Paul Simper - Pop Stars in My Pantry: A Memoir of Pop Mags and Clubbing in the 1980s

Paul Simpers career in pop journalism began after a fortuitous encounter with Spandau Ballet in a Tiger Bay nightclub in 1980. Writing for Melody Maker , New Sounds New Styles and No.1 , he spent the best part of the rest of the decade interviewing the new generation of pop stars who took over the world, before having his own crack at the charts as one half of the ill-fated disco duo Slippry Feet.

He has published one other book, the 1960s cult TV tribute The Saint: From Big Screen to Small Screen and Back Again . Paul Simper lives in north London.

Dedicated to:

The Crimpers, my dearest darling Crowther and Molly-Jean; heres one I made earlier.

Geoffrey, for trusting your little brother with your precious record collection.

Jacqueline, for risking putting on those oh so slippry feet.

And Mrs Simper, aka Mother, who will disapprove of much of this, but without whom none of it would have been possible.

No, I dont want to live in the past. But its a nice place to visit

Nile Rodgers and Chic, Ill Be There

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It is one of eighties pop musics lesser known facts that Bananaramas second album the one with Cruel Summer and Robert De Niros Waiting was at one time to be titled Tea at Mrs Simpers .

This followed a weekend jaunt in January 1984 by two of the Nanas Sarah Dallin and Keren Woodward and their best pal (and honorary fourth member) Mel OBrien, to The White House, my mum and dads home in the tiny, publess village of East Grafton in Wiltshire.

Bananarama vs. Mrs Simper was always likely to be a lively encounter. In the one corner: council-tenanted pop stars Keren and Sarah plus their gold-toothed mate from Bethnal Green, all three prone to piss-taking, eye-rolling and in-joking, lovers of Blind Date and Brookie and capable of drinking their own body weights in vodka.

In the other, the very just-so lady of the manor, Mrs S, an inveterate snob, falling somewhere between The Good Life s Margot Leadbetter and Keeping Up Appearances Hyacinth Bucket, queen of her colonially decked-out domain, lover of the Antiques Roadshow and Last Night of the Proms , partial to a dry sherry and the occasional (fairly lethal) Wiltshire cocktail.

Bristolians Sarah and Keren were at least on nodding terms with the countryside and country ways. Mrs S, on the other hand, who approved of only two records Id ever owned Turning Japanese by The Vapors, to which she would dance dementedly round the dining room like one of the three little maids from The Mikado , and Bowies The Jean Genie, because it had her name in the title had not the slightest idea who these rather unruly girls were, or of what they sang.

She had, though, been reliably informed by the teenage offspring of one of her mates that these new pals of mine had been on Top of the Pops , which at least granted them a BBC air of respectability. Hence they were feted with the best china and ushered into the big sitting room normally reserved for landmark birthdays and Christmas.

If Mrs S took to any of Bananarama, it was Keren who, perhaps with a premonition of her future life shacked up in a Cornish country pile with Wham!s Andrew Ridgeley, appeared the most at home in these surroundings. Theres a photo of the whole ensemble, including old family friends, St Marys convent girls Giulietta and Bella Edwards, and my brother Geoffrey, taking afternoon tea, and Keren, standing by the mantelpiece, is the only one with an air of Sure this is my gaff, what of it? Meanwhile Sarah and Mel muck about with the family teapot and Mother plasters on a smile and waits for everyone to return to venerating her Victoria sponge.

Needless to say, Mrs S was not impressed by the girls general tomfoolery or the lack of a single skirt, nail varnish or lipstick between them. All of which only added to the air of barely suppressed hilarity as far as the Nanas were concerned.

Soon after arrival, Sarah and Mel struck gold when they discovered a small knitted frog in their bedroom, which they immediately christened Mrs Simper. This accompanied us to Savernake Forest after wed been shooed out from under Mrs Ss feet because of our constant tittering. The rest of the afternoon was spent with the girls going through their repertoire of exotic bird calls as they waggled the knitted Mrs S about on a pointed stick and sang old Cher hits whilst running from (non-existent) gypsies, tramps and thieves.

Due to the dearth of pubs in the village, we spent the Saturday evening in the public bar of the Royal Oak, Wootton Rivers, where the locals proved about as welcoming as An American Werewolf in London s Brian Glover and Rik Mayall when their game of darts is interrupted at the Slaughtered Lamb. Being the days before camera phones, and clearly unaware of the maxim take a picture, itll last longer, various welly-clad, twine-belted characters ambled over to inspect the girls at extremely close range, as you might a new breed of heifer. The girls were not impressed.

Sunday was again spent taking to the great outdoors, walking up Martinsell Hill to do a few Beatles Help-style poses (possibly the inspiration for their 1989 Comic Relief Lananeeneenoonoo collaboration with French and Saunders?) and visiting my dads herd of cows up Dursden Lane, which proved to be a poor substitute for the horses Sarah and Keren assumed wed have knocking about somewhere out back.

Id say the weekend was over all too quickly but as we bade our farewells and headed back to The Smoke there was (for me at least) a sense of relief that wed all got through it in one piece. The glower from Mrs S when Sarah gleefully declared that her London living abode was council has stayed with me to this day.

And yet, mortifying though much of it had been, there was also something thrilling about seeing these two worlds unfeasibly collide. Like Woody Allens The Purple Rose of Cairo , where various on-screen characters magically burst free from the celluloid to enjoy a Madcap Manhattan Weekend in 1930s New York, here were shiny Top of the Pops stars Id watched devotedly on our telly suddenly spilling out into the Simper household, supping cups of tea in our kitchen, popping upstairs for a quick wee or being tutted at by my mum for coming down late for breakfast.