[ Post New Message | Post Reply to this One | Send Private Email to Cathy | Help ]

Response to [CLICK HERE to read or add to Kennington News]

from Cathy (cathyvpreece@aol.com)

Wake up with onion-flavoured Amy...

Sep 13 2002

SELF-CONFESSED "broadcaster, writer, nightclub hostess extraordinaire and international supermodel" Amy Lamé says she has the best job in world. Among other things, she is a presenter on The Danny Baker Breakfast Show on BBC London 94.9 and a reporter on BBC1's Inside Out. Just don't mention Hula Hoops. KELLIE REDMOND caught up with the south London-based personality to find out more ...

South London Press

Q. Are you a born and bred south Londoner?

A. I was born in New Jersey and have been in Brixton for nearly 10 years. Back then it was cheap, there were lots of artists, just different people living there, and you felt as though you were living on the edge of something really exciting. I've changed homes but always lived in the same area.

Q. How has it changed?

A. It's changed immensely in the past 10 years, even the past two years. I think things like the regeneration of Brixton - with new people moving in and buying the big homes - has changed the tone, but not always for the better. I think it has divided the community in a lot of different ways. I also feel very angry about the whole relaxation of cannabis laws. I feel that's torn Brixton apart at a time when we need to come together when drug dealers are taking over the streets. There was a real feeling of Brixton being a true community, and I think that's on the way out now and I 'd like to recapture that. We need that sense of civic pride.

Q. What is you're favourite south London haunt and why?

A. It has to be The Royal Vauxhall Tavern. I've been running my club night [Duckie, a gay and lesbian club, which she also comperes] there for seven years. The moment I stepped into the place I felt like it was one of the most special places I'd been in. I think it's because of the history of the area, because the Vauxhall Pleasure Gardens were on that very ground from 1661 to 1859. It was 16 acres of green space given over to performance. In its heyday people from all over the world went there.

Q. That sounds fascinating, tell me more.

A. It was a real place where the highest of society mixed with the lowest. There were prostitutes and pickpockets and princes and princesses. Handel worked there - he performed music for the royal fireworks there. The Vauxhall Tavern stands on the spot where the entrance to the original gardens was. My club is a rock'n'roll performance club and we really feel like we are carrying some kind of torch that has been passed along since 1661 on that very ground. And, of course, the Vauxhall Tavern was built in 1863, I think, as a pub for entertainment at a time when music hall was just becoming popular. So they would have had entertainment there. It's been a gay pub since the Fifties when they used to have drag-shows on.

Q. How did you get in to radio?

A. I began here when it was GLR but sitting in for a presenter on a show which ran once a week for an hour with a co-presenter. So it was just filling in when somebody else couldn't turn up. Then my co-presenter left and I got my own show. I got it through my club, through my performance and the TV work I had done. I was just totally bitten by the radio bug. I used to go around with a little radio glued to my ear as a kid, so working in radio now is a dream.

Q. What's it like working with Danny Baker?

A. It's fantastic, he is one of the most inspirational people I have ever met. I still can't get over the fact that I'm working with him. At first I wasn't really sure how we'd get along as I didn't know that much about him before I started working with him. Just reading newspaper clippings and stuff I thought "Oh, he's such a bloke, he hangs out with so and so". And after about three weeks - I think it was when I found out he was a big fan of Danny La Rue - I thought, this guy's fantastic. He's the campest man I know.

Q. What's been one of the most memorable moments on the show?

A. On Danny's birthday I organised to get him Danny La Rue's shoes at a celebrity auction. I had to outbid a Sun journalist. They were then presented in a big silver box, with a purple ribbon and tissue paper with a big silver butterfly. He opened it up and it was the first time I have ever seen him speechless. It was such a wonderful moment, a kind of bonding moment for all of us. He took out the shoes - there were two pairs - and he put one of one pair on one foot and one of the other pair on the other foot, put the tissue paper in his pocket, took the big silver butterfly and clipped in what hair he has left, and continued to broadcast. He put his feet up on the desk and I thought "This is wonderful, I've got the best job in the whole world". That's the whole tone of what we do working together. We had Victor Spinetti in today and he said "I don't want to leave it's like a party in here". I jump out of bed at 5am and I never thought I would do that in my life.

Q. I understand you're a massive Morrissey fan - I read somewhere you moved to the UK to be nearer to him.

A. That makes me sound like I am a stalker which I am not! [she laughs]. I left the US for a lot of reasons. But I was a total Smiths fan, obviously there's that appeal, you walk around and everything is like a Smiths lyric, it's like the first time I went to Manchester. It's like a Beatles fan going to Liverpool. I just found out today that we had a bid in for Morrissey, but he can't make it. I'm still coping with that loss. If he did come in to be interviewed, all the guests sit right next to me on my left and I don't think I could cope. So I think it's best that we leave it that way.

Q. Is it true you appear in an Oasis video as a passenger on a bus?

A. Yes, it was for Go Let it Out. So yes, I did meet Liam and his three- in-one haircut. I do quite a lot of modelling work, and it's through Ugly Agency, but it's very tongue-in-cheek. A lot of the people on the books fall into that category of people who were made fun of at school, and then once you grow up and into your looks it's all right. The most recent thing I've done is a big ad campaign for Hula Hoops Shoks and there's three different flavours - and I'm on 'full on onion' [she laughs].

Q. It is true you ran the UK's first lesbian beauty contest?

A. It was in 1997 and it was the world's first lesbian beauty contest. It was in the Guinness Book of Records. It was held at the Cafe de Paris, then I did a secret one a couple of years later. But in the meantime these other people came in and stole my thunder and started running the alternative and that ran in Brixton. Ours was run in the style of a traditional beauty contest. The winner was from Bermondsey.

Q. What's this new programme for BBC1 about?

A. It's called Inside Out, and I've done one report on the smells of London, and that was great. We did everything from going to the oldest cheese shop in London to going to this woman's house, as she lives a quarter of a mile away from Europe's largest sewage treatment plant. I've done one on anger management. I'm a very calm person but this anger management course made me so angry. I came out of it raging.

Q. What are your plans for the future?

A. I never make any plans because life is so great I just go with what's happening. I work hard and I think if you work hard and have a real passion for what you do, things will just naturally be okay but you might see me down that dole office in Brixton high street yet.

*** The Danny Baker Breakfast Show, with Amy Lamé, weekdays 6am-9am. Saturday Breakfast with Amy Lamé and Bill Overton, Saturdays, 6am-8am, on BBC London 94.9FM.

*** Inside Out, Mondays, 7.30pm, BBC1.

*** Duckie, Saturdays, Royal Vauxhall Tavern, 372 Kennington Lane, Vauxhall, 9pm-2am, £5 entry.

(posted 7867 days ago)

[ Previous | Next ]