Toyah’s full “If I Ruled The World” Reader’s Digest Q&A is now available online…
If you want to eat meat you should have to raise and respectfully take the lives of your own animals
I am very passionate that animals have souls, and most religions say that they don’t. Animals experience empathy, joy and pain. We do not have a right to kill them en masse.
I have never met an animal that does not have empathy. As you get older I think it’s a lot better for you to have a very dominantly vegetarian diet.
There will be a National Concert Day
I used to live in Menton in France and they would have a national concert day, but I don’t think that’s what it was called. Every school would take the school orchestra out into the square. They would play music and the dance classes would do dance. It was a very beautiful spectacle. I’ve seen it in Israel as well. On one day per week in Israel, most communities will go and dance in the square, with live musicians playing.
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Toyah is interviewed in the October 2023 issue of Reader’s Digest magazine. Here is a preview.
If I Ruled The World – Toyah Willcox
Toyah Willcox is a singer, actor and TV presenter with a career spanning 40 years and eight top 40 singles. Toyah and Robert Fripp tour the UK together in October
Young people would have repercussion predictors
If you make a move in anger, revenge or envy, you need to know the consequences of your actions. I think AI would help young people so much—if they could just have a level of repercussion prediction, they might think twice rather than taint their entire life with a bad action. Within social media, a repercussion predictor would be really useful.
Work-life balance would be a law
The majority of us forget to put life balance first. We are very lucky in the UK that we have two days off a week. I often work in America and I’m so shocked at how hard Americans are expected to work. Life isn’t all about work, email, bureaucracy and accounting. In my working world, I would insist that were two days a week where there is no communication with work.
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Toyah Willcox is an English musician, actress and TV presenter. From fronting a band to releasing solo music, there is little that she hasn’t done across a four-decade career
My childhood was definitely privileged. We had hot water, heating, food, we had our own home, and I went to a private school.
Having a limp, dyslexia and a lisp. I wasn’t even aware of it. I was having a perfectly happy childhood until people pointed out that I had a physical difference to everyone else in the room. Then, when I was sitting my 11-plus people realised that I was not on the same page as everyone else because of dyslexia. Alan Sugar, Richard Branson—you could name a thousand people who have exactly the same experience as me and we’re doing perfectly well. I have such a wonderful life. I have overcome so much.
I wouldn’t say that that specifically made me tougher. What made me tougher was being the only woman in the music industry. My way of learning, my way of working, means that I have to just be a little bit ahead of everyone else. And I think any woman in acting or music would say, “I feel the same too.” You never arrive.
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