| You’ve always had a
big gay following. Why do you think that is? Toyah: I think because I always
championed people that sat on the outside of the
norm. I’m not saying that being gay is
outside of the norm but twenty years ago, gay was
still very much underground. I championed peoples’
individuality and the right to be individuals
rather than be seen as uniform, and I think that
had a lot to do with it. And possibly, I’m a
girl and I just think gay blokes love girls, they
love girl performers.
But you’ve
got big lesbian following as well.
Toyah: Do I?
Because the only time I’ve ever been bottled
off stage was at the Fridge on a female night.
He, he. Yeah, bottles were hurtling through the
air.
Why was that?
Toyah: I had a
very pretty backing singer with me who is very
hetero and was performing very hetero. She’s
a bit of a prick-teaser and I think she
aggravated the women in the audience. I had a
painted-on tattoo and I think that just pissed
them off politically. It was interesting. I was
quite shocked. It was the only hostile audience I’ve
ever experienced.
You say in your
autobiography, Living Out loud, that in 1976 you
and all your punk friends wanted to be gay. Why?
Toyah: We all
wanted to be gay. I had a jumpsuit I wore with
‘Lesbian Rule’ on it; because gay to me
meant creativity. It wasn’t just about
anything sexual, and at this time I was a virgin
so I didn’t even know what blokes were about.
Gay to me meant an alternative lifestyle,
creativity, exploration, nothing staid, nothing
boring, no dull habits. It just meant everything
romantic and exploratory. All the gay people I
knew at the time, Derek Jarman, and all his
friends, John Maybury, were stunningly visual,
expressive people so I associated gay with that.
And they knew how to live. They lived life to the
full.
Then you acted
in Derek Jarman’s Jubilee… as a virgin…
with all these…
Toyah: Ha…
Naked men! I couldn’t get over the scrotums,
I thought “Oh my God, these are disgusting!”
He, he, he. Scrotums are so peculiar! When I had
to do this scene with Karl Johnson and Ian
Charleson naked, I couldn’t speak. I just
couldn’t take my eyes off these testicles in
skinny bags lying on thighs and Derek took me
aside and burst out laughing when I said to him
“I’ve never seen a naked man before. I’m
completely shocked!” Ha, ha, ha. I saw a lot
on that film, I can tell you!
Like in the
scene filmed in The Coleherne?
Toyah: Yeah.
With the Lindsey Kemp Company having sex all over
the place!
Was that part
of the film?
Tony: No. It
wasn’t part of the film, it was just their
offscreen entertainment. And I just couldn’t
stop watching because I didn’t even know
what sex was about between heteros. Obviously I’d
seen porno mags and stuff like that but I didn’t
know how a human being actually went about it in
motion. And it was just fascinating. I was very
scientific.
And was it
quite soon after that you lost your own
virginity?
Toyah: There
was no-one on offer. I wasn’t a very
attractive person and I was a bit picky. I tend
to like pretty boys so it was my own fault. And
also that old cliché, if someone was interested
in my I was immediately not interested in them.
So if people were interested in me, which,
looking back, there were probably quite a lot of
men and women at the time who were, I dunno, I
felt threatened by it as if I had to live up to
some kind of reputation.
How did you get
involved with Derek Jarman?
Toyah: Through
Ian Charleson. I was working at the National
Theatre with him and he knew Derek was making
Jubilee and he just said to me, “There’s
someone you’ve got to meet. Come and have
tea at Redcliff Gardens and meet Derek Jarman."
So I just went round for tea, a complete
stranger, and no-one was ever a stranger with
Derek. You were straight in there, one of the
family. I had tea with him, he threw the script
at me and said “Pick a part.”
How different
was it working on The Tempest with Derek?
Toyah: Very,
very different. Between Jubilee and The Tempest,
Derek had become a serious, very focussed film
maker. And it’s not that he wasn’t on
Jubilee, but dealing with a punk film, there were
so many laws that could be broken. Dealing with
The Tempest, he had to be very considerate over
how he broke the laws and it was treated very
much as a serious Shakespearian production.
Again, very beautiful, very happy time. Derek was
very good at expressing a kind of creative love
for everyone he worked with. There was never any
bitterness or resentment with Derek. He was
nurturing, the whole time. I view The Tempest as
really one of the most important films I’ve
ever made. Purely because of the relationship
with Derek and how he let me perform it. And he
let me take aspects of myself, the experience I
had of long-term virginity and being wild and
just craving sexual touch and sexual knowledge,
he really tapped in on that and used it.
Would you have
liked to have worked with him again?
Toyah: I’d
have loved to but I was dumped for Tilda Swinton,
whose a far better actress. I think they were
passionately in love, whereas Derek and I was a
bit of a father/daughter relationship.
You think they
were in love?
Toyah: Oh yes,
I do, very much so. Derek was capable of loving
women. It wasn’t sexual love but deep, deep
love. He was capable of expressing that.
You met another
great creative gay figure of the 20th Century,
Sir John Gielgud. You didn’t get on with him
so well, I think?
