Anthony Kavanagh: 1994

Anthony Kavanagh talks about the summer of 1994, when he stayed with his sister in St Ives and tried to work out how he was going to become a pop star.

Transcript

SPEAKER_01 0:13

Hello, hello, Elizabeth, Samma. Teenager. Each Episode, I talk to different summer teenage years. We're talking faster, first lost, faster into the world. We're going to be into their teenage coffee, the music on the mixtapes and playlists, and some of the biggest feelings they've ever felt. If you like the sound of that, you might like my novel What Happened That Summer, which explores some of these themes. It features a pop star, a theme park, a podcast, and plenty of 90s nostalgia, and it's out now. My guest today is the fabulous Anthony Kavanaugh, who was a pop star with a string of hits in the late 1990s and has now become an author.

SPEAKER_03 1:05

Hi Anthony Kavanaugh, thank you so much for talking to me today on that summer.

SPEAKER_00 1:10

My pleasure. Thank you. We finally got it started. Thanks for having me, Laura.

SPEAKER_03 1:16

I've been really excited about this interview because my book that kind of sparked the idea for the podcast is about a teen, male team pop star in the 1990s. And so I thought about asking you to be a guest on the podcast, and you were an actual real-life pop star in the 1990s.

SPEAKER_00 1:45

Okay, right. No, I didn't. I came close a few times, but I didn't. Thank God.

SPEAKER_03 1:51

And recently you've written about your experiences of fame and of addiction in your memoir Pop Scars, which I really loved. Um could you tell listeners a little bit about it?

SPEAKER_00 2:05

Yeah, well, um, it's uh it's not an autobiography. I'm not delusional enough that I'm famous enough to write an autobiography, it's a memoir. I had I've always wanted to do to write a book. I've I loved books growing up. I was brought up on memoirs, autobiographies. My dad had them, the old Hollywood ones, you know, what all that stuff. But I couldn't really get my act together and stuff kept happening. And then um, yeah, so it's basically um uh uh a memoir. I mean it's builders, um, a memoir on fame, addiction, and the dark side of 90s pop, but really it's it's more about what happens after fame, I think. I think I wanted to focus more on the you don't often hear about you know, people disappear and and then what? And my some of my life experiences were so wacky for want of a better word, and and you know, like I just there was a lot of comedy and dark humour in it, and I think I just yeah, I I I wanted to write it, and before I knew it, I suddenly had this book and and then more material because stuff kept happening. It was it it was about 10 years in the making, which sounds very dramatic, but um it wasn't until I got fully kept kept adding to the end of it. Well, I just I had the idea 10 years ago, and then I was in addiction, so I couldn't, you know, as as much as I love the idea of sitting there like Ernest Hemingway with the bottle of wine writing my uh memoirs, you know, like it wasn't working. So there was a few rock bottoms and more stuff kept happening, which get in the end I now realize was what the book was meant to be, you know. So it although it's a a memoir on the 90s pop scene, it's much more about what happens after fame and hopefully about hope. I think I'd like to say.

SPEAKER_03 3:47

Yeah, definitely. I think it's a kind of come for the 90s pop scene angle, but stay for the um really raw and honest um account of um addiction and like you say, what happens after fame. Um I was watching the take that documentary that's just come out on Netflix recently, right? And I was thinking about how pop stars and boy bands and people are kind of taken taken in at you know a really young age and then spat out the other end, and then what what what can you do? Because it's quite hard, like you can't just then go and get a job in Tesco, can you? Because you've been massively famous, and it's uh I feel like there's not much aftercare, nobody is kind of looking out for people when it all kind of comes to an end.

SPEAKER_00 4:40

Yeah, I mean, I was very fortunate because when my career um, or at least when I perceived it to be over at 21, by the way. So I started when I was 16, 17, I got signed, all that stuff. Had the three, four years of the pop, you know, explosion, travelled the world, had the top 10 hits, top of the pop, smash hits, all that stuff. Um, but I was fortunate that I'd made a decent amount of money and I was able to buy my parents a house because they would live, you know, that we didn't have any money, we're from the council house. So I ran away to America because I thought I was I wasn't done, you know. I'd I was too embarrassed to stay in England because like you said, Laura, there was no there was no jungle to go in in them days, you know, there was no uh there was no reality show to get your career back. It was, you know, and so I ran away. I went I went I went to the States, I lived there for seven, eight years, and which is documented in the book because that whole you know story about me my trials and tribulations trying to make it in LA, spoiler alert, it doesn't happen. But I came back and it was like, what do I do now? You know, like how do I the the world had moved on, you know, in my head, I thought. And so yeah, and as far as the aftercare goes, um, I only know it from my perspective, which I'm assuming is would probably like your book. It's just it was like what you're you've written about, which I can't wait to read, by the way. Um I didn't have a bought a band around me to either annoy me or look out for me, so I only know it from the solo perspective. And I was in the closet, and I was secretly drinking and didn't realise that I had this condition of of of addiction. So yeah, that it's it's the perfect star really to uh you know it got to go a bit wonky.

