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Date January 17
Type Interview
Source Manchester Evening News
Title Apollo double for Goldfrapp
Country UK
Journalist/Photographer Gary Ryan
Text WE catch up with Alison Goldfrapp - variously dominatrix, debutante and dancing queen - at 10am on the day after her incendiary Brixton gig.
For a force of nature whose spikiness is the stuff of journalistic legend (and someone who quite reasonably spurred the opportunity to be interviewed by Lorraine Kelly because it was a "bit early in the morning for the onslaught of that very happy face") rousing her at such an ungodly hour seems like a recipe for disaster.
"What," we hear you cry, "if she wakes up hanging upside down from the wrong side of the attic?"
Fortunately, The Frapp is in high spirits. She has a mouth like a sewer and laughs like a drain.

Drawl
"I'm actually still in bed," she says in her Bristol drawl. Yes, the concert went well. "It was surprisingly good actually," she reflects.
"It was a really amazing audience. It's funny because gigs for the first album - especially in Europe - we'd have an audience that mainly consisted of dentists and lawyers. Which has changed quite a lot. There's such a cross-section now. It's really old, young, gay, straight, a real mixture."
Certainly Goldfrapp have come a long way since their ethereal 2000 debut, Felt Mountain. Their latest album, the fizzing sonic blitzkrieg, Supernature, caused critics to go cock-a-hoop, with the editor of NME calling it the "sexiest album around", and penning various frenzied paeans to the horniness of Alison.

Sex symbol
"Oh, God," groans Alison when asked about being a sex symbol: a kind of Marlene Dietrich for Generation Posh'n'Becks. "It's just weird, isn't it? I do get the odd fan letter. But they're usually quite harmless, sort of naughty postcard type letters rather than anything sinister, thank God."
For the promo to their latest single, Ride A White Horse, Alison sifted through various "boring and obvious" treatments submitted by directors. "There was one that said: "Alison in a naughty riding outfit." And every other word was "Alison's doing something naughty."
The eventual video to Ride A White Horse (inspired by Bianca Jagger, who in famously rode through Studio 54 on a white horse) turned out to involve The Frapp in a blonde wig, eating pizzas topped with cigarette butts and er, so what the hell is it all about, Alison?

Bonkers
"I haven't got a clue," she laughs. "The director sent in 10 ideas, all of which were about four words long and completely bonkers. And I threw it aside at first, just thinking, what the hell's she on about? And then, after reading all these really boring treatments, I went back to hers and thought, actually I like the craziness of it.
"So she came up with mummies eating out of garbage bins and me singing into a bog roll with silver foil."
Horses aside, Al loves her animal imagery. As well as appearing almost naked - save for a peacock's tail - for Supernature, she's also frequently trailed by a retinue of dancers in animal heads. "My mum didn't like the animal imagery," says The Frapp. "She's quite a strong Christian, so the idea of humans dressing up as animals is all a bit Pagan."

Brighton
HER 80-year-old mother came to see one of Alison's gigs in Brighton. "She kept waving at me onstage. Fortunately, I didn't see her.
But my sister, I think, was slightly embarrassed. It's funny because my auntie came to a gig in Reading and I shouted an obscenity to this bloke.
There was this bunch of absolute buffoons who I think had just wandered in off the street drunk, and I ended up telling them where to go. And I immediately thought, oh my God, I've sworn in front of my auntie! Oh no! The last time she saw me was when I was 10!
"I nearly apologised to her, but then I thought that would be even more ridiculous."
As semi-legend has it, Alison attended a strict Catholic convent school - which sounds like the Sound of Music sans the pesky Nazism - before being booted out after failing an important nun exam.

Convent
"I used to want to be a nun when I was little," she says. "It's quite interesting because a lot of people I speak to who've been to convent school hated it, but in my experience I thought the nuns were great. I have a lot of respect for them.
"It was quite strict, but in a really positive way. They were really passionate and caring. I didn't feel like it was loveless. I felt it was the complete opposite. When I went to a big massive comprehensive school, I just felt like nobody gave a damn about you. You were just left in a corner, and if you were crap at something, nobody cared. That was it. You went downhill. Whereas at the convent school, they really nurtured you."
She was bullied mercilessly - students would have rather dissected her in biology than the frogs by the sounds of it - and her life hit a slide down a Toboggan run that bottomed out with sniffing Tippex and glue and other misdeeds, resulting in community service (where amazingly, she was forced to sit in a room making posters surrounded by adhesives. Which is a bit like sending a pyromaniac to a Zippo factory).

Troupe
Rescued via a grant from the British Council to sing with an avant-garde dance troupe in Belgium, she returned, went to university to study fine art, before hooking up with Will Gregory to form Goldfrapp.
Their sound is now almost the template for commercial pop, with "artists" like Rachel Stevens and Geri Halliwell raiding the Frapp Box of Sounds, and suggesting they should really change their locks.
Even the Immaterial Girl herself, Madge, has earned herself the nickname "Old Frapp".
"I get slightly bored of that because I don't think there's any resemblance, really," considers Alison. "Other than she's female. All I've listened to recently is her single (Hung Up) and there's no resemblance. I can't see the connection."
The video for the last single, Number 1, featured a plastic surgery clinic where people with dogs heads go to get nipped and tucked. So has Ali G-spot been under the knife herself yet?

Natural
"Yeah, I've had a lobotomy," she laughs. "I think if you looked at me close up you'd realise that I definitely haven't. I think the charitable description is I'm very natural in that way."
Nope, Alison is intent on keeping her old dog face (should we rephrase that?).
"I've definitely considered it but I don't think I'd do it because I don't have the bottle. I find the idea of actually being cut up quite revolting. And also, if it went wrong, they'd be something quite perverse about it."

 
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