Toyah: Well, it
wasn’t a question of trying to get on with
him. He had a dressing room next to mine at the
National and I was always shouting out of the
windows to wardrobe up above to get my effing
costume down. I think he just had enough of it
one day. He must have been snoozing in his
dressing room and he phoned my room and told me
that that the National Theatre wasn’t a zoo
and people in London don’t go around hitting
each other and I said “Oh come on you effing
bastard, who is this?” thinking it was
wardrobe winding me up and looked across to the
next dressing room and there was John Gielgud
glaring at me on the phone. I felt terrible, I
ran off and hid. But that wasn’t our first
encounter. For some reason there were wheelchairs
in the corridors of the National Theatre and I
girlfriend and I were speeding around on these
wheelchairs racing each other. Then we got bored
with going forwards so we decided to go backwards
and I went straight into Sir John Gielgud’s
nuts!
|
You weren’t really
likely to get on after that.
Toyah: I
just think he was tolerant but so much higher on
the hierarchy to me that he didn’t really
bother with me.
You’ve
gone from unhappy child to street-fighting punk
to actress to popstar to, umm, religious affairs
broadcaster. That’s a bit of an unusual
career path isn’t it?
Toyah:But if
you read the Bible it’s got everything in it.
It’s got sex, homosexuality – and it
has got that and I believe that before the Bible
was doctored by the Roman Catholic Church it
would have been much more open about homosexual
affairs. I think that the Bible has been so
doctored over centuries. I think there’s a
truth in the story of Christ, a brilliant
metaphorical truth that has been covered up. I
think it’s about equality between men and
women and sexual respect and I believe that it’s
all been bastardised to a certain extent, to make
it a political story. I’m a firm believer in
the story of Christ before it started to be
written down 150 years later. I think there’s
a story there that relates to Buddhism, Hinduism
and the new form, Christianity. That’s why I
have absolutely no fear whatsoever of being
involved in religious programmes. I don’t
like dogmatism and I don’t like literalism
and I think that there’s something
remarkable there, really remarkable, that’s
been lost and if the church would only open up
and admit it’s been lost, I think it would
win people back.
You describe
yourself as a pantheist but you’re clearly
involved with the Christian community. Do they
accept you?
Toyah: Yes. I
am accepted by them but I’m very close to
the line. The diehards loathe me. I get more
hatemail from doing a religious programme than
anything else.
Why do you
think that is?
Toyah: Because
I’m not a literalist when it comes to the
bible. I’m really a Buddhist but if there is
such a term, I’m a Buddhist Christian,
because I believe Christianity was developed by a
very brilliant prophet or Messiah to encompass
everything good and right in religious belief.
When Jesus was alive there were over 500 sex
cults in Israel alone and religion was based on
sex and sexual beliefs so he evolved with a great
knowledge of sex which is why being chaste has
been so heavy in that story. But I think it’s
metaphorical. I think it’s about control and
self-control and discipline.
I think because
I’m part of a generation who’ve veered
away from Christianity and I’m seen as a
believer which to a certain extent I am, I’ve
just been welcomed into that kind of broadcasting.
Do you give the
programmes credibility through your broader view?
Toyah: As far
as the Synod is concerned I have ruined the
credibility of religious broadcasting. They are
dead against me, but viewing figures have proved
them wrong and that’s my winning point. They’ve
done surveys on me. People only turn the telly on
to watch my pieces apparently.
Why do you
think that is?
Toyah: Well,
the religious audience is a very small one. There’s
an awful lot of people out there who want a
spiritual life. They don’t necessarily want
a religious life but they do want to find
something, that spark in them, that they can have
a dialogue with and I’m the same. I think we
see each other as equals. The audience turn on to
watch me because I’m on the same path as
them.
So how did you
get into religious broadcasting in the first
place?
Toyah: Well I
was doing The Sex Guide at the time when I was
asked to do a series called All About Eve. It was
about how women are represented in religion and
how history has covered up the true story of
women in the Bible. For instance, in Judaism,
Sofia is the all-knowing goddess of wisdom. Sofia
created God and man to do her work. Then I went
on to do The Good Sex Guide and then Songs of
Praise. That is one of the proudest moments of my
life that I can go from sex to religion!
Do you have any
plans to revive your musical career?
Toyah: There’s
talk of putting the old band together for next
year which I’m up for but it’s got to
be at the right level otherwise there’s no
point. I’ve decided that once the Internet
has sorted itself out and if it breaks even, I’m
happy to write music and release it over the
Internet. I’m not interested in profit-making
in music any more and I’m not interested in
the music industry. I would like to carry on
singing but in a way where I don’t feel I’m
compromising who I am.
How do you feel
now about It’s A Mystery now?
Toyah: I don’t
worship it and I don’t hate it – that
much. I ridicule it a bit. It’s done me a
lot of good and I’m thankful for that but it’s
history. I would perform it again but it’s a
period piece.
Was it a
deliberate decision to pull out of the commercial
side of music?
Toyah: Yes but
it was helped by the fact that I went seriously
out of fashion. I got fed up with the negativity.
I don’t like people projecting negatively on
me; and the music industry and music journalism
always project negatively. I think it destroys
the soul. I think thought is very powerful,
thought has physical action. I just thought,
“No, I’m not willing to become a victim
or be created into a victim by these people.”
That’s why I found it so easy to walk away.
You’ve
always been in relationships. Do you regret not
doing more of the sex and drugs thing?
Toyah: I’ve
done the drugs but… I do regret it sexually
but I’m so easily hurt, I’m so easily
sexually possessed and sex is so sacred to me
that I think if I did do it I would have been
destroyed by it. So on the one hand I think it’s
good I didn’t go there. I’m just too
vulnerable, too sensitive and I fall in love at
the drop of a pin.
By Tony
Leonard, For Gay.com UK (2000)
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