BELLADRUM: Toyah & Robert on keeping the love alive and why they adore the Highlands
We caught up with music legends Toyah & Robert before they take the stage at Belladrum this weekend.
What is your favourite love song?
Toyah: For me it’s The Twelfth of Never by Johnny Mathis! But I’ve got a whole list…The Moody Blues, Nights In White Satin, Tasmin Archer’s Sleeping Satellite and Shakespeares Sister, Stay! They all make me really experience love!
Robert: I have no singing voice but there have been occasions I’ve sung Twelfth of Never to my wife! For me, it’s I Will Always Love You by Whitney Housten, the Dolly Parton song! Also, any early Elvis is when your heart aches!
Have you been to the Highlands before? What do you think of it?
T: I’ve been there many times and I played there just before lockdown. I absolutely adore it. Inverness is just so different to Aberdeen, Glasgow and Edinburgh. I’ve done plays there, toured there in theatre and done music shows there. People are very connected to the land, and it’s a very different feel. I’m looking forward to that grounded-ness and connection.
The sky feels so much lower than anywhere else in the UK. It does feel like a ceiling there and I’m just looking forward to being outside in that experience.
Robert: For me everything changes when I drive into the borders, and you realise this is not England, this is Scotland! Scotland is very different and part of that is space. There is a space available which here we don’t have, and there is a very different engagement with that place.
I’m looking forward to taking a deep breath of fresh Scottish air! It’s a long long way from England! You have to commit yourself to going up there, but once you have you realise why!
You work together and live together. How do you keep the love alive?
Toyah: Our lives have changed so radically since lockdown as we never saw each other before this! We were on different continents all the time! Lockdown was very good for us as a couple as we were together constantly and we really loved it. It just made us so happy being together.
We’re now very industrious on a level I never expected at our ages – in a world that demands content daily!
Robert: I listen to my wife! Seriously because how many men actually listen to women? And how many men listen to women of a certain age? My wife has the spirit of a She-Goddess! She sometimes has concerns and sometimes has no concerns but simply wants to tell me about the activity of the birds on the bird feeder – so what do I do? I listen.
Toyah: Robert definitely listens! We are very compatible and we’re both very eccentric! I think the compatibility is quite miraculous that we found each other because I don’t think we could be with anyone else, we are that radically different from anyone we know!
Robert: I was planning to be a bachelor until I met my little wife, and I proposed in a week!
Toyah: We are definitely soulmates – soulmates with a touch of behavioural problems!
