HELLO THERE!
HELLO THERE!May went too quickly! I love the long daylight hours, once April arrives my aim is to be awake through all the daylight available, then 21st June is the pinnacle of my year.
To see the dawn arrive around 3.30am and the twilight fade around 11pm is magical.
My aim is to sleep outside. So far, it’s still too cold!
Our Birthdays where fantastic, especially Robert’s, he is 77! Bloody Hell how did that happen.
Robert loves opening presents. He will take FOREVER unwrapping the paper, peeling the cellotape, de-creasing the folds in the paper as he goes……so this year I kept the cellotape to a minimum and where possible put his gifts in gift bags.
You may be thinking this is mean but spending an hour unwrapping a present when there’s about 30 more to go leads to looking at your watch and it should be a spontaneous day. After 37yrs of marriage and 37 Birthdays I’ve learned to get to the point reasonably quickly so the day can have more events included in it.
His adorable face lit up as he opened his “Edwardian” style embroidered waist coats and his new “peaky blinder” hats. My husband is a Peacock! Even at his wonderful age he has huge pride in his appearance.
Every year he gets more and more cute.
Last month we had full production rehearsals for TOYAH AND ROBERT. Which means from now on all the shows we do are in fact TOYAH AND ROBERT SHOWS, even if they are advertised as TOYAH shows.
In many ways this is our ‘set up’ year because next year we are intending to be full on touring in the UK and other parts of the world, plus making the documentary AND we are in talks for a TV series. We feel we need to keep ahead of all these events.
One hugely successful thing happened last month in how we are perceived.
I will not allow TOYAH AND ROBERT to be perceived or treated as a “novelty” act because of the quirky concept of our Sunday social media, so at the forefront of our concept is we will be seen as a stunning rock band.
Only on the October tour will we visit the history of the imagery of Sunday Lunch and this is going to be done in such a way that we still remain Rock Performers.
There is a very specific way we are setting this up, on stage we are “set up by our own crew”, who deliver the props and this puts us on the spot….so like Morecambe and Wise both Robert and I become the underdogs to our own jokes.
We had a perfect acknowledgement of our rock credentials from the press at STONE VALLEY FESTIVAL SOUTH…quote: “ I didn’t know what novelty act I was about to see. TOYAH drew a huge crowd at the unenviably early stage time. TOYAH provided moments of magic. Toyah was pure class.”
This is the aim of TOYAH AND ROBERT, that we are taking classic rock songs, of which many of the original artists are our friends, have visited our home, or we have worked with, we see socially around the world and T&R celebrate both their music and our own classics along with the audience.
We have now had the documentary crew with us through out rehearsals, on the road for three shows and two days at our home. I am so surprised at how hard it is trying to be your best ‘you’. Also adding a camera to your everyday life makes you question who you are and why you do certain things. It’s quite unnerving to realise how utterly boring your normal usual life can be when you know potentially the world will be invited to see you for time immemorial.
The days at home where a revelation. Seeing the hours I put into running my companies, the bureaucracy, the e-mail, the filing…..NONE OF IT IS INTERESTING OR HAS ANY ROCK GLAMOUR!
Talking of glamour, a few weeks ago I was setting up a shoot in our bathroom for TikTok. The idea being The Unicorns where going to take a bath. As usual I find the best camera angles then setup the actual movements within the frame. On this occasion I must have hit “film” and unknowingly filmed myself setting up in just my underwear for 6 minutes.
We then filmed the sequence which by the way we couldn’t use because it just looked like two unicorns having sex in the bath and I sent what I thought was the actual footage off to our media team, wondering why it ran to six minutes.
Then horror struck, I looked back at what I had actually sent to the entire media team and there I was wandering around in my underwear totally unaware, a bit like Julie Walters in Dinnerladies, moving things, I think I even went to the loo just off camera………and I sent this to the entire team!
I begged the team to delete it and try and “unsee” what they had seen…..not easy.
It is always extremely sad when someone loved leaves this world and Tina Turner passing away was a hard one. For me she has been a role model of excellence and humanity since I was a child.
TINA IN BARCELONA is one of the best female performances I have ever seen and inspires me every time I see it.
Tina was about overcoming over whelming hardship. She escaped the industry’s preconceptions of her in the USA to go onto fill arenas and stadiums around the world thanks to the UK embracing her in the 1980s. Born with immense beauty and strength she conquered and won.
I only met her on a few occasions in the 1980s when we shared dressing rooms at award events. Her kindness, generosity and awareness towards me in our shared space made me respect her even more.
She will continue to inspire. Reminding me that being physically strong as a musician and performer isn’t something to be ashamed of as a woman.
JUNE is a monumental month for me and for Robert.
The ISLE OF WIGHT FESTIVAL and GLASTONBURY are the cherry on the cake of our careers and we are super excited.
J 
We hope you can get to see these shows and the many more to follow throughout 2023.
BE LOUD, BE HEARD, BE PROUD
LOVE TOYAH
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