Twittergem: Spandau Ballet

They don't do it while you wait; it's stictly an Only When You Leave business.

Possibly the best business pun ever. Gold. pic.twitter.com/33gfptPNCM

— DaveH (@freudianskippy) May 14, 2016

Tony Hadley abandons Coffee Club for brewer's arms

Tony Hadley's invented a whole new beer, although the photo from the Gazette & Herald makes it look like he's been made to do it as some sort of punishment:

Naturally, the headline writers have an opportunity to shoehorn in some references to Spandau Ballet's back catalogue:

Tony Hadley’s new golden ale sure to be a true hit

I don't think they quite got that to work, did they?

Hadley explains his ale:

He said: "I love it when you're sat outside of the pub on a summers evening and you've got a beautiful golden ale that just goes down so easily.

“That's the kind of drink we want to make; a brilliant, brilliant summer ale."

Not one of those difficult to drink beers that defy gravity, or are shaped like pianos. This one will be liquid and flow downwards through the throat. "I bet if Duran Duran made a beer, it'd be an awkward beer that had seen too many French films or something. And yeah, it might still be able to be served in one of the really big pubs, but that's because it's just content to churn out the old hits and doesn't have any integrity, right?" he mumbled, before pulling another pint, downing it in one and carrying on.

"Every now and again people are going to want something different so we are trying to give everyone a little bit more flavour.

"When you make a beer you want it to be the best tasting beer you can imagine. I think it is going to be fantastic."

"... you know, like that time we re-recorded all of our best songs for a new studio album. That was to give people some flavour. It wasn't trying to squeeze the last beer out of an old pipe or nothing. It wasn't like that at all. It was fantastic."

By the way, if you're thinking "well, at least Hadley didn't do the cheesey thing of calling his golden beer something like, say, Hadley's Gold"; he couldn't. He'd done that with a previous brewing adventure. ("Moving north" in that story appears to be a code for "closing down").

Twittergem: Gary Kemp

In its eulogy for Tie Rack, BBC News compared the chain and rival Sock Shop with some New Romantic heavyweights.

This sort of thing doesn't go unnoticed:

So Spandau are Sock Shop and Duran Tie Rack. White towelling, in that case. http://t.co/1RmegHahiv

— Gary Kemp (@garyjkemp) November 21, 2013

How Altered Images and Spandau Ballet made the new Doctor Who

Peter Capaldi once supported Spandau Ballet on tour - he was a stand-up; they were desperate to avoid giving the impression they were part of the rock machine by doing something as "industry" as having a band blow them off stage ("support them").

Shapers Of The 80s has the full story, but it was Gary Kemp's passion for Clare Grogan that put Capaldi in the right place to get the gig:

Kemp, himself then 22, recalls vaguely how Capaldi came to his attention at the age of 23: “It was through Gerry MacElhone who managed Altered Images. Maybe he played me a tape, or something.” Clearly he had other more important things on his mind at the time. The point was Grogan had starred in Forsyth’s 1981 cinema smash, Gregory’s Girl, and Spandau’s Diamond tour launched in March 1982 with three dates in Scotland and Capaldi live onstage as the warm-up.

Capaldi reckons that it was that slot which got him the role in Local Hero. And that set Capaldi on the road to the TARDIS.

Clare Grogan is at the centre of everything.

[Sidenote: Both Grogan and Capaldi played parents in Skins, closing the circle.]

Life imitates Roy Of The Rovers

Oh, how we laughed when Melchester Rovers signed two of Spandau Ballet. As if a real football team would waste its time signing pop stars, even for the stunt value.

The joke, it turns out, was on us. Doncaster Rovers have signed Louis Tomlinson out of One Direction.

There's a charity-related angle to the whole thing, so it looks like a publicity stunt with its heart in the right place.

If this was Roy Of The Rovers, there'd be a massive flu hit to the team, forcing Tomlinson to appear in the first team for an all-important cup match. (Probably while a disgruntled former goalkeeper attempts to burn the stadium down.) But that... that would be too far-fetched, surely?

Who wouldn't feel a sense of shame, being involved in the Spands?

Who knew that Martin Kemp has lived his life under a cloud of the thickest, darkest shame?

No, not apparently for the late-period Spandau Ballet output, but for how he joined the band:

Kemp, 51, was recruited for his brother Gary’s band, then called The Gentry, at his mother’s insistence.

