Toyah Willcox, the former “punk princess of pop” who can boast of being the presenter of The Good Sex Guide and the hymn-singing Songs of Praise, talks to Tony Leonard about virginity, Derek Jarman, scrotums, the General Synod, John Gielgud’s balls, bottle-throwing lesbians, Jesus Christ and... more besides!

You’ve always had a big gay following. Why do you think that is?

Toyah: I think because I always championed people that sat on the outside of the norm. I’m not saying that being gay is outside of the norm but twenty years ago, gay was still very much underground. I championed peoples’ individuality and the right to be individuals rather than be seen as uniform, and I think that had a lot to do with it. And possibly, I’m a girl and I just think gay blokes love girls, they love girl performers.

But you’ve got big lesbian following as well.

Toyah: Do I? Because the only time I’ve ever been bottled off stage was at the Fridge on a female night. He, he. Yeah, bottles were hurtling through the air.

Why was that?

Toyah: I had a very pretty backing singer with me who is very hetero and was performing very hetero. She’s a bit of a prick-teaser and I think she aggravated the women in the audience. I had a painted-on tattoo and I think that just pissed them off politically. It was interesting. I was quite shocked. It was the only hostile audience I’ve ever experienced.

You say in your autobiography, Living Out loud, that in 1976 you and all your punk friends wanted to be gay. Why?

Toyah: We all wanted to be gay. I had a jumpsuit I wore with ‘Lesbian Rule’ on it; because gay to me meant creativity. It wasn’t just about anything sexual, and at this time I was a virgin so I didn’t even know what blokes were about. Gay to me meant an alternative lifestyle, creativity, exploration, nothing staid, nothing boring, no dull habits. It just meant everything romantic and exploratory. All the gay people I knew at the time, Derek Jarman, and all his friends, John Maybury, were stunningly visual, expressive people so I associated gay with that. And they knew how to live. They lived life to the full. 

Then you acted in Derek Jarman’s Jubilee… as a virgin… with all these…

Toyah: Ha… Naked men! I couldn’t get over the scrotums, I thought “Oh my God, these are disgusting!” He, he, he. Scrotums are so peculiar! When I had to do this scene with Karl Johnson and Ian Charleson naked, I couldn’t speak. I just couldn’t take my eyes off these testicles in skinny bags lying on thighs and Derek took me aside and burst out laughing when I said to him “I’ve never seen a naked man before. I’m completely shocked!” Ha, ha, ha. I saw a lot on that film, I can tell you! 

Like in the scene filmed in The Coleherne?

Toyah: Yeah. With the Lindsey Kemp Company having sex all over the place!

Was that part of the film?

Tony: No. It wasn’t part of the film, it was just their offscreen entertainment. And I just couldn’t stop watching because I didn’t even know what sex was about between heteros. Obviously I’d seen porno mags and stuff like that but I didn’t know how a human being actually went about it in motion. And it was just fascinating. I was very scientific.

And was it quite soon after that you lost your own virginity?

Toyah: There was no-one on offer. I wasn’t a very attractive person and I was a bit picky. I tend to like pretty boys so it was my own fault. And also that old cliché, if someone was interested in my I was immediately not interested in them. So if people were interested in me, which, looking back, there were probably quite a lot of men and women at the time who were, I dunno, I felt threatened by it as if I had to live up to some kind of reputation.

How did you get involved with Derek Jarman?

Toyah: Through Ian Charleson. I was working at the National Theatre with him and he knew Derek was making Jubilee and he just said to me, “There’s someone you’ve got to meet. Come and have tea at Redcliff Gardens and meet Derek Jarman." So I just went round for tea, a complete stranger, and no-one was ever a stranger with Derek. You were straight in there, one of the family. I had tea with him, he threw the script at me and said “Pick a part.” 

How different was it working on The Tempest with Derek?

Toyah: Very, very different. Between Jubilee and The Tempest, Derek had become a serious, very focussed film maker. And it’s not that he wasn’t on Jubilee, but dealing with a punk film, there were so many laws that could be broken. Dealing with The Tempest, he had to be very considerate over how he broke the laws and it was treated very much as a serious Shakespearian production. Again, very beautiful, very happy time. Derek was very good at expressing a kind of creative love for everyone he worked with. There was never any bitterness or resentment with Derek. He was nurturing, the whole time. I view The Tempest as really one of the most important films I’ve ever made. Purely because of the relationship with Derek and how he let me perform it. And he let me take aspects of myself, the experience I had of long-term virginity and being wild and just craving sexual touch and sexual knowledge, he really tapped in on that and used it.

Would you have liked to have worked with him again?

Toyah: I’d have loved to but I was dumped for Tilda Swinton, whose a far better actress. I think they were passionately in love, whereas Derek and I was a bit of a father/daughter relationship.

You think they were in love?

Toyah: Oh yes, I do, very much so. Derek was capable of loving women. It wasn’t sexual love but deep, deep love. He was capable of expressing that.

You met another great creative gay figure of the 20th Century, Sir John Gielgud. You didn’t get on with him so well, I think?

