TOYAH WILLCOX GOODIE-GOODIE GUIDE TO SEX

Toyah Willcox is quite candid about it. Sex is her favourite subject.

You nod knowingly, recalling the pink hair and the stuff-you-lot attitude when she exploded onto the pop scene nearly two decades ago with hits like It's A Mystery.

Wrong. The 37-year-old actress, singer and presenter says she loves to talk about sex because she doesn't know much about it.

For her 20th birthday, her friends clubbed together and got her a man because they were so sick of her asking them what IT was like.

Stunned

"I was a virgin and he was a very nice bloke, a friend's friend, but it was a disaster," she says, screeching with laughter.

Toyah's parents were stunned when she brought her first real boyfriend home at the age of 21.

"My mother turned to me in the kitchen and said, 'Well, dear, that's a surprise. We thought you were gay.'

"I only learned a lot about sex in my late twenties from my friends when we'd all grown up a little, but there are still things I have to ask about.

"When Paula Yates said that on her first night with Michael Hutchence he did six things to her that she thought were illegal, I asked my husband to explain. he did think of six things but I'm convinced they weren't what she meant."

I'm still trying to think of six sexually illegal things (and am stuck at one) when I realise that in the space of one minute Toyah has rattled off enough words to fill the Mirror for a week.

her husband of ten years, former King Crimson guitarist Robert Fripp, 49, says he had to learn to spot the intention behind Toyah's words, rather than what she actually says.

Although she's an expert when it comes to using a hundred words where one will do, Toyah was amazed when she was asked to take over The Guide from the even more gobby Marg1 Clarke.

"I mean, Margi's just a sex diva. She's got the look. How could anyone follow her? So I don't try. I'm just myself, and I love doing the programme.

"When I'm with girlfriends, we talk about nothing but sex, but I was a bit nervous of talking about it in front of a million people. I'm a shy person."

Presenting The Guide has given Toyah the chance to review her own sex life, but she hopes viewers don't think she's an expert.

"I've only had three long relationships, and one of those is my husband. That rather stops you seeing the world, and I'm sometimes jealous of the sexual adventures some of my friends have had.

"The, once I was in the music business, I was horribly aware of what a notch in the bedpost it would be to certain men to bed a female singer, so I was very wary."

Toyah says she likes her sex straight and preferably in the bedroom of her stylish country home in Salisbury, Wilts, previously owned by the late society photographer Cecil Beaton.

"Sex has never been an act of freedom for me. Robert and I climb into the bath together, but we tend to talk about quantum physics or something like that.

"But there's a lot of laughter between us in bed and I feel completely at ease with him. Once the bedroom door is closed, I really let my hair down.

"We like nookie in the afternoons, but both of us run our offices from home and the phone rings every three minutes.

"We still answer it, but if the bank manager could see what's going on sometimes when he's talking to us on the phone, he would be bug-eyed."

Dirty

Toyah is also a huge fan of the dirty weekend - with Robert, of course. "The best way to spice up sex when you've been with someone a long time os to book into a hotel.

"You just can't beat sex in a strange bed."

Toyah was worried, when The Guide first went out, that viewers would suddenly see her as part of the sex industry.

"Funnily enough, the people who've been coming up to me in the supermarket are ladies in their fifties saying how much they've learnt.

"I didn't want men thinking they could come on to me in the street because of The Guide - but I'm older and the lads aren't interested any more," says Toyah without a trace of regret.

"Anyway, when the show goes out, the 25-year-old oiks with too many hormones are al throwing up outside nightclubs."
 
 

Daily Mirror (Woman Interview) - 24th January 1996

Thanks to Michael Cooney for providing this.