Tony Hadley today: flanked by two of ITV’s Loose Women, Ruth Langsford and Janet Street-Porter who shot the first TV doc about Spandau Ballet in 1980
❚ MORE COLD WATER HAS BEEN POURED on any future reunion for Spandau Ballet. The leaders of the 80s New Romantics movement haven’t worked together since their Reformation reunion tour ended in 2010. Today on ITV’s Loose Women chat show, Janet Street-Porter asked 51-year-old singer Tony Hadley whether he would ever tour again with Spandau. He replied straight away: “Very doubtful.” His life is busy and full of hoovering these days, he says. Big Tone is now the father of five children — baby Genevieve Elizabeth was born in February.
➢ Hadley’s own plans include Rewind The 80s Festival returning for a fifth successive year Aug 18–19 at Henley-on-Thames with Kool & The Gang, OMD, Grandmaster Flash, Rick Astley, Soul II Soul, Five Star, Starship, Jimmy Somerville, Sinitta, Marc Almond, Midge Ure, Adam Ant and more, plus festival fun
+++ ◼ AS WITH ANY ARTICLE AT THE GRAUNIAD about New Romantic cheerleaders Spandau Ballet, the resulting comments published online are always riotously entertaining. This is the one band that really winds up Guardianistas to a pitch of fury. When the 80s band announced their reunion tour in 2009, Michael Hann declared how much he’s always loathed them in a Graudina music blog which then provoked 342 comments — 342! — most of them apoplectic. How many other bands can claim such a following?
As it happens the Spandau songwriter has recently published an 88-page coffee-table book, titled The Lyrics of Gary Kemp from Lyric Book Company
Today for no apparent reason, the Guranaid runs an item about how Gary Kemp and Steve Norman made Spandau’s 1983 No1 hit True, in which lyricist Kemp admits: “I’m still berated for the line Take your seaside arms, but it’s straight out of Lolita by Vladimir Nabokov.”
Readers of Shapersofthe80s already know that the song was inspired by Kemp’s unrequited pash for poppette Clare Grogan — he was 22, she was 18 — who fronted an 80s band of Scottish cuties called Altered Images. On the same page, Steve Norman deconstructs his self-taught sax solo which has a key change in reply to Grover Washington’s Just The Two of Us.
All of which strangely prompts tearful blubbing at the Graun, rather than the usual explosion of acerbic outrage. Specimen comments follow after this gratuitous excuse to run a video…
VIDEO OF DARLING CLARE IN HER HEYDAY,
NOT TO MENTION SWIVEL-HIPS TICH
❏ Nepthsolem moans: “It always sounds to me like See side arms, as though referring to the service revolver I imagine was issued to all New Romantics, but sadly never used on TOTP.”
❏ DeeSawdeley says: “I always thought it was seaside aunt, which (for those of us with a seaside aunt, anyway) makes much more sense. Bet he wishes he’d written that now!”
❏ Stolencar comments: “Note also he says she gave him a copy of Lolita not that she had read it.”
❏ To which Vastariner responds: “There’s a picture of her reading it on the front of the Best Of Altered Images compilation released in 1991. Some might call me obsessed for knowing that, or because I have a username taken from one of her lyrics… etc etc.”
❏ From another planet, Golgafrinchan sobs: “I had unrequited love for Clare Grogan, still do to be fair. If you’re reading this Clare, get in touch, there’s still time.”
❏ DameHedwig adds:“I’ve often told my son that if things had worked out for me, Ms Grogan would be his Mum.”
❏ And Mccaugh:“As for the sublime Miss Grogan, well, just how many times did we go and see Gregory’s Girl? Helped, of course, by the fact that it ran at the Dominion Cinema in Edinburgh for three years non-stop.”
❏ Finally Bloodydoorsofftells a despicable and blatant untruth about darling Clare, so you’ll just have to go to Grunadia Online to see it. And plenty more.
Hero and uber-geek: Jim Parsons as Sheldon Cooper is clearly dead chuffed to meet Stephen Hawking as guest star on The Big Bang Theory
❚ “POSSIBLY, THE BEST EPISODE. EVER.” Let’s hope TVfanatic’s Carla Day isn’t overselling this week’s Series 5 episode 21 of the US’s highest rated comedy show. The States saw it last month, and Carla reported “non-stop laughs”. The Big Bang Theory is the cult comedy series that has come to define the age of Geek Chic. The sitcom revolves round four nerdy friends who all have impressive jobs and degrees in science. They play video games, collect comic memorabilia, discuss complex scientific topics.
