At a club where she was performing, she was warned that the owner expected to sleep with her and was urged to have an escort to the toilets. In another encounter, a director asked her to remove her top during an audition, forcing her to walk out. Toyah also fended off sex pests by punching them and reveals that the pressure to be thin was so great that she was weighed by a dietitian before being on Top Of The Pops.v The singer, who has just released the album In The Court Of The Crimson Queen, welcomes the #MeToo movement because it gives “vulnerable women a voice”. Toyah, 60, who first took to the stage in 1977, aged just 19, says: “It was unbelievable being a woman very much in a man’s world. We mostly played working men’s clubs, I don’t want to put these places down as the audiences were fantastic but you were just groped. There are even photographs out there of me being groped.
“Some extreme things have happened to me. My band really looked after me, though. I remember going to a club in Leeds in 1979. I arrived and my lighting man said, ‘Do not stay here alone, the owner thinks he has the right to sleep with you. Don’t even think of going to the ladies without one of us escorting you’.
“It’s cool, that’s what my band did, they looked after me. As for the casting couch, there’s one I’m actually quite proud of.This director was legendary. I arrived and I was asked to take my top off. I put two and two together and I just walked. But that happened in those days, it did happen.”
She adds: “What #MeToo has done has given vulnerable women a voice. I’ve felt no need to take part in #MeToo because to be quite honest I just used my fists. There’s a few men out there who would use #MeToo on me! I just smashed them in the face – I had no qualms about that at all.”
Toyah has since worked in music, theatre, TV, radio and film, as well as producing, directing and managing her own career.
She’s been in 40 plays and 20 films, including cult 1979 mod movie Quadrophenia.
Since 1986 she has been married to Robert Fripp, 12 years her senior, leader of progressive rock band King Crimson. In fact her new album is a nod to their 1969 debut, In The Court Of The Crimson King.
Of stardom Toyah says: “I knew that I was not tall or particularly feminine and that I had to be individualistic. I knew that was how I was going to survive. That made me bombastic and full of bravado, I just knew I hadn’t got the feminine card to play.
“If I could go back to when I was conceived and choose a supermodel’s body I would because they have an easier life. I decided I had to be tomboyish to survive.
“Back then I was 3st heavier, today there’s nothing wrong with that but I knew that as soon as I was signed to a label I had to lose that weight. I didn’t mind at all. I kind of lost it on Quadrophenia as we were on so many amphetamines to get through, all of us were all popping pills.
“Back then it was expected of you. I had a dietitian who weighed me weekly. I was weighed before Top Of The Pops.
“It’s a fantastic time for women, they can have multiple partners. It was hard to do that 30 or 40 years ago.They can be gay, straight or choose their gender. That’s all really healthy. It’s nobody’s business.
“Sixty has been one of the best years of my life. I’m about to turn 61 and finally feel I’m arriving thanks to my writing partnership with Simon Darlow.” Darlow worked with leading record producer Trevor Horn in the 80s, writing songs such as Slave To The Rhythm for Grace Jones.
“My new album is some of my best work,” says Toyah. “If it is my swansong I’ll be very happy with it.” In The Court Of The Crimson Queen is out now