The Netmums Podcast - S11 Ep10: Martin Kemp: 'We treat our kids like friends'

Episode Date: November 14, 2023

Martin Kemp, founding member of 80s pop group Spandau Ballet and TV and film actor, talks about his experiences with Christmas, parenting, and his career. Martin emphasises the importance of listening as a parent and shares how he and his wife have created a close relationship with their children. He also discusses his debut novel, The Game, and his writing process. 

You're listening to The Netmums Podcast with me, Wendy Gollich, and me, Alison Perry. Welcome, everyone. I'm on my own this week because my co-host Wendy is poorly. So get well soon, Wendy, if you're listening. And as we established last week, she's a bit of a Christmas grinch. And I'm worried that I might be joining her on that one because it's only mid-November and the Christmas overwhelm has started already. I'm just feeling like it's a lot to try and plan in all of the fun stuff for the kids in December, rehearsing for the nativity, booking the panto visits, getting tickets for Santa's grotto and crucially not over planning to make sure that your kids and you don't get overtight and grumpy. It's just a lot. But I'm betting that our guest today

has Christmas nailed, not least because his kids have grown up. So I'm guessing he's not in the thick of it anymore. We're joined today by Martin Kemp, founding member of 80s pop group Spandau Ballet, TV and film actor, presenter and now the author of his first novel, The Game. Martin, welcome to the Netmoms podcast. Oh, well, thank you very much for having me. And listen, I am right in the thick of Christmas. This is the honest truth. I have been in the thick of Christmas since the summer, right? Because, well, you know, I think I've done about three Christmas drama specials.

Right. Since the summer. And all of those Christmas ones are filmed during the, you know, the hottest part of the year. Do they have, like, the fake snill that they put out? Yeah, I've dressed up as Father Christmas about three times so far. But it's so much fun, you know. But listen, my wife absolutely loves Christmas.

Does she? Do you go quite big in the Kemp household? Oh, yeah, we always have done. But we have everybody over to our house. So, yeah, it's really nice. We have a lot of fun at Christmas. You know what? It gets dark early.

It's cold. you've got to have something to look forward to christmas is like spring with the flowers coming out but just winter that's so true a bit of sparkle to uh yeah to the evenings it's good um now martin i think that people probably know you like or how they know you probably gives away their age so listeners to the podcast who are in their late 40s or early 50s will know you from spandau ballet people in their 30s and 40s will know you from eastenders and younger people probably know you as roman's dad what is it like having such a varied fan base but also such a varied career as well uh listen i've been blessed with my career absolutely you know i've been going since i was

10 years old and i did all of those 1970s tv shows like play for today and and um comedy playhouse all of those things that uh you don't even know about so you know i've been acting a long while and to be inside that bubble called entertainment for what is 55 years nearly it has been an absolute pleasure because that bubble called entertainment that you're in as well is literally you know when i say this is literally a hobby right and as long as you remember that then it's you can go anywhere with it and back in the day you know when I when I first kind of left spanned out it was very difficult thing to cross from being an actor to a presenter to writing books but as time has gone on it's uh it's now an accepted thing to do uh and I like to explore all the corners of that bubble.

Yeah, that's so true. It must be really nice for people in the industry to be able to jump around and do different things. I mean, we talk to a lot of well-known people, you know, who are right in the thick of parenting, who are, you know, they've got babies and toddlers and, you know know they're right there kind of at the coalface um but you're right the other side what wisdom can you pass on to us i've

got five-year-old twins so i feel like i am still at the coalface what wisdom can you can you give us uh one is that you are always at the coalface don't tell us that. We don't want to hear that. It doesn't matter how old you are, it just changes. The dynamics change. But you are always there. The worry of having children, no matter how old they are, is always the same, right? But you just worry about different things.

But I suppose if anything that I learned along the way it was and I think it's something that gets forgotten about a lot when you're parenting and when you're in the middle of it and like you said when you're in the cold face of them being a young young young people is that you forget to listen and listening is most probably the most important thing that any parent can show. Because a lot of times, you know, in our house, I refuse to have like the naughty step. And I refuse to tell them to go to their room without listening to their argument and without listening to what they had to say about it. Because a lot of the time, right, you'll be surprised that they're right. You know, they did just want to do that. And to say about it. Because a lot of the time, right, you'll be surprised that they're right. You know, they did just want to do that.

And to them, it was really important. They did just want to build that last piece of Lego or whatever before dinner, you know, and not get shouted at. And I think that's the thing that I learned, was the more you listen, the better your kids are. It sounds like you and your wife, Shirley, were kind of ahead of the curve when it comes to parenting I've kind of I've seen you talk about how you know you you tweeted your kids and probably still do tweet your kids more like friends

than the kind of traditional parent-child relationship um where do you think that came from I'm guessing there wasn't some parenting book back in you know back in the 90s that you were reading that was telling you how to do this stuff was it just like an instinct thing for you guys uh it was i think it was more from from the fact that um i wanted us four to become like a gang and i think it was more from the fact that Shirley and I grew up from the age of like 17, 18 as being famous within bands. And so I think what happens is the older you get when you're famous is the more you want to pull the walls up and you build the moat around yourself so that uh your you and your family um are safe and i think that whole idea of us four becoming a gang was more from the fact that shirley and i were well known and um that's how it started but i think in the end it did us a favor because what we achieved was the four of us became best friends.

