UPDATE: Here’s a picture of Kate’s excellent hair (Freya in the foreground, Richard in the background):

Kate looking windswept with her family

[click to enlarge]
My friend and musical collaborator Richard and his missus Kate had me round for dinner the other evening and we got into a conversation about the recent Observer Music Monthly list of “larger-than-life” performers (i.e. fat rockstars). We were trying to decide if the article was itself fattist. Richard pointed out that the musicians concerned (Elvis, Luther Vandross, Tiny of Ultrasound) had nothing in common apart from walk-in fridges full of dairy produce. I replied that no one would object to a top ten of gingers in rock, but then we couldn’t even come up with a top five of those. Perhaps the music industry discriminates even more harshly against redheads than it does against lardbutts. Even with the help of Kate, who is a strawberry blonde Celt, the best we could manage was:

  • Mick Hucknall of Simply Red
  • Bonnie Raitt
  • Carol Decker from T’Pau
  • er, one other that I can’t remember now

Any suggestions? If the list gets long enough I might even submit ito Wikipedia as the definitive catalogue of ginger rockers.