The Saturdays: Rochelle

October 2011

 WE were in Nottingham last week actually on a radio promotional tour. Vanessa and I went shopping. I bought a coat from Zara and then we went to Pret (A-Manger). We had a few people say hello and take our picture. It’s funny because once one person does it, you get quite a few more doing it.

This weekend I’ll be packing because I know we are away next week on a promotional tour. I’m not sure where we’re going to be honest. It could here, it could be in Timbuktu. But that’s typical really. I quite like it.

If I’m at home at the weekend I like a healthy mix of staying in and going out. A lot of it depends on what sort of a week I’ve had.

I love @The X Factor. @I think the groups and the girls are the strongest this year but I think@ Frankie @will win. I like@ The Risk@ and@ Misha B.@

I don’t think of them as possible competition for us. We’ve not actually got any competition at the minute as there are no other girl bands around. I’m not complaining but it’s nice to have a bit of healthy competition. It doesn’t mean that you’ll be rivals and hate each other.

I’ve heard of @Parade@ but I haven’t heard their album yet. I don’t think it’s out yet (it’s released on November 14). But we’ve met them a couple of times and they’re sweet girls.

At the moment I’m loving @Beyonce’s@ (right|) latest album and I still love @Adele’s album.@ When we were recording our new album I was consumed by that and didn’t really listen to anyone else. You get a bit OCD about it. Just in case you hear a new drum beat or something.

The album’s out on November 21 and it has taken us about a year to finish. I’m excited for everyone to hear it now. It’s nice when you are creatively involved. There are 12 songs on the album and we wrote seven.

It’s a pop album, a mixture of ballads and uptempo stuff. We don’t shy away from pop, we’re proud of being a pop band. It’s what we enjoy and what a lot of other people enjoy.

I’m reading a book about Madeleine McCann (@Madeleine by Kate McCann@) at the moment but I keep stopping and starting. All of our down time is when we are in car and I get so car sick when I try and read. Even texting while in a car gets me going. So I tend to sleep most of the time. Even 15 minutes is better than none at all. It does me good. I’m back on form after a nap.

We’re always on the go and dancing when we perform so I keep fit that way. I hate the thought of getting into a gym as well as what we already do. So I don’t. I probably should.

It goes in phases, really. You join a gym in January and go for a few weeks and then don’t go again until the next year.

The last film I saw was @The Inbetweeners@ (above). I love The Inbetweeners anyway and yes it was good. It’s just like The Inbetweeners on holiday.

Eating on the go drives me insane so we make sure we sit down and have time to eat properly. Even if it’s just half an hour. On the road you can end up eating a lot of bad food. But there are a lot of Marks & Spencers and Waitrose now so you can have something that’s good for you.

I love cooking. If the girls were coming round for dinner I’d do something easy because I don’t like doing the timing. One thing’s always cold. So it would have to be a chili con carne or something like that.

I’d love to do@ Come Dine With Me,@ although I don’t like the idea of people snooping around your house.

I’m with The Saturdays all the time and they are like my four best friends but for a perfect weekend I’d like to spend it with my mum and my family and other friends from home.

The Saturdays play the Capital FM Arena on Monday December 12. Tickets are £19.50 from the venue, call 08444 124624 or visit www.capitalfmarena.com. Their new album, On Your Radar, is out November 21.

Liam Bailey

July 2011

ON a Friday night I’ll usually go to a mate’s gig or the pub and both will end up with us jamming and listening to music until the early hours of the morning. So, on Saturday I won’t get up until around two o’clock, I’ll do myself a fry-up and then go out again.

On Sunday I’ll have a Sunday dinner or if I’m in Nottingham I’ll go and see my mum.

I’ve been living in London the past few years. I live on my own but the girlfriend is around a lot.

I might be doing a gig myself at the weekend, of course. This weekend I’m off to Germany with Chase & Status. That’s on Sunday. I toured with them earlier this year and now it’s the festival season, so we’re going all over Europe. We’ve already been to Denmark and Belgium, we did Wireless, T In The Park and Oxygene. I was in Spain yesterday for Benicassim. There’s even a gig in Japan coming up.

Tonight I’ll be at my mate’s hip-hop night, then on to a warehouse party in Hackney. So tomorrow I’ll be recovering then flying out to Germany.

I was supposed to be doing a few festivals on my own but I cancelled them to promote my album which is out next month. It’ll be regional radio interviews and things like that.

