17 September 2020
Newsdesk
Lead singer of Skunk Anansie Skin joined Absolute Radio host Danielle Perry in a new episode of her podcast ‘Elevenses with Danielle Perry’, which each week sees her ask guests the same eleven soul-searching questions in a bid to understand more about their past, future plans, ideals and how they see the world.
Whilst discussing her best friend and partner, Skin revealed that she got engaged during lockdown: “Lockdown has been a real test of a relationship… A lot of people are like ‘Wow, we really didn’t get on and that was the end of that relationship, because I realised in two months of being in lockdown that we’re not the same people.’ And some other people, like me, got engaged… You know what, I think you’re the first person I’ve told. Oops!”
She also discussed her fears of racism, sexism and homophobia: “What I’m most scared of right now is people leaning into their darker sides of nature, we see that in so many ways: we see that in racism, in sexism, homophobia… Right now, I think it’s easy for people to slide into gentle racism because things are difficult for them to understand and unfamiliar. I’m scared of that becoming a normal response to things. In England we got to a place where we were much more open and much more liberal in life. I feel like in the last few years this has been closing down, and that doesn’t bode well for us and people in my community. The moment Brexit happened, literally the next day the atmosphere just changed and gave power to a certain small percentage of people who don’t like us and people like me.”
Feeling empowered about shaving her head: “I got some clippers and shaved it all off and looked in the mirror and thought ‘There you are, finally!’. I felt a definite sense of empowerment; I felt instantly stronger and instantly beautiful, which was the first time in my life I felt beautiful and looked great.”
First memories of her grandfather’s club and its elite guests: “My first memory is sitting at the top of the stairs watching people dancing. If you can imagine my grandad’s club, it was in the basement of the house… I’ve seen pictures of Cassius Clay before he was Muhammed Ali, Bob Marley used to go there, Peter Tosh, Norman Manley, who was Prime Minister [of Jamaica].”
‘Elevenses with Danielle Perry’ is available every Tuesday from Apple podcasts, Spotify, the Absolute Radio website and all mainstream podcast providers.
Past episodes have included interviews with Steve Coogan, Jeff Goldblum, Sophie Dahl and Karl Pilkington and next week Danielle will speak to Sister Bliss.