SPEAKER_03 6:32

Yeah, of course, yeah. Um I I'm so interested in the you know, you hear about particularly in the 90s, pop stars not not being allowed to be gay. Um and was that kind of an an explicit thing that was stated, or was it or was it did you just kind of understand that you couldn't be open about that?

SPEAKER_00 6:52

Yeah, I mean the the latter. I was not told either way, and I was in the closet to myself. I mean, I knew I was gay, obviously, but my dream had just come true, you know. I didn't go to uni or anything like that, I was literally working at McDonald's, and then I uh got signed, you know. I mean, it I write about it how it happens in the book, but um the manager who I had was gay, and you know, that's a whole thing in itself, which you know we don't need to go into, but but that was a complex uh relationship, and um um you know, so but nobody ever said you can't be gay, but it was suggested that you don't, well, it was told you don't say you've had your you don't have a girlfriend, um right. So, but because my dream had come true, all that dopamine, all that joy, all that want of everything I've ever dreamed of, looking at Smash It's every two weeks and dreaming to be on the cover, that was all sacrificed. I'm happy to be on my you know, but of course, you you get used to it, and then you think, Oh, I am a bit lonely actually. But no, I mustn't, I'm it's fine, you know. You carry on. Yeah.

SPEAKER_03 8:02

I'm so busy, I guess.

SPEAKER_00 8:04

Yeah, you are so busy.

SPEAKER_03 8:05

Kind of swept along by it.

SPEAKER_00 8:07

Yeah, yeah.

SPEAKER_03 8:09

Okay, well, let's start talking about um that summer, which uh for you is 1994, um, which I believe is the kind of calm before the storm, just before everything kicked off. So to put listeners into the right um kind of just to remind them of that year, it was the year that Nelson Mandela became South Africa's first black president, it was the year that Kurt Cobain died by suicide, um, it was the genocide in Rwanda, and it was the start of the OJ Simpson trial. So um that's where we were culturally. Um so if you could start by just telling me how old you were, where you were living, and who you were living with in the summer of 1994.

SPEAKER_00 8:57

So I left school in the July, the high school, excuse me, and with not many qualifications because I didn't all I wanted to be was a pop singer, which sounds ridiculous, but I I was that's what I wanted to be. Um I think I got a U in maths, which was unclassified, but I did get a bit of drama. I got drama and music. I had a very kind music teacher that, although I couldn't read music, he'd let me play uh when when it was games in PE, which I was terrified of doing because I was quite chubby-ish and a bit girly looking, and I used to get bullied a bit, and and he used to let me sit in the piano room and and and when it was time for games in P. I don't think I did games in PE for about three years in school. I'd just go and hide in this piano room and practice songs. Anyway, I left so I it was what happened was I went to that summer. I went to St Ives, Cornwall, where my sister and brother-in-law lived. Um, Angela, my dear sister, who's my best friend, she passed away a few years ago, um, which I write about in the book. Actually, I write a scene in the book of us on that very beach where we used to spend every summer. This particular summer, me and Angela would be sitting on the beach at St. Ives, husband Clint's a hairdresser, he's at work, and we'd just sit there and she'd say to me, You know, Anthony, what are you gonna do in September? I said, Don't know. I said, I'll have to get a part-time job, but I really, you know, there's this manager, and he's based in Manchester, and and I wish I could meet him. And so that summer was um was oh, and and I and and you know, like you go from the ugly duckling to the swan. I don't know what you say for the male version, but I was I was quite chubby-ish, let's say, and um I uh I just lost all this weight that summer. I got a job at the fish and chip shop on the seafront called Moby's, so I had a bit of independence, and Clint, the husband, my brother-in-law, cut my hair. He's a hairdresser. So I had this first time ever, this kind of shorter haircut, a sun time. And I came back that summer looking like a different person, and I'd lost all this weight, and my confidence was up. Um, yeah, and that that so I remember all that stuff going on in the background, but I was very tunnel-visioned. I just had this delusion that I was gonna somehow be a pop singer. It was wild.

SPEAKER_02 11:21

I mean, it it worked. Maybe you had to be a bit delusional.

SPEAKER_00 11:25

Do you know what? I think these days we've got so much going on in our brains. I was so naive, but you can be ambitious and naive, right? I mean, I yeah, yeah. I mean, I'd just used determined.

SPEAKER_03 11:36

Yeah, I think it's a bit like being a writer in the sense that a lot of people who do it don't know anybody in their family who's done it, or you know, don't know anybody who's become an author successfully, but you kind of push and push and push, and you have to, you know, really believe in yourself because you get so many rejections along the way.

SPEAKER_00 11:57

Yeah, yeah, absolutely.

SPEAKER_03 11:58

And I think if you've got a really strong ambition like that, then um and you stick with it, it sometimes dreams come true.