Now TBBT can claim the ultimate accolade: the world’s most famous scientist steps up to guest star in The Hawking Excitation, which airs in the UK on Thursday (E4, 8pm). Yes, Britain’s 70-year-old cosmologist, Stephen Hawking, visits California to lecture at Caltech university (renowned as much for its practical jokers as its Nobel prizewinners). There, engineer Howard Wolowitz is given the job of maintaining his wheelchair. This makes theoretical physicist and uber-geek Dr Sheldon Cooper (played by Golden Globe and Emmy winner Jim Parsons) green with envy.
As the Prof’s most ardent admirer, Sheldon stops at nothing for the chance to share his hero’s “beautiful mind”, so his put-upon rival Howard sets Sheldon various tasks to earn a meeting with Hawking, and one is to walk into the cafeteria in a French maid’s costume. “What are you all staring at?” quips Sheldon. “You ever seen a man try to get a meeting with Stephen Hawking before?” The encounter itself produces a pretty ripe exchange between the pair of geniuses.
Let’s not forget Big Bang is an ensemble show: superstar Stephen Hawking is circled by satellites Leonard, Raj, Sheldon and Howard
Executive producer Bill Prady said: “When people would ask us who a dream guest star for the show would be, we would always joke and say Stephen Hawking — knowing that it was a long shot of astronomical proportions. In fact, we’re not exactly sure how we got him. It’s the kind of mystery that could only be understood by, say, a Stephen Hawking.”
Fact is however that Hawking has guested on Futurama and appeared more than once as himself in The Simpsons.
This week’s episode isn’t the only dream come true for Sheldon. In March the world’s most famous Vulcan actor, Leonard Nimoy, was heard when Star Trek’s Spock spoke to Sheldon in his sleep and deployed some snappy logic, as ever. And in 2010 Apple’s Steve Wozniak had a cameo in which he interacted with a virtual Sheldon who tells Wozniak he’s his “15th favourite technological visionary”. Only 15th, note.
Vulcan brothers: Jim Parsons brought some method acting to his role when Leonard Nimoy appeared on The Big Bang Theory this year
1963: Sassoon creates the “bob” on designer Mary Quant. (Photo: Getty)
“He revolutionised not just hair but fashion” — model-turned-Vogue fashion editor Grace Coddington
Comeback 1975: Vidal Sassoon between two contrasting examples of his hairdressing for a teach-in at the Albert Hall, where he returned to hairdressing after a five-year break. (Photograph by Tim Graham / Getty)
“ Vidal Sassoon, who was found dead at home on Wednesday, was at the cutting edge – literally and metaphorically – of hairdressing. His sharp, geometric, low-maintenance 1960s hairstyles revolutionised his craft, sounding the death knell for the stiff, set hairdos of the 1950s. An astute businessman, he made a fortune from his salons and products, and became a household name. “I wanted to eliminate the superfluous and get to the basic angles of cut and shape,” he said… ” / continued online
+++ ❏ Craig Teper’s 2010 documentaryVidal Sassoon: The Movie follows the true rags-to-riches tale of how a boy from a London orphanage went on to open his own Bond Street salon in 1958 and — influenced by the Bauhaus designs he had studied — he create the “shape” that became his signature cut, the five-point bob. It revolutionised hairdressing. His geometric wash-and-wear cuts marked the end of the beehive and the bouffant hair styles of the 50s. Admirers included the Duchess of Bedford, model Jean Shrimpton, actor Terence Stamp, and film star Mia Farrow. In 1963 he devised the classic “bob” for fashion designer Mary Quant, who called him the “Chanel of hair”. By 1964 he’d gone international by opening his first salon in New York.
Sassoon The Movie: the London crimper freed women from 50s bouffants by pioneering the low-maintenance hairstyles that defined the 60s
❚ HERE WE SEE CLASSIC PIX of the early glam incarnations that broke the rules of rock and roll and put the gender-bending David Bowie into the headlines. Since 1972 Japanese photographer Masayoshi Sukita has gone on capturing the prolific flow of creations from the ever-inventive Bowie. This week in London his long-awaited book Speed of Life documenting their 40-year collaboration is launched by Genesis Publications in its 2,000-copy limited edition. Signed by both Bowie and Sukita, it is priced at £360 ($581) for 300 pages which they caption with their own recollections and memories. Bowie says: “It’s very hard for me to accept that Sukita-san has been snapping away at me since 1972 but that really is the case… May he click into eternity.”