But his arrival displaced the existing bassist, a fact Kemp says he still recalls with shame.

I'm not sure you should feel shame at having your mum go down the school and insist you be allowed to play with the other boys; and it's not like the original bassist ever turns up, Pete Best style, playing his own version of Chant Number One and claiming to be the One True Spandau.

And be fair to Martin: what young man wouldn't have killed to have been in this video:

Ivor Novello Awards 2012 agree with all the other awards

There's something charming about the Ivors, which come towards the end of the awards season and sometimes seem like a summary of all the other awards that have been given out thus far. Here are this year's totally unsurprising winners:

Album Award: PJ Harvey - Let England Shake

PRS for Most Performed Work: Adele – Rolling In The Deep

Best Song Musically and Lyrically: Ed Sheeran – The A Team

Outstanding Contribution to British Music Award: Take That

Best Contemporary Song: Lana Del Rey – Video Games

Original Film Score: Alex Heffes -The First Grader

Original Television Score: Martin Phipps – The Shadow Line

Songwriter Of The Year: Adele

Ivors Jazz Award: Stan Tracey

Ivors Inspiration Award: Siouxsie Sioux

Music Special International Award: Jimmy Webb

Outstanding Song Collection Award: Gary Kemp

Lifetime Achievement: Mark Knopfler

The prize for Gary Kemp does give me an excuse to mention the Guardian's piece on how the Spands wrote True, and the surprising detail that... well, it was written by Gary Kemp mainly to try and get off with Clare Grogan:

I met her on Top of the Pops and, at one point, travelled up to Scotland to have tea with her and her mum and dad. Although my feelings were unrequited and the relationship was platonic, it was enough to trigger a song, True, which became the name of our 1983 album, too.

True is about how difficult it is to be honest when you're trying to write a love song to someone. Hence: "Why do I find it hard to write the next line?" The lyrics are full of coded messages to Clare.

This kind of puts True on a par with my second year math exercise book. Although I didn't have a saxaphone solo in that.

Tony Hadley says history ended around the time of Through The Barricades

He can remember when it was all movements round here:

Spandau Ballet singer Tony Hadley has revealed he thinks there have been no musical movements since the New Romantic phase in the 80s.

Tony Hadley claims there have been no musical movements since the 80s.

The Spandau Ballet singer believes the New Romantic era - which his band were a prominent part of - was the last type of music that interlinked with fashion to create a whole way of being.

This might come as some surprise to goths, shoegazers, garage fans, acid housers and Britpoppers, amongst others.

Spandau Ballet decide we need new material

For reasons that aren't entirely clear, Spandau Ballet are going to record some new songs:

Guitarist and songwriter Gary Kemp said: "The band gelled immediately and we immediately played better than we did even back in the day.

"The new song was a way for us to show that Spandau Ballet are back, not just to play the hits on tour but also to take on our contemporaries in the pop charts."

Right. When you say your "contemporaries", you do know that you're talking about Men At Work and the late Renne And Renato, don't you?

Gordon in the morning: All the fun of the unfair

While, undoubtedly, Michael Jackson will have requested some home comforts at the house he's rented to stay in when he's busy canceling his O2 dates, is Gordon Smart sure about this?

The King Of Pop has ordered the promoters behind his record-breaking 50-night residency in London to turn his new UK abode into a replica of his former residence.

Jacko, who is battling skin cancer, has told firm AEG he wants a bowling alley built in the historic Foxbury Manor in Chislehurst, Kent, and a fully-functioning funfair installed in the grounds.

Skittles, maybe. But a full funfair?

Is anyone else imagining a call to the Bizarre desk that went like this:

Gordon: Hello?
Source: Hi, I've got some news about the crazy demands Jacko's making...
Gordon: Really?
Source: Yeah, he wants a bowling lane in the manor
Gordon: Oh.
Source: A full-size one.
Gordon: Oh.
Source: Erm... and... um, dodgems. He wants dodgems.
Gordon: Just dodgems?
Source: No... not just dodgems. Candy floss. And a big dipper.
Gordon: Ah... now this is sounding more interesting...
Source: A full funfair. He wants a full funfair.
Gordon: Brilliant. Where shall I send the cheque?
Source: Can you make sure you mention the bowling? That bit is true...