SPEAKER_00 12:09

Yeah, I mean, mine did, but I I I totally understand what you're saying with the the writing thing, and and you know, people see a book in the shops and think, oh, you know, that little do they know what's gone behind it and the rejections and the you know, oh my god, you get back and you you know it's not for the faint-hearted, is it? But it's what we'd I mean, I'm only just starting to call myself an author, which is the weirdest thing. But I did write the book myself, you know, there was no ghostwriter, but there's something about doing it, isn't there? There's the you can't beat that creative uh balls, I suppose, once you've finished a chapter, or well, you know better than me because you're yeah, you're much more experienced.

SPEAKER_03 12:49

No, it's brilliant feeling. It's just hard to take yourself seriously as a writer when you don't have a an agent yet or you don't have a a deal yet, and you know, you say to people, I can't come out, I'm working on my book, and you feel a bit silly, like you know what you're working on. I remember I remember asking a boss, I was contracting, and I asked him if I could go down to four days a week because I wanted to spend a week writing, a day writing. And oh yeah, he just he agreed to it, but you just obviously thought I was completely mad.

SPEAKER_00 13:20

Writing, what do you mean? Writing, you know, it's like well I'm not I'm not sat at home crocheting, it's not like a strange hobby. Um but yeah, and um yeah, I hear you, and and um it's uh yeah, it's it's uh it's it's a tricky. I mean what I will say, 10 years ago when I did have the idea for the book, I uh I think I sent one chapter to one literary agent. I can't remember who it was. I think I just looked at the phone, and they sent me uh a letter saying, I mean it was a letter, how embarrassing it's 15 years ago. Oh, was it a letter or yeah, I think it was an actual letter, is that or was it an e must I remember getting a letter and she just said, you know, thank you, but but not for us, and that was it, done, dusted. Okay, never again. I can't do this, you know.

SPEAKER_03 14:07

But it took you a while to build I mean it it knocks you, doesn't it, at first, until you realise that that's just kind of half of the course.

SPEAKER_00 14:17

Well, I had to do a course. I mean, I literally did a writing course once I got sober properly this time. Um, I mean you're never properly sober, but once I'd got my act together a bit and I'd been to the rehab for the second time, I uh I did a I did a writing course. And I and I won and I went every week and I was with all these other writers and sat in the boardroom and we had a tutor, and that's when I started getting feedback, and I was like, ah, okay, maybe maybe I can do this. So I needed to be told, really. I needed, I needed that bit of I needed, I needed a bit of approval, which has kind of been the story of my life, you know.

SPEAKER_03 14:52

And I'm sure the singing, the music thing is similar, um, that there's a lot of knockbacks and things like that. Um, so do you think that summer stands out because it was your last summer of sort of normal life before the roller coaster?

SPEAKER_00 15:09

Yeah, it was just magical, and I know that sounds a bit corny, but some kind of sorcery went on, and I just remember, I remember buying Smash Hits that that one of those weeks I was there, one of those fortnights, and sitting in my sister and brother-in-law's bedroom, they was at work, and I would usually go up there and play CDs or whatever, and um staring at the Smash Hits cover and literally having this, it was almost like my future self, and it sounds so cocky, and and I say this in the book like I mean, how we this sounds so cringe, but staring at it and having this visceral reaction that I am going to be on that cover, and and and that was it.

SPEAKER_03 15:50

Manifesting.

SPEAKER_00 15:51

Well, yeah, but you know, it's a bit carny, say manifesting, but it's true, you know. I mean, it was other things have have happened slightly happened like that, but and then I put it to one side, and I was like, okay, well, now it's just a case of making it happen, and then fate aligned uh in in a cosmic way, but yeah, I was very lucky, but yeah, that summer was yeah, I remember the music and and all that kind of stuff, so yeah, and I got some other hello you're from Manchester.

SPEAKER_03 16:23

Um so was your sister and her husband living in St. Ives and you would go down there to spend the summer there. Is that what yes?

SPEAKER_00 16:32

Yeah, they've them from Manchester, and um they moved down there in the late 80s, and um then it became the holiday destination, you know. Uh me and my mum and dad would go down on the coach. They were a bit older at this point, so they weren't um they weren't. I remember my mother, God bless her. My father had had a heart attack, and um my mother had discovered uh I think Clint had been to Italy, the brother-in-law, and he'd left espresso, uh, which he thought was coffee, and she made a flask of coffee with espresso in a flask. And my dad wasn't a big coffee drinker, and we sat on the couch for eight hours to saying eyes, and he drank a full flask, almost like a litre of very strong espresso coffee, and nearly had another heart attack when we arrived. I shouldn't laugh and do in the name of the father here. Um, but I then would go on my own every oh I loved it. I'd go and hang out in the salon with them because they had their own hair salon. But a lot of them.

SPEAKER_03 17:32

Well, they were both hairdressers.

SPEAKER_00 17:33

She was the receptionist, Angela was the receptionist, and Clint was this the hairdresser. Uh, yeah, so it was just magical days, but yeah, that summer was just had a feeling about something, you know. I just uh it was like pressure was on, you know. Like what we're gonna do here, like you know.

SPEAKER_03 17:51

Um suppose if you've actually finished school and you're not planning to go back to because you were 16, is that right?

