Date: 12 December 2002
Originally published in: The Wharf (UK)
Written by:
It’s time to dig out your ra-ra skirts and frilly shirts and apply enough hairspray to destroy the ozone layer – the 80s are coming.
Some of the biggest names from the decade that taste forgot visit London Arena this Saturday (December 14) in a gig called Hear & Now. And The Wharf caught up with some of the greats ahead of the show. Kim Wilde, the pouty blonde fantasy of many teenage boys, told us: “It’s a hoot, I get to be a popstar for a few weeks. I love my new career in horticulture and being at home with my babies but it’s good to go back – it’s like role playing.” She smiles: “One minute I’m making packed lunches and the next pouring myself into leather strides and getting back to being Kim Wilde.
“I’m very much looking forward to getting back on stage then we’ll have Christmas and then I’ll go back to being Mrs Fowler again.”
Visage frontman Steve Strange is looking forward to his return to the stage: “I wouldn’t have considered it four years ago, but my book did s owell I figured it was time.”
Steve battled publishers over his candid autobiography charting the excess which came with fame. “I wanted it to be warts and all. I think people can see through a cover up and, at the end of the day, I did have a breakdown and I did get caught nicking a teletubby – they were my mistakes. Heroin was the biggest mistake but I’ve been clean for six years and I’m happier than I’ve ever been.”
Steve plans to give gig-goers a night to remember. “It will be flamboyant with four pleasure boy dancers and lots of snakeskin”, he chuckles.
Susan Ann Sulley of the Human League may well be the most down to earth popstar in Britain: “You’ll still find me at Tesco”, she laughs. After over 20 years in the business Susan has little time for today’s divas, “We’ve all stayed in Sheffield and never got caught up in the celebrity thing. It surprises me that some people are so up their own arses. I saw on TV recently one star has to have her coffee stirred in an anti-clockwise direction before she drinks it. I genuinely don’t understand these people.”
And let’s not forget Five Star – Romford’s answer to The Jacksons. Five become three for Hear & Now, as Lorraine, Stedman and Deniece Pearson now perform as a trio. “It was strange at first but we got used to it, and now it’s good because there’s so much more spce on the stage”, Lorraine laughs as she talks to The Wharf.
Hear & Now is a total nostalgia fest, a chance to don your deely boppers and relive those teenage years.