Gordon, of course, remembers Neverland:

But as debts mounted while he defended himself from child abuse allegations, he was forced to sell up four years ago.

Didn't the debts mount up as he spent more money than he had, regardless of child abuse allegations?

Meanwhile, Gordon is still excited about his showbiz chums Spandau and their big comeback:

SPANDAU BALLET’s album sales have soared 415 per cent since they announced their comeback tour.

TONY HADLEY’s group beat the 360 per cent boost for NEW KIDS ON THE BLOCK when they returned last year.

Julian Monaghan, of Amazon.co.uk, said: “Comebacks can have a hugely positive effect.”

What's missing from this is any indication of how many records we're actually talking about. What is 415% of hardly anything at all?

Gordon in the morning: Apparently it's still 1995

Okay, I know I might find it hard to let things go occasionally, but can you believe that Liam Gallagher is still fighting the Britpop wars:

"I'm right into the Blur reunion, 'cos it'll finish off the KAISER CHIEFS and put them to bed.

"There's nothing worse than a s*** Blur. And at least the original s*** Blur are back to finish off all these other s*** Blurs. I'm bang into the Blur reunion.

"I'll tell you what, though, all these band reunions recently, it just goes to show who's the real deal."

Yes, Gordon Smart is delighted to discover this abandoned serviceman, trapped in the jungle, still battling against enemies who have long since sued for peace.

But what, you wonder, can Liam mean about reunions showing you who the "real deal" is?

Oasis have never split up. Now all these bands have come back, just as the recession is kicking in.

"They've all been found out."

Oh, god help us, he's trying to do financial analysis.

While it's true that Oasis might never have split up, the Blur playing this year are the same Blur who started out, whereas Oasis have had to have actual musicians parachuted into their set-up to try and bulk up the operation, which might make it difficult for the Gallagher brothers to claim they're the same band? And why does Liam think they deserve credit for slogging on in the first place? Would Oasis not have done well to have had a bit of a rest instead of churning out the same album, only worse, every couple of years? Isn't a band that never runs out of inspiration one that isn't particularly inspired to begin with?

"SPANDAU BALLET? I've seen TONY HADLEY, and it's more like Spandau Belly."

Ha ha! Because Tony Hadley is fat. More like Expandau Belly, eh, Liam?

It's a shame The Topper closed, isn't it? They used to give a pound to readers for jokes like that.

Gordon in the morning: Whole lot of Cole

Someone on your mind this morning, Gordon?

I guess we should at least pat him on the head for resisting the temptation to call the column Colezarre or something this morning, as the remaining few readers of FHM vote Cheryl sexiest woman of the year and that Cheryl is starting solo work:

CHERYL COLE’s bid for solo stardom is getting a helping hand from the songwriters behind legendary soul diva WHITNEY HOUSTON.

It’s a canny move from the GIRLS ALOUD star as the Grammy-winning singer is one of the most successful songbirds ever.

Whitney has shifted 140million records throughout her career.

Well, yes, she has... so which of the many songwriters Houston has worked with is Cole teaming up with?

Cheryl has been recording with R’n’B maestros SOULPOWER, who have also penned tracks for the likes of PINK, DESTINY’S CHILD and, ahem, VICTORIA BECKHAM.

Ah. Soulpower. Remind me, old press release, what did they write for Houston?

Renowned production team Soulshock & Karlin who most recently brought us the smash "Heartbreak Hotel" from Whitney Houston (featuring Faith Evans and Kelly Price)...

Ah. The one which struggled to even get a UK release slot, before stuttering to number 25. The one which stank the place up so badly they didn't even bother including it on the most recent Houston greatest hits.

Although Gordon seems to have a different view of the track:

They penned Whitney’s 1999 global hit Heartbreak Hotel, which saw her team up with other R’n’B divas FAITH EVANS and KELLY PRICE.

That's one of those global hits that managed to get to number two in the US, and, erm, seven in France, and... 61 in Germany.

It was, however, a fairly big hit in America.

Unlike Victoria Beckham's stuff. But, still, why should the tanking of a misjudged attempt to turn a fairly popular British manufactured pop band member into an American R&B diva worry Cheryl, eh?

You'll recall the fawning copy Gordon published when Spandau Ballet announced their reunion? There's acres more this morning as Gordon goes to watch a rehearsal:

I had the honour of being given my own sofa in a north London studio to enjoy SPANDAU BALLET’s rehearsal for their big TV comeback on Friday Night With Jonathan Ross tomorrow – and it was something special.