SPEAKER_00 17:58

16, yeah. I thought but what will you when you leave school? Do you leave school at 16? I can't remember.

SPEAKER_03 18:04

Do you you finish your GCSEs when you're 16?

SPEAKER_00 18:08

Yes, so I was.

SPEAKER_03 18:09

But now you have to stay in education until you're 18. But then, because I'm similar age to you, then you could leave at 16 or at 18. And yeah, I guess if you've finished and you're not planning to go back, there's a lot of people I've talked to on the podcast, they've talked about the summer before they went away to university, or the summer between GCSEs and A levels, that kind of thing. But if you finished at 16, you're still very young, and you're not, you know, you don't know what you're doing next, but you want to be a pop star, and then it it must be just like, How how do I make this happen?

SPEAKER_00 18:43

Um, yeah, I mean, I was musical, so I I shouldn't really play down that. I mean, I was talented in that department, so I you know, I had a piano, I was always playing the piano. I wasn't really singing in front of people, but I would make my little tapes in the bedroom, singing different songs and stuff like that. Um but yeah, I mean, sixth form would have been an option, but I I think I could have gone to sixth form, but I just couldn't wait to get out of school, to be honest with you. It I I'd I I'd I it wasn't the greatest experience for me high school, so I just I wanted out really, you know.

SPEAKER_03 19:22

Yeah, yeah, that makes sense. And what about um your social life in terms of your group of friends? Because was it hard to I mean, 16 is quite a key age for friendships, and was it hard to leave for the summer and not see any of those people, or did you just not mind?

SPEAKER_00 19:41

Um, well, I mean, I didn't have loads and loads of friends, not to get the violins out, but my main staple for friend was Andrew, my best friend, and he's you know, it the book opens with me and him trying to get go on trying to get in a nightclub when we're 16, which is when what happens happens when I meet the you know the most um so it's a gay club, right?

SPEAKER_03 20:04

You're you're you go into a gay club with your friend who I think isn't gay, and don't you pretend that you don't know it's a gay club?

SPEAKER_00 20:12

Yeah, well there was my cousin, there was my cousin who's straight, and there was Andrew and and I, Andrew, my best friend, who were the same age, me and Andrew. Andrew was also secretly gay, and I was secretly gay. We never told each other, but we died, we had tried to get in two other nightclubs that wouldn't let us in. So as a last chance saloon, not not gay nightclub, just you know, as a last chance saloon, we saw this one that just so happened to be a gay nightclub, Paradise Factory. I mean, it was quite mixed as well. It was all kind of crazy, you know, it was it was a real mixed bag of you know, all kinds of motley crew, and um we got in that one, yeah. So uh that was uh quite an eye-opener. But I was secretly pleased, of course.

SPEAKER_03 20:57

Yeah, and then that's where you met the manager.

SPEAKER_00 21:01

Yeah, that's when I that's when I literally yeah, he was there in the corner of the room, this guy that I told everyone I I was gonna meet, or somehow, or it might be in his net, you know, it was uh and then we collided, business card was given, and and yeah, it that's when it's that's literally when it started. So hadn't I got into that nightclub, I might never have if I'd got into the other two, it might we might not be sat here talking about it, you know, it's crazy.

SPEAKER_03 21:29

Or it just might have happened but in a completely different way.

SPEAKER_00 21:33

It might have, yeah, yeah.

SPEAKER_03 21:34

It's so interesting, isn't it, to think about these pivotal moments that um take your life in one or other direction and you think, you know, how would it have happened, how would it have played out if you yeah, you hadn't got out that night or you got into a different pub or Yeah. Yeah, and you can never know, obviously, but it's quite fascinating to think about. But it's interesting that you and your friend were both had you been friends for a long time, you and Andrew.

SPEAKER_00 22:00

Yeah, we were friends since we were about, I would say, nine or ten, maybe ten. Um and we had an idea, but um yeah, I didn't discuss it. And he he was starting uni, I think, and it wasn't long after that he was getting into blur and pulp and suede, and then the you know, the bisexual uh label was kind of dangled around, and that and then uh you know, but I yeah, I didn't I never said it. It's so weird, isn't it? But yeah, everything we did was quite camp. I mean, we were you know, there's bits in the book where I'm telling us we're in the bedroom recording tapes of acting out characters from neighbours, you know. I'm Mrs. Mangle and he was Helen Daniels, you know, like we're playing uh, you know, we're on a Saturday afternoon. Uh all the other lads are out playing football, and we, you know, we're in the house, while mother's at bingo with the curtains drawn on a Saturday afternoon watching Prison Cell Block H on VHS. You know, it wasn't really the most show of friendships, but uh yeah, he's great. So, but we would me and Andrew would write letters to each other in the six-week holidays, so I we'd we'd send like funny letters to each other um when I would be in Cornwall. Yeah.

SPEAKER_03 23:12

And be back at home in Manchester for that holiday.

SPEAKER_00 23:16

Yes, yeah. And um, yeah, he's a school teacher now and lives in York with his husband. Yeah.