I got a complaint from the neighbours the other day. The landlord phoned me up and said they’d heard me shouting at the telly. I wasn’t even drunk, I was sat on the sofa watching that BBC programme about songwriting (Secrets Of The Pop Song, BBC2). Nothing soulful comes out of the studio when you’re sat there with a pen going “I don’t think we should say ‘with’, I think we should say ‘and’”.

I like watching Channel 4 News for some reason. But I generally like to watch the stupid stuff, like Undercover Boss and Come Dine With Me – that cracks me up. I’d love to go on it. I’d do a fry-up. I’ve had some posh fry-ups in London, you’d be surprised what you can do. Put spinach on it, make it look nice.

I’m alright in the kitchen, thanks to Jamie Oliver, he taught me well. I’ve got his book, 30 Minute Meals. Obviously it takes me about an hour and a half. He’s got one of his restaurants around the corner, I might go in and have a moan.

I’ve been to Jamie’s Kitchen in Nottingham and it’s all right in there. It’s not too expensive.

The last time I went to the cinema was to see Attack The Block, which was funny. I only went because the girlfriend wanted to go. It’s about these aliens that come down and try and take over a council estate in South London but there’s all these kids, the ‘you get meh’ crew who are like ‘What you sayin’ bled!? We’re gonna kill these aliens.’ It’s funny.

I’m reading a book about Quincy Jones. He had an interesting life. And Bob Dylan’s Chronicles... that was like reading the Bible. It’s a great book. Really interesting. And I’ve got quite a short attention span.

The music I’m loving at the moment is Hudson Mohawke, Tyler The Creator and Radiohead.

Of course I don’t keep fit. I need to do. At one point I put on about a stone and a half which made me laugh because a girl I know, she’s a singer, you’d know her... well, the label put her on meals on wheels. Delivering the food she’s allowed to eat. They couldn’t do that with someone like me, there’s no point. And it’s different for blokes. I’m not that kind of artist anyway. If I was in a pop group it’d be different.

My perfect weekend would be good music, good people, good wine, good weather... if you’ve got good people around you it doesn’t matter where you are.

Liam Bailey’s It’s Not The Same EP is out now on Polydor Records. It includes an acoustic version of Blind Faith, the Top Five single he recorded with Chase & Status.

Corrie!

April 2011

HE can’t help but make a reference to Robin Hood but Ken Morley does know more about our city than the obvious.

“I relish saying to people from Nottingham ‘did you go in the caves,” he says.

“And they always say ‘what caves?’ I say ‘didn’t you realise Nottingham has got the biggest system of underground caves in Europe? In the 1800s there were 30,000 people living in caves of Nottingham.’”

I knew that. Ahem...

Morley, who has appeared here at both the Theatre Royal and Nottingham Playhouse, will be back later this month for Corrie!, a new comedy play, written by long-term Coronation Street scriptwriter Jonathan Harvey. It features a cast of five actors playing some of the most famous characters from the past 50 years of TV’s longest running soap.

“I’d heard on the grapevine that it was very good but being a dyed-in-the-wool cynic I thought it sounded useless, five people playing all these characters covering 50 years!?” says Morley, 67, who played Reg Holdsworth in the soap.

“I went to see it in Salford and I was gobsmacked because it was so fast and so funny and very original.

“The actors are not only very good at doing their parts, they’re very good mimics as well.”

Among the 55 characters are Bet Lynch, Elsie Tanner, Hilda Ogden and Jack Duckworth, including current Weatherfield residents Gail Platt and the Barlows; Ken, Deidre and Tracy.

Morley played Holdsworth in Coronation Street from 1989 until 1995 married to Maureen, played by Nottingham actress Sherrie Hewson. She’ll be the narrator during Corrie!’s run in Manchester.

She recently published her autobiography, so is he in it?

“Yes, she said I was a fat b.....”, he laughs.

Did he have to leave the soap because he was a naughty boy?

“I was always a naughty boy and I still am.”

As was seen on the Come Dine With Me Corrie special where he was winding up Julie Goodyear (Bet Lynch).

“I think that set a standard don’t you?” he laughs.

“Someone in The Times said ‘I see Ken Morley’s dragged society down to its lowest level again’. Get out more, son.”

He adds: “I get on very well with Julie. We speak to each other a lot because she lives 20 odd miles away from me. She is the funniest woman. My type of gal.”

The balance of drama and comedy is, he says, reflective of the TV soap.