Yeah. And it really shows like when you see you talking with your kids and talking about your kids, that clearly has had a massive impact. Oh, without a doubt, you know, and we all get on so well. But, you know, I'm not saying my way was the right way. I'm saying there's lots of ways that are the right ways it all depends what what the personality is of your kids but I think the overriding thing that I learned was to listen and the more you listen and the more you just take a breath and sit back when your kids are screaming and shouting and just listen to their

argument sometimes they're right and were there points when they were perhaps teenagers where you felt that because of the way you were parenting them perhaps they confided in you about things or they were honest about mistakes that they'd made yeah yeah absolutely i mean that was really true um but i would say that most of my kids are more honest and confided in my wife more than they did me. That's interesting. I was always the one that was out working and I was either doing a play or on tour with the band or doing something. And so I think my wife in the later years as they grew up became, especially when they were young young teenagers became their point of call for

any problem but you know we uh i like to think that we have no embarrassment between us we can talk about anything whether it's um i don't know girls or or sex or whatever you get any problems problems that they have there there is no embarrassment. And I like that. That's good, yeah. And, yeah, you said that you're really close to them. How often do you talk to them now with them being, you know, grown-ups, not living with you?

Neither of them live with you, right, I'm guessing? No, neither of them do. But, you know, what I've found is that girls always go back to their mum. They always want dinner with their mum and they always want to confide in their mum. But boys are a lot more difficult to get home. Yeah. And I know that from growing up when I was a boy. You know, I wished I'd spent more time with my mum and dad. They're both gone now.

But I wished I'd gone down and seen them more at their house. But boys have a tendency to go and see their parents less. And I know that from my girl and my boy. That's why I end up working with Roman quite a lot, so that I get to see him. That is exactly why I started doing Gogglebox with Roman, so I could see him. Yeah, that's brilliant.

And you've presented with him as well a couple of times, haven't you? You've done presenting shows with him. Yeah, I've worked with Roman quite a lot. We've presented stuff together. And we did a couple of seasons where we did like 50-odd shows in a theme book, Breakfast with Mike and Roman, that thing that we did.

But I absolutely love working with him. He's an absolute perfectionist. He really is. And working with a perfectionist is good for me, you know, because sometimes I'm a little bit lazy and I try and find the easy routes around everything. And so I need a perfectionist to kick me up the back side every now and again do you find yourself kind of falling into kind of dad and son roles when you're working together

or do you manage to kind of be quite professional about things we can't imagine a venn diagram right where on one side the dad and then rovers the other side the boy and in the middle you have that little slip of land that we are best mates and i think we kind of like move between that venn diagram all the time that's so good um now you mentioned right at the start about christmas you have everyone over to yours at christmas set the scene for us tell us what the kemp family christmas get together is like okay we wake up in the morning. I usually do breakfast on a Christmas morning, which is always scrambled eggs and smoked salmon.

And then by about 2 o'clock, we sit down and have dinner. But we sit down and have dinner. Probably there will be eight of us this year for dinner in the dining room that never gets used apart from Christmas Day. And so we have dinner in the dining room that smells of dust. And, you know, we cook a turkey that you can only just about fit into the oven that is too big for anybody, more than you would ever need. And then we watched queen's speech at three o'clock then everyone falls asleep and then you wake up again to watch the um to watch the movie and after the movie you have your pickle and cold turkey sandwiches we are exactly

exactly the same as everybody else. And Boxing Day, you will have your mash, your pickles, and your cold meat. We're the same as everybody else. We do it. And that's what I think is really nice. Christmas is about, you know, I always find that Christmas and New Year's Eve is like putting a full stop on the end of the year. It's like the end of the sentence or the end of the year it's like the end of the sentence and you or the end

of the paragraph where you get to breathe again before you start again and it's nice to take that break yeah and just spend time i guess with with your kids and just have that that breathing space just to hang out with them i guess oh it's lovely it. And, you know, the kids need it as well. You know, they need to touch base with the family. It's a nice thing. You know, listen, my mum and dad have gone, like I said, I wish to God I could go and see them. And so you've got to make the most of it.