SPEAKER_03 23:23

Wow.

SPEAKER_00 23:24

Yeah.

SPEAKER_03 23:24

And I used to I you've just triggered a memory. Uh, I used to write letters to my friends in the summer of it. Like you'd go away and write a letter even though you're only away for a week. And yeah, one of my sister's friends, um we went away for three weeks to France, and my sister's friend wrote in a little notebook what happened in Neighbours every day that we were away.

SPEAKER_00 23:50

Now that's kind of that would be right up my street. That's very mean, Andrew. I love it. That is brilliant.

SPEAKER_03 23:57

You couldn't like if you missed something, then you missed it, right? You couldn't come back and think, Oh, I've got to catch up on neighbours, it's still gone.

SPEAKER_00 24:05

Well, I mean, unless you, you know, you you you missed lunchtime, you could see it in the night, you know, the evening while you're having your tea or whatever, or you didn't, but yeah, that's that's brilliant. I love that.

SPEAKER_03 24:16

And also a friend of mine, now it's all coming back to me. A friend of mine, we drew this massive chart of all the characters in neighbours and all the relationships between them, like who had slept with who and who was like brother and sister and all of that. Yeah, and we spent hours on it.

SPEAKER_00 24:34

Like a neighbor's ancestry tree almost, like but but who but a bit more personal details. I love it. Yeah, was Helen Daniels in there? I mean, maybe but maybe not because she wouldn't have slept with anyone, maybe James.

SPEAKER_03 24:47

No, she definitely would have been on there. I think if we had fam, you know, familial relationships as well, or you know, this is this person's grandmother. This Helen Daniels definitely. I mean, she was you know, she was she mainstay for so many years.

SPEAKER_00 24:59

Yeah, yeah. Um, but yeah, neighbours was was was the one. I mean, that was uh yeah, it was something about the old Australian show was just to give a comfort. I mean, I was off school saying that sons and daughters was another staple that I used to like to watch in the afternoon.

SPEAKER_03 25:16

I never watched Sons and Daughters, so I watched Home No Way and Neighbours, and sometimes in the school holidays, I'd watch them twice in a day.

SPEAKER_00 25:24

I'd watch at lunchtime and then again at the time without absolutely I would do that.

SPEAKER_03 25:30

Children now have like so much choice of what to watch.

SPEAKER_00 25:34

Um I know we had four channels.

SPEAKER_03 25:38

I know and most of the time nothing good was on any of them. But now, like my kids will say, Oh, there's no I can't find anything to watch on Netflix. And I'm like, Don't be ridiculous. Don't be ridiculous.

SPEAKER_00 25:50

I mean, honestly, you know, some nights I can literally sit, scroll, like like going through channels, I can spend an hour trying to find something, and I'm thinking this is ridiculous. It's because I've got so much choice, like in the old days. Too much choice almost. Yeah, oh don't quite fancy that. I might see if this it's like no no no, the old days we had four, so you either want that or you want that, or you want, you know.

SPEAKER_03 26:11

And even if something was a bit shit, you didn't give up on it, you just watched it anyway.

SPEAKER_00 26:15

Exactly, you'd stick with it. Yeah, absolutely.

SPEAKER_03 26:20

So I'd love to know what sort of thing you were wearing at this time in your life. Can you remember much about like was uh fashion important to you and what kind of thing did you wear?

SPEAKER_00 26:31

Well, I mean, budget was a bit tight, but I I had to think about you probably know yourself when you're writing about a certain era. Um, and of course, the first quarter of the book is the 90s. Um I had to really think about some of that stuff, uh, what what I was be wearing. I remember there was uh I was very excited to the Pepe jeans jacket. I had the Pepe jeans jacket, um, and I went from a 34 waist to a 32 or maybe even a 30 because I'd lost weight. So so a lot of my trousers and jeans didn't fit. Um we had a a shop in Manchester, a store, and I'm trying to think of the name of it. It was kind of like the Primarch of its day. Was it called What Shop? I can't remember, but but they had like there was a lot of Joe blogs going round, you know. There was that kind of do you remember Joe blogs, the baggy jeans?

SPEAKER_03 27:27

Yeah, do you remember Nath?

SPEAKER_00 27:30

Nath Nath. Um, what was really cool at school if you could afford it, and my mum did eventually get me one, God bless her, was the Burghouse fleece. Do you remember the Burghouse? I mean, they could they're still going, aren't they? Um that was a bit of a northern kind of cool uh uh look.

SPEAKER_03 27:50

The the burg I remember that, and I was in I grew up in uh Cheshire, so I was okay.

SPEAKER_00 27:57

Maybe it was more of a Manchester L S L is it or Elise, yeah. Yeah, I had the Elise trainers. Um but um yeah, I I actually dressed stranger when I was a bit younger and and not really because we had a shop called Red Our Dead in Manchester, and um do you remember when um don't you remember Smash it's when Kylie had those big wedgy shoes and they had like stars on the front, and then Matt Goss used to wear them in bross. They were like he's had bottle tops on, but do you remember them wedge, the kind of wedgy ones? I went through, I managed to get a pair of them once and went to school with them, not with the bottle tops, with the star on the front. I mean that would yeah, but um it was more of a kind of casual jeansy, jeansy kind of denimy look, I I think, you know.