Toyah: Well, it wasn’t a question of trying to get on with him. He had a dressing room next to mine at the National and I was always shouting out of the windows to wardrobe up above to get my effing costume down. I think he just had enough of it one day. He must have been snoozing in his dressing room and he phoned my room and told me that that the National Theatre wasn’t a zoo and people in London don’t go around hitting each other and I said “Oh come on you effing bastard, who is this?” thinking it was wardrobe winding me up and looked across to the next dressing room and there was John Gielgud glaring at me on the phone. I felt terrible, I ran off and hid. But that wasn’t our first encounter. For some reason there were wheelchairs in the corridors of the National Theatre and I girlfriend and I were speeding around on these wheelchairs racing each other. Then we got bored with going forwards so we decided to go backwards and I went straight into Sir John Gielgud’s nuts!

You weren’t really likely to get on after that.

Toyah: I just think he was tolerant but so much higher on the hierarchy to me that he didn’t really bother with me.

You’ve gone from unhappy child to street-fighting punk to actress to popstar to, umm, religious affairs broadcaster. That’s a bit of an unusual career path isn’t it?

Toyah:But if you read the Bible it’s got everything in it. It’s got sex, homosexuality – and it has got that and I believe that before the Bible was doctored by the Roman Catholic Church it would have been much more open about homosexual affairs. I think that the Bible has been so doctored over centuries. I think there’s a truth in the story of Christ, a brilliant metaphorical truth that has been covered up. I think it’s about equality between men and women and sexual respect and I believe that it’s all been bastardised to a certain extent, to make it a political story. I’m a firm believer in the story of Christ before it started to be written down 150 years later. I think there’s a story there that relates to Buddhism, Hinduism and the new form, Christianity. That’s why I have absolutely no fear whatsoever of being involved in religious programmes. I don’t like dogmatism and I don’t like literalism and I think that there’s something remarkable there, really remarkable, that’s been lost and if the church would only open up and admit it’s been lost, I think it would win people back. 

You describe yourself as a pantheist but you’re clearly involved with the Christian community. Do they accept you?

Toyah: Yes. I am accepted by them but I’m very close to the line. The diehards loathe me. I get more hatemail from doing a religious programme than anything else.

Why do you think that is?

Toyah: Because I’m not a literalist when it comes to the bible. I’m really a Buddhist but if there is such a term, I’m a Buddhist Christian, because I believe Christianity was developed by a very brilliant prophet or Messiah to encompass everything good and right in religious belief. When Jesus was alive there were over 500 sex cults in Israel alone and religion was based on sex and sexual beliefs so he evolved with a great knowledge of sex which is why being chaste has been so heavy in that story. But I think it’s metaphorical. I think it’s about control and self-control and discipline.

I think because I’m part of a generation who’ve veered away from Christianity and I’m seen as a believer which to a certain extent I am, I’ve just been welcomed into that kind of broadcasting.

Do you give the programmes credibility through your broader view?

Toyah: As far as the Synod is concerned I have ruined the credibility of religious broadcasting. They are dead against me, but viewing figures have proved them wrong and that’s my winning point. They’ve done surveys on me. People only turn the telly on to watch my pieces apparently.

Why do you think that is?

Toyah: Well, the religious audience is a very small one. There’s an awful lot of people out there who want a spiritual life. They don’t necessarily want a religious life but they do want to find something, that spark in them, that they can have a dialogue with and I’m the same. I think we see each other as equals. The audience turn on to watch me because I’m on the same path as them.

So how did you get into religious broadcasting in the first place?

Toyah: Well I was doing The Sex Guide at the time when I was asked to do a series called All About Eve. It was about how women are represented in religion and how history has covered up the true story of women in the Bible. For instance, in Judaism, Sofia is the all-knowing goddess of wisdom. Sofia created God and man to do her work. Then I went on to do The Good Sex Guide and then Songs of Praise. That is one of the proudest moments of my life that I can go from sex to religion!

Do you have any plans to revive your musical career?

Toyah: There’s talk of putting the old band together for next year which I’m up for but it’s got to be at the right level otherwise there’s no point. I’ve decided that once the Internet has sorted itself out and if it breaks even, I’m happy to write music and release it over the Internet. I’m not interested in profit-making in music any more and I’m not interested in the music industry. I would like to carry on singing but in a way where I don’t feel I’m compromising who I am. 

How do you feel now about It’s A Mystery now?

Toyah: I don’t worship it and I don’t hate it – that much. I ridicule it a bit. It’s done me a lot of good and I’m thankful for that but it’s history. I would perform it again but it’s a period piece.

Was it a deliberate decision to pull out of the commercial side of music?

Toyah: Yes but it was helped by the fact that I went seriously out of fashion. I got fed up with the negativity. I don’t like people projecting negatively on me; and the music industry and music journalism always project negatively. I think it destroys the soul. I think thought is very powerful, thought has physical action. I just thought, “No, I’m not willing to become a victim or be created into a victim by these people.” That’s why I found it so easy to walk away.

You’ve always been in relationships. Do you regret not doing more of the sex and drugs thing?

Toyah: I’ve done the drugs but… I do regret it sexually but I’m so easily hurt, I’m so easily sexually possessed and sex is so sacred to me that I think if I did do it I would have been destroyed by it. So on the one hand I think it’s good I didn’t go there. I’m just too vulnerable, too sensitive and I fall in love at the drop of a pin.

By Tony Leonard, For Gay.com UK (2000)