1981 - Daily Mirror,Tycoon Toyah

4 December 1981 - Daily Mirror

Talented Toyah has stormed her way to the top in the rock scene like a mini-typhoon. But these days it is not so much Typhoon Toyah as Tycoon Toyah. Her Toyah range of fun make-up sold out in stores in the first week of its launch.

She told me: “The manufacturers have had to go out and buy another factory! We started with 100,000 packs of the first two products – my Manscratchers nail kit and Soul Reflecters eye set – which were intended for the Christmas market. They just went. I really wanted to put my name to young fun make-up that was inexpensive, and hopefully that’s what it is. Everything should sell for less than £1.”

“In the New Year there’s a range of body paints so that kids can paint themselves for an evening out. I think it’s terribly important that they don’t go out and get tattooed, which is the temptation at that age.”

 

SHREWD     

Toyah’s down-to-earth attitude combined with her original approach to her own looks is a dynamic selling package. What’s more, she knows it. Toyah, 23, No.4 in the charts with Four More From Toyah, is a shrewd little cookie. You have to marvel at the self-discipline and determination that have gone into creating her as an image, as a singer and as an actress. She is a self-made woman.

But she told me on the phone from Stockholm, where she has just started her sell-out European tour: “I’m not in it for the money. Frankly, money can be a pain in the rear. People think I’m rolling in it already – I can assure you I’m not. But you never know, in a few years I may be a really business-minded millionairess.”

It is hard to imagine Toyah as anything but a winner all her life. She is as confident and bouncy as her distinctive red and yellow thatch. But just four years ago, the star with the bizarre kind of beauty looked very different. Toyah confessed: “My face was grotesque. Hideous. I weighed ten and a half stone – three stone more than I do today. With my hair all shorn I actually frightened people in the streets. I was a 4ft 11in elephant. But then I realised something had to happen.”

Toyah lost the first stone by not eating for two weeks, and the rest by switching to a healthier diet. “But I have to fight it every inch of the way,” she said. “I drag myself round the park in the mornings, jogging. Then I do weight-lifting and dance exercises – taught by Dee Dee Wilde who used to be in Pan’s People.” Toyah thrives on hard work. “I often live a 20-hour day,” she said. “I love working.”

 

STEW            

Her boyfriend Tom – she has lived with him for two years – has also changed her. “He’s taught me a lot about values,” she said. “I was pretty selfish when I met him. Couldn’t even boil an egg. Now I cook stew! All I dream about as far as possessions are concerned now is a home – a proper house with a garden and a whole floor to myself, where I can write. That’s very dear to me.” Here’s to ya, Toyah!