SHE will forever be the fresh-faced, red-haired 1980s popstar belting out China In Your Hand, but now, at 67, Carol Decker admits she works hard at staying young.
“Well, my voice is still in good shape, but I am competing with my own face from 40 years ago, so I do need a little help,” she quips good-humouredly, ahead of her star turn in NOW That’s What I Call A Musical which opens in Belfast this month.
“If I look tired, I will maybe have a little filler or something, but I mean, you can’t be silly; you can’t look 25 forever. But I do like to look good - I work out, but I am no angel; I love a pie and a pint and I just love my wine... all of that gets harder as you get older, so I like to take care of business.”
Carol has had to take care of business on the health front too, after undergoing surgery last year to remove a large growth (benign) on her colon, but has since powered back, singing in concerts, events and in various 1980s revival festivals across the country.
When we spoke, the Liverpool-born singer of T’Pau fame was at home in Oxfordshire, tinkling away at the piano, her only health concern the possibility of coming down with a cold before a T’Pau show in Merthyr Tydfil in Wales that coming weekend.
“My whole family are coughing and spluttering around me and I’ve got a show on Saturday,” she repines. “I have tonnes of vitamins and I look after myself as best I can… I said to my husband, who is absolutely dying: ‘Keep away.’ I have just sent him off to work with a wave – no kiss. That can wait.”
The husband in question is classically trained chef, Richard Coates, who steps in as tour manager on occasion, while the couple’s children, Scarlett (26) and Dylan (22), are also called in to work at festivals and as road crew when needed.
“We are a self-contained little unit, so it all works well,” says Decker, who, away from music has made several television appearances, among them a stint on Celebrity MasterChef in 2018 and a role playing herself in a “bonkers” episode of Benidorm the same year. “Dylan is actually joining me for the Human League’s 40th anniversary tour in December - we are on the Generations Tour with Sophie Ellis-Bextor and T’Pau are the opening support, so we’re all excited about that.”
First, though, there is another big anniversary to celebrate – 40 years of the compilation NOW albums which have been creatively repackaged into a new musical comedy for the stage. NOW That’s What I Call A Musical is currently on its first UK tour and heading to Belfast with the Heart and Soul and China in Your Hand singer in the role of guest popstar.
Starring comedian and EastEnders actress, Nina Wadia, and musical theatre actress, Melissa Jacques, each show features an authentic Eighties popstar – as well as T’Pau’s Carol Decker, the tour line-up includes Sinitta, Sonia, Jay Osmond and Toyah Wilcox.
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“We are all good pals, so it’s a shame we never get to be perform in the show together,” enthuses the singer, who is also booked for theatre runs in Truro, Woking and Oxford. “I’ve known Sonia for years, and Toyah and Sinitta… they’re great girls. But, I am so thrilled that one of my popstar slots is in Belfast, as I just love it there and I know everyone will get the vibe.
“It is such a fun show – it’s about two best friends, Gemma and April, from Birmingham, who have grown up and gone off in different directions. We are the soundtrack to their youth as they reunite 20 years later, go over old memories and try to help each other with what they’re facing in their lives now. It’s just fantastic, really – the writing is by award-winning comedian Pippa Evans, the choreography by Strictly’s Craig Revel Horwood and the cast are all brilliant; it’s very high end, very well done.”
With hits from Rick Astley, Cyndi Lauper, Whitney Houston, Wham!, Blondie, Tears For Fears, Spandau Ballet and other pop titans of the era electrifying auditoriums, it is a veritable homage to the Eighties - crimped hair, spandex and Sony Walkmans included.
For Decker, the public’s continued craving to be trapped in the aspic of the Eighties – the decade that gave us MTV, Miami Vice, industrial strength hairspray, power suits and ‘yuppies’ - is something she struggles to explain but is obviously very thankful for.
“The Eighties seem everywhere at the moment,” she muses, “but, actually, this has been happening for a very long time. I started my first Eighties comeback tour, or whatever you want to call it, in 2001 when I did an arena tour in the UK with Paul Young, Go West and Kim Wilde and it was great fun.
“These little packages have just become very, very popular. I don’t have a theory down pat, but for me, when I look back, as well as the music, there were amazing films, incredible fashion – very diverse – and it was just a very optimistic time. I think the line: ‘Build it and they will come’ [from the film, Field of Dreams] sums up the prevailing attitude of the time. Anything seemed possible. Of course, I was in my 20s and you do think anything is possible at that age. The music never seemed to stop.”
It might not have started in the first place had Decker not decided to leave a string of dead-end jobs and go back to college - to art college - when she was 22. “It was there I met artistic, creative kind of people that were so different to those at my strait-laced girls’ grammar school, where the only kind of music that mattered was classical,” she recalls.
“I always knew I could sing – it was kind of in my blood because my mum was a singer and dad played piano – and I was in the school choir and stuff, but it wasn’t until I was in an environment with like-minded people that I really started to think it was possible to have it as a career. I joined a local band, left college in my second year and that was me started in the business.”
She was fronting Shropshire band The Lazers when she met BT engineer and musician Ronnie Rogers, with whom she would go on to form T’Pau – a romantic and business partnership that led to a string of top 40 hits, including China In Your Hand which spent five weeks at number one in the UK and Heart and Soul which reached number four in the American charts.
“It was definitely a decadent life at times,” says a wistful-sounding Decker, who these days is more likely to be throwing vitamins down her throat rather than fine Champagne. “We travelled on private jets, we went on tour with Bryan Adams… it did turn a young girl’s head and the funny thing was, I got used to it all very, very quickly. It ruined me, in a way – now when I get on an EasyJet flight, I want to turn left, but they won’t let me.”
Carol Decker will be performing in Now That’s What I Call A Musical at the Grand Opera House, Belfast, November 19-23. goh.co.uk. She will also be performing with Hue and Cry and Katrina and the Waves at the Mandela Hall, Belfast, on February 7 2025 - tickets through Eventbrite or musiccapital.org
