SPANDAU Ballet, The Kray Twins and Eastenders. What links these three?

Well quite simply it is Martin Kemp who was the bass player in Spandau, played Reggie Kray in the film about the Kray twins in 1990 and then went on to play Steve Owen in Eastenders from 1998 to 2002.

I was therefore fascinated to hear more about his life when I went to his one man show last week at the Kings Hall in Ilkley. The audience naturally was largely comprised of “women of a certain age” who had been his teenage fans when he appeared in Spandau Ballet. For the first half of the evening Martin was interviewed by Rachel Cain from his production company who prompted him about various aspects of his life.

He talked firstly about his very poor upbringing in Islington in the late 60s and early 70s, going to the Anna Scher Drama School in an attempt by his parents to overcome his shyness and appearing in his first film, “Glittering Prizes” as a result of being coached there. He then went on to become the roadie for his brother Gary’s band The Gentry before their manager Steve Dagger suggested he should replace their bass player and as they say the rest is history. The Gentry changed their name to Spandau Ballet and Martin left his job with a printing company to become a full time musician. To Cut a Long Story Short was their first release which reached number 5 in the charts in 1980. They had their first number 1 single and album True in 1983 and went onto international success. Martin told us there was a big rivalry with Duran Duran both in terms of music but also with regard to the outlandish costumes they all wore at the time.

In 1998 Martin married Shirlie Holliman who he had been introduced to by George Michael as she was one of his backing singers and he said he has remained friends with George ever since. They had a quiet wedding ceremony on the island of Saint Lucia in the Caribbean where their questions were, “Martin do you love Shirlie?” and “Shirlie do you love Martin?” at which point the minister then pronounced them man and wife!

For the rest of the first half Martin spoke about the split of Spandau Ballet in the early 90s, going on to appear in the Kray Twins film, a visit to Broadmoor to visit Ronnie Kray for over two hours and then his time on Eastenders.

After a short interval he took questions from the audience for about 40 minutes which again was fascinating. A great evening by an excellent raconteur.

by John Burland