Not just watching them, but watching them from his own sofa. You know when you're somebody in showbiz when you get a sofa all to yourself. (Actually, my strange Uncle Doris used to get a sofa to himself at family gatherings, come to think of it.)

Still, I'm sure that Gordon's affection for the group, and excitement at being allowed a piece of soft furnishing all to himself won't go to his head and make him say something that would make him look silly, will it?

They were a stadium outfit in the Eighties and by the sound of things they are ready for Wembley again.

Yes, I'm sure Spandau are ready for the big trip to Wembley. In fact, I can think of no reason why they shouldn't even expect to be up to taking the tube all the way to Harrow & Wealdstone, should they really want to.

Gary Kemp: Please don't call it True. Please don't call it True. Please don't call it True.

Unusually for a 'pop star signs up to write autobiography' story, the person signing on this time has actually lived enough of a life to make it worthwhile. Gary Kemp has probably timed his deal with Harper Collins right in terms of generating the largest payday, but I can't help wishing he'd been producing his book before the not-entirely-convincing 'we're a big happy family' Spandau reunion.

Let's hope that cheese anecdote makes the final volume.

And it's not going to be called True, either. That would have been obvious and...

John Elliot, popular culture editor at Fourth Estate, acquired world all-language rights to I Know This Much

...oh.

Gordon in the morning: Points of view

Pete Doherty has, Gordon discovers, been invited to write a BBC drama pilot. This doesn't please Gordon:

WHEN I give my cash to the BBC every month for a TV licence I expect it to go to responsible people making top telly shows.

But I was disappointed when I heard that Mr PETER DOHERTY, a fine upstanding member of his local community, was meeting BBC bosses on Tuesday for a job interview.

Sadly the grubby rocker is not in line for a job cleaning the wayward splashes off JONATHAN ROSS’s private urinal at London’s Television Centre.

That would be London's Television Centre in the London's busy Wood Lane, of course.

Gordon has a source, of course:

“He’s seen it all as a hellraising rock star, so they want his experiences written in.”

He’s certainly no stranger to tapping into rich veins, but for very different reasons.

Actually, that did make me giggle.

“Pete was meeting creative chiefs. They’ve commissioned him to write a Skins-style show on the dark side of the music industry."

So, Rock Follies On Drugs, then? Or Jimmy Corkhill Goes To The Roundhouse?

Given Doherty's published works to date, would he really be first choice to write something like this? If you really felt that something like this would be worth doing in the first place? Perhaps they should start him off by adding a bit of mystical, mythical Albiony doodling on the edge of the next scripts for Merlin.

Mistaking the Spandau Ballet reunion for something people might be in the least bit interested in, Gordon follows them to the Groucho Club. And, yes, whoever makes up the HTML pages for the Sun really has titled the page:

Spandau Ballet head an A-list guestlist at London's trendy Groucho Club

London's trendy Groucho Club? You'll have to forgive me, I'm from the provinces - is that anywhere near London's Television Centre?

It seems they really will let anyone in to the Groucho these days, as this awkward photo shows:

Spandau tour boss STEVE DAGGER told of the band’s ridiculous riders, which once featured a cheese board...

Not a cheese board. Oh, what larks. That must have really thrown the promoters for a loop - how on earth would they find something crazy like cheese? Unless there was a small grocer's shop nearby, of course.

Gordon frames his meeting with the Spandau boys by constant references to Yuppies, apparently because they came from the 1980s and he's now seen them drinking champagne.

Spandau ReBallet: I know this much is true

Did... did the BBC Ten O'Clock News really carry the news of the Spandau reunion?

They bloody did. Spandau Ballet. I mean, I know you can't spend forever showing photos of the damage to Fred Goodwin's car, but the getting back together of the Spands surely only merits flagship news coverage if you happen to be broadcasting exclusively to Steve Norman's house?

Still, it's good to see that Spandau Ballet have got so poor they're having to pretend to like each other again ("it's good to see that the Spandau boys have put their difference behind them") and will get out to do the job of playing the three songs everyone likes and some others to fill out the time:

Gary Kemp, the group's songwriter and guitarist, explained: "This is my other family really and I just missed them for the last 20 years.