SPEAKER_03 28:49

Double denim, sounds like with your jacket.

SPEAKER_00 28:52

Maybe a double denim, yeah. I remember the Pepe jeans jacket I was very proud of. I never had that off. Yeah, like a light, like, light, light blue.

SPEAKER_03 29:01

Yeah, okay. And what about well, we've talked about neighbours, but um films and TV, and you said you were a reader. What other kind of what's the media that you associate with that time? The books and films and things like that.

SPEAKER_00 29:17

Um gosh. Um what was I into? Trying to think. I mean, I was quite I was very music obsessed, so a lot of my life was kind of music, you know. It was um buying tapes all the time. You know, new albums that I wanted on tape, I would constantly be buying.

SPEAKER_03 29:38

Um I um did you record the charts as well?

SPEAKER_00 29:42

I did record, yeah, certain songs off the charts, yeah. Yeah, um, and then we were allowed to take tapes into school, and I used to bring them to the odd class and I'd kind of almost DJ on not DJ, but I'd select what we would listen to in the class. I've just remembered that memory.

SPEAKER_03 29:59

Um that sounds mad that they let you bring tapes into class. That's it.

SPEAKER_00 30:04

I don't know how I got away with it. Yeah, I mean there was no I I just would play the songs and I'd sit at home trying to figure out what would work in geography or you know, like um I remember um I did I love Kate Bush. My sister loved Kate Bush, my late sister Angela, she was obsessed with Kate Bush, she's 20 years older than me, and I never got into it until I was maybe I don't know, got into Kate until I was maybe say 15. No, maybe 16. Yeah, 15. No, a bit younger, actually, 14, 15. And me and Andrew would go to the library because he got into it too, and we'd get Kate Bush tapes, and we discovered all these early albums like The Kick Inside and Lion Heart, and you know, uh Hounds of Love. So we were very obsessive. Um music. Film-wise, I'm trying to remember. Whoa, we used to go to the video shop, yeah. Video shop was the best. I've used my mum used to meet me after school, she'd finish afternoon bingo, and then at four, usually finished about half three, and then at four o'clock we'd walk through the market and we'd go to would it be blockbusters then or would it be something else? I can't remember. There was a big chain on the market anyway.

SPEAKER_03 31:14

In my blockbuster, but I think there were also just individual ones as well.

SPEAKER_00 31:19

And they weren't cheap. I think they were like five pounds to rent the video. Would you get the money back?

SPEAKER_03 31:26

For just a night.

SPEAKER_00 31:27

Oh, maybe 250. I can't remember, but and that was heaven. So I remember I used to like um thrillers. My dad used to watch them with me as well, because my mother did go to bingo quite a lot in the evening. Um like stuff like sleeping with the enemy, um, you know, like those kind of um misery. I was obsessed with misery. I remember loving misery. Um uh, you know, uh, I might treat myself to say return to Oz just because I was obsessed with the Wizard of Oz. Or um I remember uh, you know, a trying to kill stuff like that. Um speed, I quite like speed because the manager told me I looked like Keanu Reeves at one point because I had the haircut short. So they used to watch stuff like that. All those 90s proper Hollywood um films I used to love.

SPEAKER_03 32:19

Yeah, I some of those I'd completely forgotten about, but Sleeping with the Enemy was a brilliant film. Do you remember Ham That Rocks the Cradle?

SPEAKER_00 32:27

Yes! Ham That Rocks the Cradle right up my street. Loved that. Single white female, you know, all those kind of thrillers. I wanted to watch Basic Instinct, that was probably a bit too much to watch at home. Um, but then I'd go and stay with my sister and brother-in-law, and they were dead cool, so they'd watch like really cool like David Lynch films and stuff like that. So I was I had the I'd started to get a bit of experience of the more art, you know, like the more cooler side, it's not necessarily cooler, but interesting. So it was a it was nice. I was kind of educated, uh, a bit of that as well, which probably inspired my creativity somewhere along the line. Yeah, it all feeds in. The elephant man. I remember getting the elephant man and crying my eyes out because uh I'd watched a bit with Angela Clint or something, but me and my dad watched that with the John Hurt, was it? The the elephant man, yeah.

SPEAKER_03 33:22

I used to spend so long in the video shop reading the backs of the video because it like you say, it was quite expensive, and so you didn't want to make a mistake, get one that was uh very good, you know. Yes, I think absolutely ages choosing, and if you were choosing with a friend, you like sometimes they bought one, you'd want another one, and you'd have to like yeah, it's just like it was a it was a big ritual, I feel like. Actually getting the videos.

SPEAKER_00 33:55

Yeah, and and you know, god forbid you do it with somebody else, you know. Like then it because I'm a I can be a bit people pleasy and like, oh no, are you gonna enjoy it? Like, I'll be sat with someone and it might be 15 minutes in and I'm I'm thinking, are they enjoying it? Are they not? Should I I've chosen this? Oh god, like you, what are you thinking? Yeah, yeah. So but that was the same. I remember the reading the back of the videos, yeah.

