By now, you can’t have failed to become aware of Toyah Willcox and Robert Fripp’s Sunday lunch lockdown videos. Their weekly kitchen-based renditions of rock classics – Willcox’s enthusiastic performances of “School’s Out”, “Paranoid” or “Smells Like Teen Spirit” often reducing her husband to a fit of giggles – have gone viral, reminding everyone that this sometime TV host is a performer first and foremost.
Inspired by the punk scene, Toyah first rose to prominence as an actor in Derek Jarman’s Jubilee and Quadrophenia. Her theatrical instincts served her well as she became one of the biggest British pop stars of the early-’80s, a vibrant new wave Boudicca blazing a trail for independent female artists.
In fact as Willcox transferred her talents to stage and TV, she even delivered a creative retelling of the Boudicca story for the BBC, alongside Tony Robinson. At one point in the ’90s, Toyah became so ubiquitous on telly that she could be spotted presented both Songs Of Praise and The Good Sex Guide Late.
However, the popularity of 2019’s reissue of In The Court Of The Crimson Queen (spoken word intro, of course, by Fripp) followed by last year’s Toyah Solo box set has reignited interest in her music; a reissue of 1980’s breakthrough album The Blue Meaning is due this spring.
So what do you want to ask the warrior rocker and current queen of the internet? Send your questions to audiencewith@www.uncut.co.uk by Monday (Feb 1), and Toyah will answer the best ones in a future issue of Uncut.