Things have taken a turn towards the dark side in Toyah and Robert's kitchen

Toyah and Robert in the kitchen
(Image credit: Toyah Willcox/YouTube)

Robert Fripp and Toyah Willcox's inexorable march towards sainthood continues this week with the help of leather and latex. The feisty pair's mission to entertain the nation proceeds unabated, but there's a twist: Robert Fripp is wearing a leather plague doctor mask as they perform. And yes, it's as weird as that sounds. Willcox, meanwhile, is dressed in latex and brandishes a whip. 

Missing in the latest Sunday Lunch broadcast is the element of live music. Instead of rattling out a hastily rehearsed cover of a classic song, the King Crimson man and his boisterous bride lip-sync to Toyah's track Latex Messiah (Viva La Rebel In You), a song that originally appeared on her 2008 album In the Court of the Crimson Queen after being released as a single the previous year.

The song's lyrics may go some way to explaining the pair's unlikely garb.   

Silly Billy been a naughty boy
Gone and broken all your toys
He's a whore for television
Bi-polar supervision
Cracked up in submission
Bound and gagged, a rubber vision

Pandemic
Polyemic
Schizophrenic
Epidemic      

You get the idea. As the song fades, there are more lyrics about "tantric sex" and "pink latex", but we'll leave it there. 

In other news, the couple have spoken of their relationship in a new interview with The Times [paywalled link], during which Toyah reveals that she had to negotiate her way through Fripp's popularity with his female fans.

“When we first got together there was a tsunami of women trying to claim him," says Willcox. "It was breathtaking. I got very bored of the number of people who felt they had to tell me they’d slept with him. I was, like, ‘Go f*** yourself.’

“I often had to explain to him what my version of monogamy was – and that women phoning every hour for a goodbye bonk was not what you built a relationship on."

Fraser Lewry

Online Editor at Louder/Classic Rock magazine since 2014. 38 years in music industry, online for 25. Also bylines for: Metal Hammer, Prog Magazine, The Word Magazine, The Guardian, The New Statesman, Saga, Music365. Former Head of Music at Xfm Radio, A&R at Fiction Records, early blogger, ex-roadie, published author. Once appeared in a Cure video dressed as a cowboy, and thinks any situation can be improved by the introduction of cats. Favourite Serbian trumpeter: Dejan Petrović.