SPEAKER_03 34:18

Um, did you have posters on your bedroom wall and who was on them?

SPEAKER_00 34:24

Madonna, Madonna, Madonna, um, and I had Kate Bush, and I had Kylie from I bought I first discovered Smash Hits in 1988 because my brother-in-law, Clint, used to buy it himself. Now, even though he was older than me, Smash It's was quite a cool mag in the 80s.

SPEAKER_02 34:48

Yeah.

SPEAKER_00 34:49

Right? Neil Tennant was the editor, it was it was a quite a thick magazine too. It was very wordy, it was a lot of print, you know, a blot of written word, and it had a bit of that dry humour. And um, so I used to read his and then I used to start by it myself. So when I first started buying Smash It's I used to get the posters. I loved Kylie Minogue. So my first posters were Kylie. Um, I think there might have been the odd one of Sonia. Um remember Sonia? And uh, but then I'd maybe throw a few hip ones in there or hip to me at the time. Like I might shove a simple minds poster up, or I might shove a I think I had I think I had a Tiffany poster as well at one point. Um I know and and also I forgot to write this in the book, but me and Andrew always laugh about it. I mean, how embarrassing is it? I put up a poster of bross and I was only about 12, uh 12 maybe. Matt Goss and his brother. I think it was just the two of them at this point, or maybe it was the three of them. Yeah. And I I stood on the bed and I started kissing the snugging the picture of Matt Goss, and my dad walked in the room. I know it was and he just kind of looked at me and then kind of walked back out again. And I was so impressed. Never mentioned. No, it was never mentioned, and I've just remembered that. Just me and Andrew spoke about it a few years, not not recently. Um oh god. Anyway, um and then when I discovered Like a Prayer, it was that was the obsession then the whole everything aligned, music, because I I wasn't into true blue stuff like that. Like a prayer, the sound, the Patrick Leonard who wrote it with uh who I ended up writing the song with years later, the images, the Catholicism, is that the right word? The the I was an altar boy, I was religious. Yeah, every that I was obsessed then. So it was basically to answer the question, mainly Madonna and Kate Bush, with a little bit of the odd cool band thrown in to level out the secret gainers.

SPEAKER_03 36:57

Um, I just remember while you're telling that story that I had posters on my wall at one point of Big Fun. Do you remember Big Fun?

SPEAKER_00 37:07

Of course I remember Big Fun. Of course I remember Big Fun. I had them on my school book. I made the post on big fun.

SPEAKER_03 37:15

So I asked my dad uh if I could cover my floor of my bedroom with posters of big fun and then have glass. Uh this is amazing, and he was like, No, this is the best thing ever. And then I think they only had about two songs, didn't they?

SPEAKER_00 37:38

Like it was like a short session. Well, they did, they did, but I mean, I'm not being funny, Lori. You need to be doing your own memoir of your teenagers because that is brilliantly insane. I've never heard anything so so strange and wonderful at the same time. That is amazing. I mean, of course, you know.

SPEAKER_03 38:00

Doing these interviews all this podcast is really unlocking a lot of memories for me.

SPEAKER_00 38:06

That has given me so much joy. I can't even tell you the glass floor of big fun posters.

SPEAKER_03 38:12

I just imagine now, like my son's 12, and I just imagine like some of the things I used to think. Oh, my parents are so mean they won't let me do this, and now I'm like, oh yeah, I get it now.

SPEAKER_00 38:24

Right. Yeah, big fun, yeah. That whole PWL.

SPEAKER_03 38:27

You can't have a glass floor.

SPEAKER_00 38:29

No, no, no, no.

SPEAKER_03 38:32

Um okay, would you go back to that summer and live it again if you could?

SPEAKER_00 38:38

Oh wow. Do you know what it was? Obviously, with my sister passed, you know, passed away. Yeah, I I think for that reason that it would be lovely. Uh look, I mean, if I could choose a summer, that would be one. Yeah, absolutely, probably be because it was so joyful. It was a real coming of age. Everything about it was just brilliant. You know, I mean, I shouldn't really say this, but I was it was my first time having a drink. So, you know, when it was fun and when it was when it was great, you know. So we I'd I'd finish my shift at Moby's but on the seafront, and then Angela and Clint might be out with their friends, so I'd go and join them in the pub at say 10 o'clock, and I was having I remember it was bottles of K and Jesus Christ, no wonder I was had a drink problem. I started on the strong stuff. Do you remember K, the black cider?

SPEAKER_03 39:30

But it wasn't the name, I don't think I've ever had it.

SPEAKER_00 39:33

It was a black bottle with a red K on the front, and it was like a it was a cider. Uh but it just looked, it was quite cool at the time. But looking back now, I think it was like five, five, six percent.

