From Wham! to Woo: A Life on the Mic

1

Chapter 1

A Ray of Sunshine

It was baking hot on the roof of the Sebel Townhouse in Sydney. I wasn’t sure how long I could fry my skin without burning, but I was acutely aware of just how glorious it felt to be lounging on a sunbed, waiters hovering nearby to ply me with drinks, and nothing to do till our soundcheck later that evening. Lying next to me (not with me) in tiny swimming trunks, very big and expensive sunglasses, earphones, and nothing else, was Rod Stewart who seemed to share none of my concerns about his skin getting burnt, wrinkled and haggard. He already had a deep tan, while I, having come from a wet cold winter in the UK, was lily-white and already starting to go the colour of beetroot in unsightly patches.

Later that day, after a quick shopping trip in the Kings Cross area of Sydney, I thought I’d check out the hotel spa. It was pretty empty; in fact, the only other person in the hot tub was my ‘boss’, George Michael. I hesitated for a second in case he wanted privacy, but he gave me one of his heart-stopping beaming smiles and said, ‘Janey, come in!’

We sat there luxuriating in the bubbles and he asked how I was finding my first trip to Australia (his too). I told 2him I LOVED it. I felt so at home in Sydney, I’d even consider living here. He looked directly at me. George had a way of looking at you so that you knew he was going to mean what he said: ‘Why don’t you stay? You’d do great out here, I can really see you as a Bondi Beach girl. There’s probably loads of work for singers, and if you’re open to it, there is one of our Aussie film crew who’d be keen to showing you around.’ He sort of winked as he said it. I was a bit shocked. Little insecure me thought he may have been suggesting I leave the tour or give up on my dreams of being a pop star to marry someone in the crew and be a kept woman. I had a pathological hatred of the idea of being a ‘woman who lunched’. I was fiercely independent, and I wondered if he was suggesting I didn’t have enough talent for anything more. Many years later, we laughed about that conversation. He said he had been waiting for an opportunity to tentatively suggest that I might want to live out there, as one of the cameramen definitely had the hots for me and George had promised he’d sound it out!

I wasn’t romantically interested in that guy, but I can’t deny I left a piece of my heart behind in Sydney. Had it been the last leg of Wham!’s tour rather than midway before heading to the US, I may well have said: ‘Sod it all’ and found a way to stay on. I fell in love with Sydney quickly because within a few hours of landing, I got chatting to an air steward. I could kick myself that I can’t remember his name, but he was so nice and a big Wham! fan, and he offered to show me around. I seem to remember making it super clear I was spoken for, but he was cool, and as soon as we’d checked into the hotel, he zoomed me round Bondi Beach on a motorbike, then to a barbie where I met some of his friends, who were just lovely. I also told him I wanted 3to go to church. I think that surprised him a bit, but he connected me with a lovely woman who drove me from the hotel that Sunday morning to a church that was way too happy-clappy for me, but nevertheless, I got my fix of remembering I had a faith.

I thought about that conversation with George a fair bit during that tour in 1985 and as we flew back home six weeks later, I couldn’t help but wonder if I shouldn’t have just finished the final US leg and gone straight back to Australia. I recall lounging in my business class seat being wined and dined, and realising that within 24 hours, I’d be dragging my sorry arse and a big suitcase onto the Piccadilly line to travel back to my shared rental flat where nothing awaited me, other than half a can of baked beans in the fridge growing a fur coat.

The contrasts were sharp. As a backing singer with Wham! I lived a life of luxury – and, in fairness, without much of the responsibility. As jobs for singers go, you couldn’t really top it.

4

Chapter 2

Stars in Her Eyes

It was watching ABBA win Eurovision with ‘Waterloo’ that made me want to be a pop singer. I sat so close to the TV that my dad told me to ‘shift back, or you’ll get square eyes.’ But I was transfixed by the costumes, the style, the glamour and the harmonies. I loved singing. I’d cottoned on at an early age that it came naturally to me, and I didn’t have to try hard to remember tunes or lyrics. At Sunday school, they desperately wanted to encourage the children to sing in the service, but everyone was too shy. They started bribing us with a few pence and sweets if we sang a solo. I liked the sound of that, and popped up regularly – so often, in fact, that I got quite rich for a seven-year-old (probably the beginnings of my dental issues in later life). After a while, they changed their bribe to a gift of a reading book for every few solos. In fairness, that suited me better because I also loved reading. In the style of Matilda, I didn’t exactly have parents who encouraged reading. I did, however, have a local library and got through my full allowance of titles every three weeks.

