![the original betty boop the original betty boop](https://dygtyjqp7pi0m.cloudfront.net/i/15043/15223485_1.jpg)
The presenter said: “If you want to hear Hear’Say’s debut single, call 0800-whatever, and here’s what it’s called” – and I thought, oh, and called the number. I only knew about Pure and Simple being used after Hear’Say had won.
![the original betty boop the original betty boop](https://3.bp.blogspot.com/-uv_vY-C2BMY/UZ3-HNp4PjI/AAAAAAAAeXg/RJI6ldrTjvA/s1600/veronique.jpg)
One of your songs for Girl Thing, Pure and Simple, became a million-seller for Hear’Say, the first 21st -century ITV pop contest winners. The look came from my love of glam rock and Ziggy Stardust as a tiny kid watching Top of the Pops, wanting to do fancy dress every day in silver pants and big boots.īetty Boo in 1990. At first I was, “Oh, thanks for nicking all my ideas!” But it’s amazing what they achieved. I worked with Chris on his new band, Girl Thing, a few years later and he told me about the advert. Indeed, when the Spice Girls were being put together, the original manager, Chris Herbert, put out an advert looking for “five Betty Boos” … Your retro space age look became a template for 1990s fashion. Then my brother heard a DJ on BBC Radio London talking about this girl he’d seen rapping in Harlem. Then we got invited to New York and I didn’t tell my mum where I was going. I had my hi-tops and my nan’s cardigan on as I had a cold, and they filmed us rapping. On our walk home, we saw them through the window of McDonald’s – we’d seen them on stage doing all these military kind of routines, with Uzis – how on earth we went up to them and weren’t scared, I don’t know. It was November 1987 – they’d just played this big Def Jam night at the Hammersmith Odeon with the Beastie Boys, LL Cool J and Run-DMC. There’s a pre-fame clip online of you rapping with members of Public Enemy in the Shepherd’s Bush McDonald ’s. I made all these songs in my bedroom instead. Then I studied sound engineering after I left school – I wanted to be a vet, but the careers adviser said I should be a secretary. I loved playing with language and humour, changing my voice, recording myself with my microphone plugged into my hi-fi.
![the original betty boop the original betty boop](https://i.etsystatic.com/14483344/r/il/0df73d/1480862208/il_fullxfull.1480862208_d8a7.jpg)
Some musicians learn the Beatles songbook – I learned Big Daddy Kane’s raps. It wasn’t just rap: it was all of hip-hop culture, the music, the creativity. You broke through as a rapper with the Beatmasters in 1989, with your take on Martha Reeves and the Vandellas’ I Can’t Dance to That Music You’re Playing. To be a pop star you have to be full-whack all the time and I just melted I remember meeting Arthur Scargill and a young Tony Blair – all the up-and-coming New Labour politicians were in awe of her. She had amazing energy and was so well respected that she had her retirement party at the House of Lords. She also set up a drop-in centre for older people in White City and was always campaigning for people, such as a man wrongly accused of stabbing someone at the Notting Hill carnival she campaigned to have him released from prison. I worked for the Fabian Society in the school and summer holidays and my granny dragged me along to all kinds of meetings. The name Betty Boo was inspired not only by Betty Boop, but also by your grandmother, Betty Clarkson, a left wing activist. Of course I did, because that was 30 years ago! I talked to Bananarama about it – it drives us all mad. A photographer spotted me outside the 7/11 in Piccadilly and took a picture of me from below, up my nose, and that’s the one online the next day, with the writer saying: oh, she looks so different to how she used to. A few years ago, I went to the premiere of Everybody’s Talking About Jamie, as I helped the writer, Dan Gillespie Sells, on a rap section when it was in development. Is it different being a woman in pop now?Īs an older woman, I find the first thing people say is “what does she look like now?”. Watch the video for Get Me to the Weekend by Betty Boo. A major label would have reined me in, told me what to do. But I didn’t feel like I’d missed out, because when I launched my solo career, I’d taken control of everything – written my music, produced it, had the freedom to look the way I wanted to look. I went into survival mode looking after my granny and family. I didn’t want to be that other person any more. To be a pop star, you have to be full-whack all the time and I just melted. My mother got very ill, then she died, then my aunt died 10 months after my mum. What made you give up your pop career at the end of the 90s?
![the original betty boop the original betty boop](https://i.etsystatic.com/20368199/r/il/86a84d/1955168469/il_794xN.1955168469_cw0x.jpg)
Now I think I’ve made the record I should have made when I was 25. It was great to enjoy it again because I’ve had times when I didn’t even listen to music through the years. My husband would do the shopping and I’d park facing a wall, playing tracks, so no one could see me singing along. Yes, in the supermarket car park in the first lockdown.