"I wanted to get together just to have a chat about all those great experiences we had. To be able to make some new experiences is a really great opportunity and that's what we plan to do."

Actually, Gary, one of them is also your actual family, isn't he? But I take your point.

Yes, yes, the one they relied on to write the words did just make that clunky "it's all about the experiences we experienced, and now experience tells me that we should experience some unexperienced experiences" statement.

But here's Martin, again with the family metaphors:

Kemp's bassist brother Martin - also known to EastEnders fans as club owner Steve Owen - added: "Families go through terrible times sometimes and they argue.

"But in the end we've got back together - which is the main thing."

Yes, yes, family. All this talk of family might be more touching if it wasn't coming from the pair who played the Krays, who were brothers for whom family had a distinct and slightly chilling overtone.

Still, nice to get the family back together, isn't it, Tony? Tony? Sorry, can't hear you through those gritted teeth - could you speak up?

Hadley said they had buried the hatchet after "the realisation that time is a great healer".

"We all realised how powerful the band were, the songs, and what we did as a band in the '80s," he said.

"We first met in the pub, had a few beers, the stories came up and the anecdotes and we just realised that we're great mates."

... the realisation coming just about the same time as the barman said "come on lads, time to settle the slate before I serve you any more."

The dance returns: Spandau Ballet plot comeback tour. Supposedly.

Given the size of the venues Tony Hadley has been playing recently, isn't it a bit of a stretch to believe that even a reformed Spandau Ballet would be playing the Nou Camp in Barcelona? Especially now the pound falling against the euro has meant far fewer pensioners winter in Spain?

We have all lived so long Spandau Ballet are becoming credible again

This is the Cazal's cover of To Cut A Long Story Short:



We've always thought that early Spandau could stand a bit of a critical rediscovery - especially the Paint Me Down era stuff - whoever knew that a career born wearing Greek national costumes and making softcore gay porn would end in Through The Barricades and sofa commercials?

Another night at the Ballet?

Although there's been courtroom-centered falling outs, more bad blood than a donor drive in a junkie neighbourhood and a noticeable lack of public demand, Tony Hadley has suggested there might, one day, be a Spandau Ballet reunion:

"There'll have to be an awful lot of things remedied because things did get personal and it went a bit too far.

"The next window of opportunity that I see would be our 30th anniversary, in about four years' time."

The last "window of opportunity" (and we're taking 'opportunity' in the sense of 'a way of doing it so it doesn't look like a desperate cash-in', of course) would have been Live 8, when Gary Kemp approached Haldey about doing something. To Africa's relief, Hadley harrumphed off, swinging his giant overcoat closed behind him.

We personally feel that the Spands should only get back together if the promise to strip naked and smear themselves in Dulux, like with the Paint Me Down video. Otherwise... it'd just be that bloke out of EastEnders and his old mates, wouldn't it?

Spandau Bullets

Does anyone want to hear about Spandau Ballet? About how the British Boxing Board of Control has stopped the forthcoming bout between Tony Hadley and John Piennar, on the grounds that someone could get hurt (this, of course, is the same BBBC which is quite happy, indeed encourages, schools to hold boxing matches between little boys whose heads are all still soft.

But Tony will get a high profile scrap anyway, as the Kemp Brothers are taking him and Keeble and Norman back to court for another row over the name - they're objecting to Keeble, Norman and Hadley having used "ex-Spandau Ballet" in their billing for the Here & Now tour last year - jesus, let it go, you bitter old men. What is it - did Martin Kemp nearly lose the ability to humiliate himself in that bank advert because Tony Hadley mentioned "I was in that Spandau Ballet" to a bunch of Belle Star fans?

And Gary, of course, is related to the current Second-drawer Star Gossip of the Day, having fathered one of Sadie Frost's kids before she stopped shaving for Jude Law.

Why are Spandau Ballet suddenly everywhere - could someone check the Book of Revelation to see if they're mentioned?

Stuff lifted with a straight face

Good stuff, as ever, in the weekly remember the 80's mailout, including the scary news that Bryan Ferry is going to perform for the Pope and the even more scary news that Spandau Ballet are going to re-release True next year, in order to screw more money out of the schlock market ("promote the recently released Box Set").

There are also plans for a DVD from the Spands, which will at least give us pixel-perfect versions of homoerotic epic Paint Me Down. Yes, it bloody is erotic, although not quite so much when you know what they end up turning into.