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 Back to: Archive · 2006
Do what? Betty's back on planet Boo

From Scotsman.com, 26 March 2006. Words: Aidan Smith.

Betty Boo doesn't know where she would be right now if she hadn't bumped into Alex James in a nightclub, but it almost certainly wouldn't be here, posing for pictures, smiling at the re-enactment of old moves, and about to stick a big black stiletto onto the pop treadmill again.


She might have remained in the writerly backrooms, churning out panting hits for Girls Aloud - not the most taxing job in the world and one that comes with its own recognition. A mere afternoon's work on Hear'Say's 'Pure And Simple' won her an Ivor Novello Award.


Or she might have given up pop entirely and just played tennis, which was how she filled her days after the death of her mother. "I was really depressed," she says. "Nothing about music excited me any more."


It was going to take someone special to persuade her that more Boomania was a good idea, so step forward the bassist with Blur, reformed rock roué, Renaissance man.


"Boo makes cool pop music, which is the most precious substance in the universe," says James. "To paraphrase Graham Greene, there's popular, which is easy, but being good is a neater trick."


James will also quote from Evelyn Waugh and his forthcoming autobiography (Bit of a Blur) on one of the more bizarre pop days your correspondent has experienced, but also one of the most enjoyable. James is 37, Alison Clarkson - Boo's real name - is one year younger, and they've more in common than you might think.


This is them looking back on the heady days of the previous decade, James first: "When you're in your 20s your body is a speedboat and it's terribly important to find out how fast you can make yourself go."


Clarkson: "I was like a bloody performing monkey. They worked me so hard I can't remember my 20s, apart from the fact I broke out in rashes. I got a lovely boil on my bum."


Today the glamorous Ms Boo is at her publicist's office in Shepherd's Bush while her indie poster-boy cohort is stuck on his Cotswolds farm and so contributes to the chat down the phone line. Their collaborative project is called Wigwam and the eponymous debut single sounds like a distant refrain from 1990, when Clarkson was rappin' and rhymin' like this: "Love is just a word/That you tell to all your birds." But James, the rock star, claims equal input.


"I've never been snobby about pop," he says. "Blur themselves have always been looked down on by the rock establishment, especially in America," he says. "When we recorded 'Song 2', they were like: 'When did these guys grow balls?'"


James and Clarkson - a space freak and, in her Boo days, a sexy alien - can even swap notes on Scottish roots. With him it's just the name, which he took from his grandfather's favourite footballer, Alex James, the Brylcreemed and baggy-shorted Arsenal winger from the 1920s who was one of Scotland's Wembley Wizards. With Clarkson, it's something more.


The darkly exotic looks probably come from her Malaysian-born father, John, who sought a new life in Britain via the former Ceylon, but her mother Lysbeth was just as influential.


"I'm an unusual mix, I guess - Malaysia, Ceylon, Planet Boo - but I'm really proud to call myself Scottish. Mum came from Edinburgh. It's in the way I speak. Instead of 'Look out!', I'll say, 'Watch!' And the other day I told my husband I was going for the messages. He still doesn't get that I mean shopping for the house - the hoose."


Clarkson's entry into the pop world was borne of teenage frustration. "I actually wanted to be a vet," she says. "but I had a terrible time at school and was bullied. Hammersmith County was a terrible school. It was Thatcher's rule and the teachers were always on strike. It was burned down before it was closed down.


"I was actually quite bright and wanted to go to uni but my careers officer told me not to get ideas above my station. That really hurt. So one day when the teachers didn't turn up again, me and my friend Donna decided to form a group. We'd been rapping in our bedroom, writing rhymes and dressing like Salt'N'Pepa. I didn't have any great dreams to be a pop star, it was just a way of expressing myself."


The She-Rockers won a support-slot on a Public Enemy tour. Clarkson, then 17, had to bunk off from her A-levels, which angered her mother. Her crazy comprehensive had toughened her up, but not for the extremism of gangsta rap. When she witnessed a young fan being shot in New York for his gold chain, she returned home and made it up with mum.


Clarkson speaks with great affection for her mother, and the latter's death from cancer in 1995 was a shattering blow. "I'd already lost my dad so I nursed her to the end. When she passed away I was just about to sign with Madonna's label Maverick. I had to tell Madonna I couldn't do it, I was hurting too much. Her death was a massive tragedy."


With the proceeds of the big Boo hits - 'Doin' The Do' and 'Where Are You Baby' - from when she was a regular bobbed-haired and spray-on-spacesuited presence on Top of the Pops, she was able to disappear for five years.


Then in 2000 she started writing again. Girls Aloud demanded three songs per week; tots' telly faves the Tweenies were similarly tough taskmasters. And 'Pure And Simple' remains the fastest-selling debut single ever.


The Boo bank balance has further benefited from the Popstars/Pop Idol phenomenon but she cheerfully bites the hand that feeds. "I think these shows are terrific family entertainment but they've just about destroyed pop music. I suppose I exploited the format but I wanted to see if I still had a job in music. These songs took no effort at all and made me think, 'OK, I'm all right.'"


James and Clarkson live 40 minutes from each other, in very big houses in the country, and it was Clarkson's husband, indie manager Paul Toogood, who proposed the alliance.


"I loved Blur but it was always Alex who fascinated me," she says. "When I met him it was no surprise to learn he was involved in something like Beagle 2 [James sent Blur music to Mars on the ill-fated 2003 space probe]. There's a lot going on in his life, although I don't think I want to know everything he got up to in the early days. I'll skip that part of his book."


For the rest of us, Bit of a Blur should be a good read. Since James quit London for "the trout-farm phase of being a rock star", and quit booze for marriage and fatherhood, he has written a witty weekly newspaper column called "The Great Escape" about being a rock squire.


Last week's dispatch from his favourite fence was typical: "I was having a stare with Fred, the sheep farmer, today." He jokes that it was cheaper supporting an entourage of "models and hangers-on" in the metropolis than having to fork out for repairs to outhouses. But he's in no doubt that meeting his wife Claire saved his liver, possibly his soul as well. They have a two-year-old son, Geronimo, and Claire is expecting twins in June. "I was a terror," he says of his Groucho Club excesses with Damien Hirst.


With Damon Albarn about to release a solo album in the wake of his Gorillaz success, Blur remain very much on hold. "It would be a shame if we didn't work together again," says James, "but just as we cannot run around like we're the Beatles in Help! any more, we can't rely on each other for ever. It's important for everyone in the band to become his own man."


There's a whole solar system for James to explore, but for now he's loving being an inhabitant of Planet Boo. He likens his relationship with Clarkson to the one he enjoyed with ex-Blur guitarist Graham Coxon. "Neither of them has ever done anything I thought was naff," he says. "Boo sings like a sparrow and she's just amazing. I'm really glad I've persuaded her to come out of retirement."