With 30 albums, 25 feature films and countless theatre and TV presenting roles under her belt, punk rocker Toyah Willcox is one of the biggest stars of the 1980s. But her first brush with fame came in less glamorous surroundings - when Rod Stewart visited the caravan park she used to go to every weekend with her family near Birmingham, the Wyre Mill Club.
“One day this group of people who used to come here turned up with Rod,” recalls Toyah.
“I was only six at the time, so I didn’t really know who he was. I just remember everybody was going absolutely crazy and the girls were all screaming, ‘oh my god, it’s Rod Stewart!’.
“The club is just that kind of place, where stars come to hide. Paul Weller was here recently and we’ve snuck Kate Bush in here before. When I became famous, I’d go there myself to escape the paparazzi.”
Since she burst on to the music scene as the front woman of the new wave band Toyah in 1977 following appearances in plays, Toyah, 64 has rubbed shoulders with many famous faces.
Also an actress, she starred alongside Phil Daniels in 1979 mod flick Quadrophenia and iconic actor Laurence Olivier in 1984 TV movie the Ebony Tower, and she also went into the I’m A Celebrity jungle in 2003.
But among her fondest celebrity memories is meeting, and then getting to know, the late Princess Margaret.
“She had the wickedest sense of humour,” recalls Toyah. “When I first met her, it was at St. James’s Palace with the Queen Mother and we were having tea.
“She looked at me and just said, ‘what are you?’. I said, ‘We’re anarchists. I’m a punk rocker’, and she burst out laughing and said, ‘that’s ridiculous’.
“I had a fabulous time with her. She was very social and very witty. She was quite punky for a Royal, a total rule breaker. I think she would have loved to be a civilian and that was the side I saw.”
During the pandemic, Toyah added another string to her bow when she launched the weekly YouTube series Sunday Lunch alongside her husband Robert Fripp.
Amassing a huge 80 million views worldwide, the series sees Toyah and Robert, 76, perform conceptual music covers and they’re even set to take the show out on the road next year.
Toyah and Robert, a member of the prog-rock group King Crimson, married in secret in Poole, Dorset, in May 1986. But as they tried to relax in the local area for their honeymoon, they were hounded by the paparazzi.
So Toyah came up with a plan. She and Robert packed their bags, leaving in the dead of night for the sanctuary of her family’s caravan.
“We’d gone from having a very quiet wedding to being chased around country lanes,” recalls Toyah.
“So Robert and I drove up to Wyre Mill and just hid there. It’s usually empty on weekdays, so nobody knew we were there.
“We were able to go to walks, went to buy food from a local village shop unbothered. It was just very romantic, we’d sit outside on the hill drinking wine and we were left alone.”
Next week, Toyah will be telling this story, as well as sharing many other memories from time spent at family’s old motorhome at The Motorhome and Caravan show at the NEC venue in her native Birmingham.
She says: “I’m a Birmingham girl - and this is such a massive show because people really want to be holidaying within the UK at the moment.
“From the moment I was born, until I moved to London to become a rockstar at the age of 18, I spent my weekends on the River Avon in our caravan.
“It was wonderful. Most people think their best years were their school years, but my weekends in the caravan were mine - even though it had no running water. I was always sad to leave when it got to Sunday night.”
The family caravan, which Toyah says was already decrepit back when she was a teen, has long gone. As has the boat her family used to use to travel down the river on holidays.
“When my father Beric passed away in 2009, we couldn’t bear the memory of the boat so we got rid of it,” says Toyah.
“It now belongs to another family, but I live on the river and see it go past once a week. It’s lovely.
“All my friends come past on their boats. Even the cast of Quadrophenia, they hire longboats and come back every Bank Holiday.”
Not that there’s much time for relaxing and watching boats for Toyah. As well as appearing at the NEC, she is also currently touring her groundbreaking 1981 album Anthem, which re-entered the UK Top 40 last month.
And she’s just done her first gig supporting rocker Billy Idol on the UK leg of his Roadside tour, which kicked off this week in Manchester.
“Supporting him is an absolute dream come true, because I’ve had his songs in my set for 25 years and I really love his music,” says Toyah.
“It’s going to be one hell of a rock show. I knew him when he started out in the punk band Generation X in the 1970s, but we lost touch when he moved to the US.
“I work flat out, so I’m juggling the shows around other commitments. But I’ll be staying over after the Glasgow concert - all of us have to - so I’m looking forward to that.”
Among her favourite performing moments have been doing The Old Grey Whistle Test’s live Christmas Eve show in 1981, which went out to 12 million viewers, and her two gigs at Wembley Stadium over the years.
But her number one moment was her very first Top of the Pops in 1981, when she sang It’s a Mystery on the popular programme.
“This was a show I watched religiously with my family every week, we even watched it on Christmas Day,” says Toyah. “To actually be on it was probably the pinnacle of my life.”
Yet despite over 40 years of experience as a performer, Toyah admits she still gets nervous about singing or acting in front of large crowds - but thankfully the ‘monster’ inside the 5’1 star will always take over.
“I do suffer terrible nerves,” she says. “The more I want it to be the best show in the world, the more nervous I am.
“But as soon as I step out on to the stage, the monster comes out. There is another part of me that is much larger than me, like an alter-ego. I don’t know where it comes from when I walk onstage, but it’s always there.”
Although she’s approaching her mid-sixties, Toyah says a quiet retirement is off the cards. She’s just finished a short film called Weightless, which saw her learning to cold water swim for the first time.
She says: “I had to train for two months, because I was going to be spending two to four hours a day in the sea filming wearing only a flimsy swimming costume.
“It’s quite extraordinary that as a singer and a film actress who is now 64, that I’m still having to meet quite incredible physical challenges.
“But it’s the best career to wake up to every morning. At my age, it’s speeding up - there’s no retirement in sight.”
*The Motorhome and Caravan Show is taking place at the NEC, Birmingham, from October 18 to 23.
- Tickets are available on the The Motorhome and Caravan Show website.