Reading was my ticket, my window into a world much bigger than our subpar little council house in Stapleford 5(a not exactly salubrious corner of Nottingham). The expectations for me were that I would stay in the local area, working in the haberdasher’s shop or the pencil factory. But I think I knew from as early as I can remember that I was destined for something else. Ambition fizzed around me. I was definitely not a show-off – in reality, insecure and unsure of myself – but I knew deep down that I wouldn’t be sticking around.

My parents weren’t unkind, or cruel, but both had mental health issues which meant they simply weren’t able to provide the love and security I needed. I’ll share more about that later.

At Skegness Beach

Most people can cite one person who made a big impact on their life, and for me, it was my junior schoolteacher, Mr David Swainston. T. Rex had just hit the charts and I thought I’d died and gone to heaven. Watching Marc 6Bolan on Top of the Pops was like a bolt of electricity running through me, and I became fixated on his music. Mr Swainston played guitar and sang, and when he found out how much I loved the band, he seemed quite surprised but learned to play ‘Ride a White Swan’ on his acoustic and accompanied me one day singing in the school assembly. Totally crap it was, I’m sure, but I didn’t care, he was a lifeline for me. He used to help me find sheet music so that I could learn lyrics or play lines on the recorder (the sum total of my musicianship skills for many years). And just how cool is it that you can just Google and download music manuscripts now! In chatting to him, I think I started to realise that maybe, just maybe, I could do something other than lay out rolls of fabric or collect the pencil shavings. He made life seem exciting. Things started to feel possible.

When I attended the Sunday school for the aforementioned sweets and books, somehow along the way, some of the messages sunk in. I kept on going to church right up until I left home. I bought it, all of it, and while I wasn’t quite sure if I could ever be a born-again Christian, I liked the security of thinking God had my back. Also, the church gave me a social life. While some of the girls in my secondary school seemed to like hanging about in dodgy alleyways and getting themselves pregnant (there was an inordinate number of unwanted pregnancies at my sink-level secondary school) I stuck to my church crowd – well, a duo to be precise. My friend Karen and I attended church religiously (excuse the pun – attending was the only bit we did religiously), hoping for an introduction to the teens’ club that we’d heard so much about. The joyful moment came when I was 13. A lovely middle-aged couple, Gerald and Dorothy who had a son a few years older than us, took us along to 7Derby Youth for Christ, and they held church services with live music and ‘charismatic speakers’. Karen and I were so excited! I had saved enough money to buy make-up and a maxi dress from Laura Ashley. I remember it clearly, the first dress I ever bought, and I wore a flower in my hair. There were not delighted, but what could my parents say? We were being picked up and delivered back on a Saturday night by a respectful, churchgoing, God-fearing couple.

Mum (Norma) and Dad (Alan)

The church was packed, with teenagers making up at least 60 percent of the congregation. Karen and I had never imagined that we might meet boys in a church situation! This was like manna from heaven. We sang a few boring 8hymns, listened to a very trendy vicar share some stuff, and then the room darkened. Showbiz time. A full lightshow and a mirrorball kicked in over the stage, and on came the first live band.

Writz were a proper electro pop band, possibly a bit ahead of their time, with a bit of punk thrown in. One of the lead singers, Steve Fairnie looked like a young Charlie Chaplin (he later made a film on the theme) and they had a cool gaunt looking bass player called Jules. I don’t remember seeing the drummer from my seat, but it sounded great. Onto the stage strutted Bev Sage (Steve’s wife, I later discovered) and Buzzy (Jule’s wife). Bev had a shock of dyed white blonde hair while Buzzy’s was bright red, and they wore the funkiest outfits I’d ever seen, including striped leg warmers and high heels!

That was it, my very first experience of live pop music. I loved it, and I knew I wanted to perform myself. I wanted to be in that spotlight. My head had literally been turned, but how could I get started? How could I widen my horizons, especially when my own parents were not exactly the adventurous types! How could I do something different – maybe even leave home?

The answer, at least to the last question, came in the form of my first proper boyfriend, Mark, who I met at Derby Youth for Christ. He first spotted me across the pews, then in the coffee hall afterwards shovelling in custard creams. He knew Gerald and Dorothy’s son Rob and asked Rob to put a word in for him (seems like a theme), but I hadn’t even noticed him in the crowd, so I don’t remember responding.

