Latest news with #PaulineBlack
The Guardian
15-04-2025
- Entertainment
- The Guardian
Pauline Black: A 2-Tone Story review – original rude girl is still impossibly cool
'I was never going to be a nice little white girl,' says Pauline Black, singer with the ska band the Selecter – and a woman with an amazing personal story to tell. There's her childhood growing up as an adopted mixed-race girl in a white family in 1960s Romford in east London, and her time as the impossibly cool frontwoman of the Selecter. Black is a brilliantly blunt straight-talker and very funny. Here she is joking about her open marriage in the hippy 70s: 'I did get the hump one time, when I came home, and she was using my frying pan.' (She is still happily married to her husband.) Black was adopted as a baby and at that time in Romford racism was everywhere. 'It would come at you like a slap.' Even in her family, she remembers an uncle singing the praises of Enoch Powell. When she was 10, Black was sexually abused by a neighbour (her parents' reaction was appalling). Her childhood made her mistrustful; lonely and alienated, she spent hours practising the piano and reading. In 1979, Black was working as a radiographer in Coventry when the Selecter took off – and she changed her name from Pauline Vickers to Pauline Black. ('I don't think my family ever forgave me.') The Selecter were not the biggest band signed to 2-Tone Records, but they were pioneering: six out of seven members were people of colour and they had a female singer. DJ Don Letts says Black was the first lady of 2 Tone and today, she is still rocking her 70s rude girl look: the sharp boy's suits and pork pie hats. After three years, she left the band, did some acting and TV presenting before the Selecter re-formed. Black co-wrote this documentary, and arguably she exercises a bit too much control; that said, given everything in her personal history, you can see why she wants to tell it her way. Pauline Black: A 2-Tone Story is on Sky Arts and Now on 16 April.
The Guardian
12-04-2025
- Entertainment
- The Guardian
Pauline Black: ‘My most unappealing habit? Bluntness'
Born in Essex, Pauline Black, 71, worked as a radiographer before becoming lead singer of the Selecter in 1979. The band's hit singles include On My Radio, Three Minute Hero and Missing Words. Black was made an OBE in 2022 for services to entertainment. A documentary about her life, Pauline Black: A 2-Tone Story is on Sky Arts and Now TV from 16 April, and the Selecter are due to appear at Glastonbury. She is married and lives in the West Midlands. What is your earliest memory? Puking all over my mother's freshly ironed sheets when she told me that I was adopted. She was not amused and she smacked me. I was four and a half; it was before I started going to school. I needed to be told because all my family was white. What is the trait you most deplore in yourself? I'm argumentative. What is the trait you most deplore in others? Being late. What was your most embarrassing moment? It was a small gig and I was doing Three Minute Hero, which has a long, held note at the end, and I fell off the stage. Describe yourself in three words Fizzy like lemonade. What would your superpower be? Matter transfer like in Star Trek so I never had to use a tour bus again. What makes you unhappy? Fascists. Who would play you in the film of your life? Janelle Monáe. What is your most unappealing habit? Bluntness. What scares you about getting older? Not being able to perform adequately. Which book are you ashamed not to have read? Nineteen Eighty-Four. I always meant to read it before 1984, and once 1984 had passed I didn't see the point. What is the worst thing anyone's said to you? I was called the N-word in Romford, by someone stepping off a train as I was getting on. Sign up to Inside Saturday The only way to get a look behind the scenes of the Saturday magazine. Sign up to get the inside story from our top writers as well as all the must-read articles and columns, delivered to your inbox every weekend. after newsletter promotion What is your guiltiest pleasure? Creme Eggs. What does love feel like? An umbilical cord. Which living person do you most despise, and why? Elon Musk, for being the most unimaginative rich person in the world. What is the worst job you've done? Giving barium enemas. I used to be a radiographer in Coventry. How often do you have sex? Define sex. What would you like to leave your children? I don't have children. I will leave my nieces money because girls need money of their own. Anything to make women independent. What is the closest you've come to death? I fell asleep in a room that had an oil heater and it filled with carbon monoxide and, if it hadn't been for my husband, Terry, I would have died. What keeps you awake at night? My husband snoring. Would you rather have more sex, money or fame? Money. How would you like to be remembered? For ever. Tell us a joke Me to my dog, Milo: I hear you've been attacking people on a bicycle. Milo to me: It's not me, I don't even own a bike.
