Kim and Joyce Wilde are interviewed about their family ‘business’ in music. After the interview, Kim performs her new single, ‘In my life’, solo. It is a lipsynched performance to the West End remix of the song.

Joyce, it’s very ununsual to have your mother as your manager. How did you end up doing that?
Joyce: I actually started off being manager to my own husband Marty Wilde many years ago, 34 years ago actually, and we were having a very difficult time financially, and basically, you know, I had to do it in order to pay the mortgage and look after the kids.

So I’d like to know, are you more mum than manager?
Kim: More mum (laughs).
Joyce: More mum, yeah, probably more mum.

I always think, Kim, that it’s great to have somebody in the business who is honest, so that you’re given honest opinions. So does your mum do that?
Kim: Yeah, definitely, especially in quite sensitive areas like clothes or hair or make-up and stuff. Which a lot of people say ‘darling, you look gorgeous’, you just get the sort of… people being very nice and very sweet but not very constructive. So mum can be very honest with me, but sometimes it’s quite hard to be honest with people. You don’t want to hear some things. You want to hear what you want to hear, but that’s not how it should be.

Why do you think your family is so close? What has been the binding factor in your case?
Kim: It’s a combination. Ultimately, the most important thing is mum and dad, the fact that they’re really quite crazy about each other. And it’s lots of love, it’s a foundation of love and it’s also a real commitment to the family that they made by taking us along when we were kids, making us feel like we were VIP’s. We weren’t just like ‘oh, go off to school or go off for the nanny’ or something. We had some help along the way but primarily we were made to feel that we were very important. It’s kind of in later life you realise that the family is very important and you grow up with that outlook. If you grow up with an outlook that family is irrelevant you possibly go on to have an irrelevant family of yourself.

Yours is a bit like having two families: the older two and the younger two. Did that have advantages?
Joyce: We didn’t consciously decide to have Kim and Rick and then leave a big gap like we have but we lost a lot of babies and it was due to a gynaecological error, which was put right ultimately but, and I’ll tell anyone out there if they want to have a baby don’t let anyone tell you ‘don’t have a baby’, because you must, especially in later life, go and get an opinion, another opinion like I did, because I wouldn’t have my other two children now.

You must have spent most of your life pregnant?
Joyce: Yeah, I was (laughs). I was pregnant most of my life, but you know now that I’ve got those two other children I feel very, very lucky.

Must have been quite tough for you, Kim, because obviously having established that you are a close family, to watch your mum go through all of that must have been awful at the time?
Kim: Yeah, it was very difficult. It was easy when I was there, when I started to have my career it was very difficult. But we just pulled together, it made our family very strong, we were supporting mum a hundred percent, we wanted the children as much as mum did, and that gave us the strength. And so now you look back on it, it hurts more looking back actually, than it did at the time. At the time you just get on with it.

Are you very keen to have kids yourself?
Kim: I don’t know, I think in the right circumstances children would be a fantastic experience for me. Because I really like young people very much. I don’t know what they think about me… (laughs)

Do you feel that you’ve been able to help Kim avoid some of the pitfalls that young people fall into in the business?
Joyce: I just hope that by now I’ve done my job in bringing Kim up that she has the common sense to know how to deal with that anyway, you know?

A rare TV appearance of Kim and Marty together. In this clip, they are both interviewed at some length. Also, a clip of ‘Teenager in love’ by Marty is shown.

(Music videos for ‘Kids in America’, ‘You came’ and ‘If I can’t have you’ shown.)

Have you ever been on TV together before?
Kim: No, not like this (laughs).

Because you kind of avoided that, didn’t you, at the start? You could have sort of cashed in on the fact that your dad was in the business, but you’ve made that conscious decision not to. Why was that?
Kim: We just felt it was like it would be overdoing it for everyone. Everyone knew I was Marty’s daughter and obviously I just wanted to establish myself in my own right. So now after 13 years I think I might have achieved that (laughs) so here we are.

Was it inevitable that your children would follow you into the pop world, do you think?
Marty: Well, I suppose with all the influences at home, I used to play hi-fi very loud and things like that, but I wasn’t too keen on it initially. I’m pleased that she did it now, she’ll keep me in a nice old people’s home won’t you?
Kim: I’ve already told him it’ll be the very best one, and no messin’.

Of course, your brother as well is… He’s your producer too, isn’t he?
Kim: Yeah, Ricky Wilde, he co-wrote in fact all the hits mostly and Ricky and Marty wrote all the, actually the first side of the Singles Collection, everything from ‘Kids in America’ right through ‘Four letter word’. And now Ricky and I write together.

You’re also a very strong family unit, which is good too, do you help her with problems, or do you let your children make their own mistakes and go their own way?
Marty: No, I must admit I was one of those dads that used to interfere sometimes. I did interfere. But I couldn’t, sometimes you can’t let a child go down a wrong avenue. If it’s that wrong, you have to say something. And sometimes we’ve had minor clashes like all families. But actually I think my daughter has given me as much advice as I’ve given her over the years. She’s very intelligent. And sometimes I’m in a situation and she’ll say: you’re wrong there. So I have to listen to her.

It has changed a lot. You started in the late Fifties. It seems that it is more cynical now and it’s more of a business. Was it always like that, because people do tend to look back at the old days and say ‘it was good fun then and it’s not as much fun now’.
Marty: There was a lot of naivity. I mean, nowadays, you know, most acts are armed with a barrister and an accountant, they’re the two most important things. I think it was naive and no doubt about it. But the whole world was, I think, to a certain extent.

You were obviously very keen from a very young age as we can see here (photograph of Marty and Kim shown, with both touching a guitar). There you are with your daddy. Isn’t that lovely?
Kim: Oh, it’s so sweet! Yeah.

When did you first spot there was any talent there, Marty, that there may be something?
Marty: I never looked it… It was Micky Most really that spotted Kim that way. I never looked at Kim – Kim was always to me Kim, my daughter. And if you’re meeting someone every day in the house and you’ve known them since they were little you don’t even think in terms of them being anything other than your daughter. Micky Most said that he thought that she had a great potential. I thought ‘what’s he on about?’. He said ‘She’s got a great face’. And there it was.

How do you feel sometimes, because you’ve overcome a lot of problems. People used to criticize your weight, which is ridiculous, and did you get very protective at that time?
Marty: Yeah, I do. Anything against your family, you feel very prickly. If I am hurt in any way, that affects Kim, if Kim is hurt in any way, that affects me.

But you’re great now, you’ve got everything sorted out and your boyfriend’s ten years younger than you.
Kim: (Laughs)
Marty: (Laughs and jokes)

Listen your Greatest Hits is coming out, there’s a video as well…
Yeah, it’s all out today, I’m really chuffed, you know it’s 13 years, it’s the stuff that Ricky and Marty and myself have put together for the first time and we’re really excited about it. I’m off to do personal appearances in Birmingham, Leicester and Manchester the next few days, so I’m really chuffed about it and really proud.

Let’s have a look at dad. This is a cracker, this is ‘Teenager in love’.