Meanwhile in today’s Sunday Times Magazine art critic Waldemar Januszczak recalls his teenage outing in 5-inch platforms when he paid 90p on the door of Starkers in Boscombe, Dorset, to discover the eye-popping mystique of Ziggy Stardust in August 1972 — minutes after Sukita the photographer arrived in Britain and caught Bowie’s shock show at London’s Royal Festival Hall. He described it as “like an astronomer finding a new planet”.
Januszczak writes: “It was Andy Warhol who invented the immensely attractive cultural idea that anyone could be whoever they wanted to be. It became Bowie’s big idea as well. And the tour he set out on in 1972 featured his most determined efforts yet to become lots of people at once: Ziggy Stardust, Aladdin Sane, Major Tom, The Man Who Saved the World. That was just the beginning. The bewildering multi-identitied career photographed for us so sympathtically by Sukita-san in Speed of Life features enough different David Bowies to constitute a football crowd…”
➢ Choose “View full site” – then in the blue bar atop your mobile page, click the three horizontal lines linking to many blue themed pages with background article
MORE INTERESTING THAN MOST PEOPLE’S FANTASIES — THE SWINGING EIGHTIES 1978-1984
They didn’t call themselves New Romantics, or the Blitz Kids – but other people did.
“I’d find people at the Blitz who were possible only in my imagination. But they were real” — Stephen Jones, hatmaker, 1983. (Illustration courtesy Iain R Webb, 1983)
“The truth about those Blitz club people was more interesting than most people’s fantasies” — Steve Dagger, pop group manager, 1983
PRAISE INDEED!
“See David Johnson’s fabulously detailed website Shapers of the 80s to which I am hugely indebted” – Political historian Dominic Sandbrook, in his book Who Dares Wins, 2019
“The (velvet) goldmine that is Shapers of the 80s” – Verdict of Chris O’Leary, respected author and blogger who analyses Bowie song by song at Pushing Ahead of the Dame
“The rather brilliant Shapers of the 80s website” – Dylan Jones in his Sweet Dreams paperback, 2021
A UNIQUE HISTORY
➢ WELCOME to the Swinging 80s ➢ THE BLOG POSTS on this front page report topical updates ➢ ROLL OVER THE MENU at page top to go deeper into the past ➢ FOR NEWS & MONTH BY MONTH SEARCH scroll down this sidebar
❏ Header artwork by Kat Starchild shows Blitz Kids Darla Jane Gilroy, Elise Brazier, Judi Frankland and Steve Strange, with David Bowie at centre in his 1980 video for Ashes to Ashes
VINCENT ON AIR 2026
✱ Deejay legend Robbie Vincent has returned to JazzFM on Sundays 1-3pm… Catch up on Robbie’s JazzFM August Bank Holiday 2020 session thanks to AhhhhhSoul with four hours of “nothing but essential rhythms of soul, jazz and funk”.
TOLD FOR THE FIRST TIME
◆ Who was who in Spandau’s break-out year of 1980? The Invisible Hand of Shapersofthe80s draws a selective timeline for The unprecedented rise and rise of Spandau Ballet –– Turn to our inside page
SEARCH our 925 posts or ZOOM DOWN TO THE ARCHIVE INDEX
UNTOLD BLITZ STORIES
✱ If you thought there was no more to know about the birth of Blitz culture in 1980 then get your hands on a sensational book by an obsessive music fan called David Barrat. It is gripping, original and epic – a spooky tale of coincidence and parallel lives as mind-tingling as a Sherlock Holmes yarn. Titled both New Romantics Who Never Were and The Untold Story of Spandau Ballet! Sample this initial taster here at Shapers of the 80s
CHEWING THE FAT
✱ Jawing at Soho Radio on the 80s clubland revolution (from 32 mins) and on art (@55 mins) is probably the most influential shaper of the 80s, former Wag-club director Chris Sullivan (pictured) with editor of this website David Johnson
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