on ‘BBC America’. Click below to view larger versions. Read up on all of our recent Doctor Who documentary specials news here. (Thanks to Paul Lomas)
Toyah did, after all, guest in Saturday night’s third documentary special, The Time-Wimey Of Doctor Who, on ‘BBC America’. Here is a transcript of what she said.
Toyah on Rose Tyler in the epsiode ‘Father’s Day’: “Rose Tyler is human. She’s made like all humans, to nurture and save, and she sees her father and she has a chance to save him… So she saves him from the car hitting him, and all hell breaks loose. It cracks a moment in time, where these demons, these gargoyles, can come to life.”
On the Doctor and instant time travel, specifically from the episode ‘The Big Bang’: “He can go like that (clicks fingers) and he’s with one person, and he can be having a conversation with that, and he can go like that (clicks fingers) and he’s back in another time having a conversation with someone else. ‘Oh! I forgot to say something’ (clicks fingers), and he’s back somewhere else!”
On Doctor Who and its effect on viewers: “What the writers of Doctor Who manage is to broaden our perceptions, broaden our beliefs, broaden our horizons. They get it brilliantly correct every time.”
• Screen caps of Toyah from Timey-Wimey coming soon. (Thanks to Paul Lomas)
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.
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.
BBC Breakfast Time went on air 30 years ago this morning. The original programme logo and memorable theme tune still remind me of getting ready for school.
The ‘Vintage TV’ September newsletter has been emailed to subscribers, and again Toyah is mentioned in one of their updates.
Toyah did, after all, guest in Saturday night’s third documentary special, 