“Of course in the series you’d have three or four minutes of some dire stuff in which someone was dying or having a dreadful experience, followed by something absolutely hilarious. And it’s the same on stage.

“The set is the street, the railway arches, all the chimneys smoking away and I’m the narrator on the viaduct. Above me is Heaven where you see a number of these characters who are now dead. They’re making very caustic remarks about the value of the show since they left it and about some of the current characters who are on stage below.

“It’s a very funny caricature of the show.”

It includes a narrowboat, reviving the story of Ken’s affair with Martha and the famous Alan Bradley tram death.

“Originally the tram itself was doing about three miles an hour but we all accepted that it killed him. We laugh at that now. In the play the tram is a painting of a full size tram on a cloth that speeds across the stage, hits Bradley, he dies and the audience roar with laughter.”

It’s been 16 years since he left Coronation Street, so is he happy to still be associated with it?

“If you’ve been in something that’s generally assessed as being the best of its kind, then you’ve nothing to be ashamed of have you?”

He recently reprised the role of Reg in the feature-length DVD Coronation Street – A Knight’s Tale.

He’ll next be seen on the small screen in reality TV show, Four Go On Holiday, which lumps celebrities together at a holiday resort.

“After Nottingham I’ll be filming that in the Canaries. But they won’t tell who else will be there. It’ll be a surprise for when I get there.”

He adds: “I turned about five plays around last year. At my time of life I tend to do what I fancy.”

Corrie! runs at the Theatre Royal from April 11 to 16. Tickets are £12 to £26 from the box office, call 01159 895 5555. For more details visit www.corrietheplay.com

The Noisettes

My Weekend


I don’t have a typical weekend anymore and that makes me yearn for one. If I have one, which might be the first in three months, I try and reconnect with the domestic goddess in me.
I’ll go to the market and buy stuff to cook and a nice bottle of wine. Then I’ll have a bad TV marathon.
I did that recently where I watched the EastEnders omnibus, an episode of Poirot, which I love, then Blade Runner and Love Actually.
It was a Sunday. I’d been out with the girls on the Saturday night, dancing and drinking, after we’d seen a matinee of Cat On A Hot Tin Roof in the West End with James Earl Jones.
So, if I get a weekend off I’ll do something like that.
Friday night I’ll be tired, so I’ll try and sort the junk in my flat.
I never get in to DVD box sets like Lost or 24 or CSI. That’s not my thing. I like music programmes and some of the stuff on Dave. I know this sounds bad but I really like Heartbeat. My favourites are detective dramas like Poirot, Columbo, Ironside and Murder She Wrote. I love the attention to detail, the outfits, the music... all that kind of stuff.
And weird documentaries, about a baby with six legs or something and people believe she’s a Hindu goddess.
The last film I saw at the cinema was Pedro Almodovar’s Broken Embraces. I don’t get the time to go often so it has to be really bad but entertaining or something intense I can really get lost in. I’ve never been in to middle of the road stuff.
I am a really good cook when I’m not in a rush. I like cooking for other people. I’m from a huge African family so I’m not used to cooking just for myself. If I do I’m very lazy.
I was washing rice from the age of six, although though the boys in the family didn’t have to do anything. We’d all be playing outside climbing a tree and you’d get called in to wash a vat of rice. While your cousin or brother could stay in the tree.
I love Come Dine With Me. If I was on that I’d do a slow roasted leg of lamb or pork belly, something classic and Western but with an African inspired gravy or vegetable rice.
I do keep fit. I try to swim and do sit-ups so I can keep jumping up and down on stage and be able to sing upside down. I have to do that twice a week. I’ll find the nearest gym or leisure centre in whichever city I’m in and do 40 laps, about 50 sit-ups, then have a sauna to sweat out all the booze.
I’m reading Samuel R Delany at the moment. He’s an African-American science fiction writer who inspired people like Philip Moorcock and Philip K Dick. The way he plays with words breaks my heart. It’s called Stars In My Pocket Like Grains of Sand, which is one of the most beautiful phrases I’ve ever read on paper.
Zadie Smith’s latest book was really good as well.
The key to a perfect weekend is the company. You can do the walks, you can go to the cinema, the restaurant, the play, the gig... but for me it’s got to be with someone.
Who?
Hopefully they’re just round the corner.

The Noisettes play Rock City on Monday February 22, 7.30pm. Tickets are £14 from the venue, call 0871 310 0000.