SPEAKER_03 39:43

Um having a sibling so much older than you, it's like completely different generation, isn't it? But not um not a parent, so probably like letting you do things that your parents might not let you do, yeah, um, even though she was kind of you know older and more responsible.

SPEAKER_00 40:01

Yeah, and she was just you know great. She was the life and soul. She wasn't, you know, the her and Clint were like the cold the cold, the the cooler oh the cooler parents, but it was never like that. We just we got on really, we were more like we we I mean I'm still very close to Clint her her her husband, but we were more like friends, you know. We were more yeah we were more well once I got to a certain age, yeah.

SPEAKER_03 40:25

Yeah, yeah. Oh, that's nice. Well, right, there's only one thing left to do, and that is my mini quiz of uh sort of pop culture. There's only five questions. So let's see how well you remember. So number one, I love a quiz. Okay, good. That that goes well. I well a pop quiz, isn't it? I did this quiz with uh one guest, and she said she'd been like worrying about it. And I was like, you really do need to worry, it's really very lighthearted. Um do you remember which iconic New York-based sitcom first aired in 1994?

SPEAKER_00 41:06

Oh um, well, there's a couple that are iconic. I I I I suppose it depends on the person. I'm gonna go for what I think is the answer, which I'm gonna say friends? Or is it Fraser? Friends.

SPEAKER_03 41:22

No, it was Friends.

SPEAKER_00 41:23

Okay, thank you. Got that one. See, I'm already in it now. I'm I'm how I played it.

SPEAKER_03 41:28

You're taking it very seriously.

SPEAKER_00 41:29

I have, yeah.

SPEAKER_03 41:31

So okay, number two, which song from a Richard Curtis film was at number one for 15 weeks.

SPEAKER_00 41:37

Um, I know this because I write it in the book. Uh, I think Love is all around.

SPEAKER_03 41:44

What, where, where? Yes. Yes, it was.

SPEAKER_00 41:48

How can we figure it?

SPEAKER_03 41:49

Well I I did this quiz on my husband as a practice, and he when I said number one for 15 weeks, he said the only songs that were number one for that long were that he remembered were the uh the Whitney Houston one and the Brian Adams one.

SPEAKER_00 42:03

Brian Adams, yeah. Well I remember because it I remember because it was on yeah, I mean your husband would is more more right actually because they are, but I remember because it was on the chart show ever bloody week. What yeah.

SPEAKER_03 42:25

Like who was buying it 15 weeks in? Right, so bizarre.

SPEAKER_02 42:29

Yeah, crazy.

SPEAKER_03 42:31

Okay, number three. Do you remember which video game console was launched that year?

SPEAKER_00 42:37

Oh okay. What year is this? Is 94, is it? 94. Right. I remember Andrew had my best friend Andrew had um, I wasn't really a video gamey person, but I remember I borrowed his one of his consoles for a bit, and I'm torn between two. I think Sega Game thing was a little earlier than 94. So I'm gonna say Nintendo.

SPEAKER_03 43:07

No, I'm sorry, it was Sony PlayStation.

SPEAKER_00 43:10

Oh, you see, no, no, it was a bit too um advanced for for my house that we're going we're going back to music now, it's okay.

SPEAKER_03 43:19

Um which Manchester band's album was the fastest selling debut in UK history in '94.

SPEAKER_00 43:28

In '94. Debut 94. The fastest selling. That's what throws me the fastest selling. Because you know, Happy Mondays had been out already. Uh uh Stone Moses had been out already. Oh, oh, uh.

SPEAKER_03 44:00

Okay, got that.

SPEAKER_00 44:01

See how soon must I take this? Yeah.

SPEAKER_03 44:05

Number five, which boy band had the Christmas number one that year?

SPEAKER_00 44:11

94. Um, yeah. I'm gonna say, because I think stay another day was earlier than that.

SPEAKER_03 44:21

No, no, no, no, no.

SPEAKER_00 44:22

Oh stay another day? Was it I was gonna say babe if I take that. Okay, great. Okay, so thank you for for stopping me in my tracks for the right reasons.

SPEAKER_03 44:35

I like people to get the questions right if they can. And it wasn't the first one you mentioned, so I felt like you deserved that.

SPEAKER_00 44:42

Oh, I appreciate that. Thank you.

SPEAKER_03 44:46

Okay, well, uh, I just want to give you a massive thank you for coming on to talk to me about your summer of 1994. And um, I hope everybody listening will uh read or listen. I listened to the audiobook of Pop Scars, and it was great that you that you narrated it. Um yeah, thank you so much for your time.

SPEAKER_00 45:08

Thank you, and thank you for for sharing your wonderful tales as well. Of you know, I mean, I honestly the big fun uh floor flooring is not gonna leave my frame today. That has made my day, and I can't wait to read your book. I'll send you a copy. Please do. All right, thank you. Thanks so much. See you soon.

SPEAKER_01 45:32

Thank you so much for listening to today's episode of That Summer. I'm Laura Pearson, and you can find me on Instagram at LauraPAuthor and at That Summer Pod. And if you're hungry for more, please check out my novel What Happened That Summer. See you next time.