A few more Youth for Christ events later, Valentine’s Day came, and I received a card through the post. An actual 9Valentine’s Card – and I didn’t know who it was from, I really didn’t! It said something cryptic about YFC, but there were hundreds of guys there. I told a few school friends, all insane with jealousy, but they said it was probably just from my brother (I didn’t have one) or even my sister. She had her ticket to a different life by now, being eight years older than me and already married to her childhood sweetheart.

That evening a friend dragged me along to a Valentine’s disco in the local village hall. I was dreading it: I didn’t drink (now I think about it, thank God I didn’t start that early) and I hated the look of the spotty lanky youths doing the Bump or whatever hideous dance trend was going down. I couldn’t wait for it to end so that my friend’s dad would collect us (my parents didn’t drive). Unbeknown to me, the sender of the card, Mark, had wondered why I hadn’t responded, and with a confidence way beyond his 19 years, drove over to my house and knocked on the door. Rumour has it that my mum welcomed him joyfully and told him that I was at the local disco, while my dad (after rushing to put his dentures in and his shirt on) silently fumed at him in a Don’t think about going near my daughter kind of way. And then into the seedy, horrible, cheap cider-swilling, sticky-carpeted and smoke-ridden disco of spotty kids entered this stunning, self-assured guy with long dark hair, gorgeous eyes and a captivating smile. Everyone stared as he walked straight up to me, told me how he knew I was there, and asked why I hadn’t contacted him after receiving the card. I shrugged and said I didn’t know who’d sent it, but all I could think about was whether meeting my parents and seeing my less than perfect home had already put him off! As he drove me home in his little Mini Cooper (he had a car!), I knew life would never be the same.

10Mark wrote and sung in a Christian band, gigging in churches at weekends while working full time as an apprentice for a big-time prestigious engineering company. He took me to meet his parents in Buckinghamshire and that was my first introduction to a ‘proper’ family, a lovely home, wholesome cooking and all. We became inseparable.

* * *

Secondary school was a truly horrible girls only in Stapleford called Arthur Mee, and I hated it with a vengeance. With a staggering number of girls leaving to have babies, the exam results were appalling even for those of us who tried their best. I was not especially bullied because I was good at art, so that gave me a badge of honour, especially if a mean girl wanted their portrait done. I was once in a domestic science class, hating every second because I couldn’t cook or sew, and the teacher was getting hugely frustrated as I tried to thread a needle, when I was summoned to the headmistress’s office. Fearing the worst, I knocked on her door. She ushered me in with a smile, and then presented me with a pad, paper and pencils, saying, ‘Draw my portrait, and make sure there are no wrinkles or age spots.’ Well, it got me out of a class I hated.

I was beyond excited after being accepted to a sixth-form college in Nottingham for A levels. I think it was because my art portfolio was good, so they gave me the benefit of the doubt. I met Alison while waiting at the bus stop on the first day, and we instantly had a conversation about ballet, tap dancing (we both attended classes), pop music (we both loved it) and going to church (yes, we tentatively shared that we both did that too!). Alison is my ‘longest-serving’ friend to this day. 11

Winning a national Art Competition – prize was a weekend in London!

With my best friend Alison on our first flight

12Because Alison’s parents had a car and were very supportive, they drove us to our first gig a couple of months later. We saw the Police at Derby Academy. Oh man, I still remember it. How can three guys make a sound like that? We got the bug then, and next came Elvis Costello with John Cooper Clarke as support. ‘Why do you want to see Abbot and Costello?’ was my dad’s very old-style joke. Somehow, we got to go backstage and meet the guys, no idea how.

Fast-forward a few years and despite being very good at art and being offered a place on an art foundation course in Oxford, I opted to do a BA Honours in Performance Arts. My parents wanted me to go to Nottingham Uni (of course they did), but I had bigger ideas. Mark drove me to London (who has a boyfriend who does that?) and then went off to be a tourist, while I investigated Middlesex Poly – or as it later became known, Middlesex University – on the Trent Park site near Cockfosters. I walked through the glorious array of daffodils outside the mansion house and knew instinctively I’d found my place.

My audition day was like an assault on the senses. I’d never seen so many colourful, weird and wacky people! We did all kinds of icebreakers, and for the first time in 17 years I realised how tiny my world had been. This was my first experience of other cultures. There was one Black family in our town – I kid you not – but this room was full of exotic accents and sultry looks. I did a modern dance class that rocked my