Yeah, you do. Now, we had Roman on as a guest on the Netmums podcast last year, and he spoke very openly with us about his experiences with his mental health. What's it like from a dad's point of view, watching your child go through struggles and hit such low places? Yeah, it was a funny one, to be honest with you, because, like I said, Roman in his early teenage years would confide a lot more with his mum than he would with me. With me, he was all up and buoyant, and he was hiding it a lot more. And he was a lot more open with Shirley. But, and so when, and I knew he was doing that,

and so when he was talking to me, I tried to keep him up, and I tried to keep him up and I tried to keep him going. But obviously I saw moments in him that made me worry. I saw different things that affected him. But I love the way now that he's turning into something positive. And he's completely turning on his head. He went through a terrible experience with his best friend committing suicide a while back and he's grabbed onto that and made something good out of it and I love Roman so much because not because of what he's achieved in his career or what he's done on

television it's just about the person he is and the man he's becoming is is really nice and of course we can't forget about your daughter Harley Moon because she's making waves isn't she in the country music scene um what advice have you and Shirley given her since you've both had such big success in the music industry? You know, my advice to both of them, to be honest, and it's about life, really. It's something that I learned when I was in the band that I think is one of the most important things, is that every now and again, when you're young and your career's on this kind of like treadmill and it seems like it's going forever, you have to, when something're young and your career is on this kind of like treadmill and it seems like it's going forever, you have to, when something really good happens, you have to stop and breathe it in because you are in such a rush to get to the next place that you stop and you forget to breathe

in when the good things happen. Like, for example, like when spandau were playing at their height it was you know i dreamt about being able to play a hammersmith podium to 3 000 people but when you get there what you really want to do play in wembley arena but by the time you get to wembley arena what you really want to do is play in wembley stadium to a hundred thousand people so you you never stop and just say you know what mark this is great just right now is great and it's something that i've kind of made harley and roman uh aware of uh and to breathe into good times yeah that is really good advice for all of us i think and also speaking of the music industry we've got to mention you and Shirley being on The Masked Singer. What was that like and did you really keep it a secret from your kids? Oh yeah we kept it a secret from everyone you know it was like it was bliss to be honest with you

right because we got to put these masks on no one knew who we were completely for two weeks, which if you've grown up being famous, right, if you've singing and you sing those big notes, you need to take in a big breath, right? But inside those masks, all you're breathing in is dust from the mask. And it's kind of like, where's the breath that you need? Where's the air? But me and Shirley had a lot of fun. And I absolutely love singing i'm not great at it by any means but um i don't care i love doing it and it's it's something that we most people forget to do right and it's kind of it's good for your adrenaline it's good for your

endorphins it's why we sing in church it's why we sing, guys sing at football stadiums. It's because they come out and they feel great afterwards. And I do this thing around the country where I DJ to 80s music. Oh, do you? We have about 1,000 people in the venues. And everybody, every single person is singing at the top of their lungs to every word they know and it is the most euphoric atmosphere i've ever been in and it's because people forget how to sing

at the top of their lungs you know everybody sings along with a radio they're like half voice quarter voice but to sing at the top of your lungs, you feel incredible. So it's, listen, I take any chance I can to be able to do that. Wherever I'm at, people like listening to it or not. They do. They do, Martin. So your debut novel, The Game, it is about a fallen 80s rock star who is dragged down into the underbelly of the East End. Now, I'm guessing that you weren't dragged down into any underbelly, but how much of it is inspired by your own experiences? I think when you write a novel, I think so many, all of those experiences that you

put into any character, whether it's like you or not, is a big part of you. You know, I found that I was more honest about certain things in my life inside this piece of fiction than I was writing any biography that I've done in the past. There are emotions and dark things that happened to me that I really wouldn't like to explain within a biography. But inside different characters, you can put it in there. It's safe for space, I guess, isn't it? It's absolutely... I found it a really cathartic experience. I mean, but what you get to do within fiction is you make the highs a lot higher and the lows a lot lower.

You know, the valleys and the troughs are so much bigger. So there's so much more fun that you can have with it. But it was something that always fascinated me was when I was a kid, when I was growing up. to be honest in the middle of the 80s 85 86 when you know my face was on a lot of posters on bedroom walls and i and i used to think what happens if it all goes wrong what happens if i'm left with absolutely zero you know back down to ground zero nothing at all and uh what happens then all you're left with is a famous face and how do you go back into normal life? And that was always a fear of mine. Where do you go?

And it was something that I thought that's worth exploring within a book and where would this guy go and how would he get on? You know, sometimes your famous face does you a favor and sometimes it's a hindrance that's so true um and how did you find the you know the writing process because a lot of celebrities and famous and well-known people write books and they use ghost writers

or they have somebody who helps them write it but you you wrote all of this yourself didn't you yeah but you know i i think i grew up when i was uh 10 years old i was at drama club drama school and by the time i was uh 15 i had done something like 30 odd television shows and my brain was starting to work in pictures and then I after the band I went off and I did the Kraytwin movie and getting back into acting and I started to write film scripts and then from film scripts I was that were turned into movies so I was directing them and then I started to write a load of biographies, which I have three or four by now, and I just thought it was the right time to write fiction. I knew I could write, you know, I knew I could do it,

and it was just about... And I had this idea of the character for such a long time because the character's name was the name that I used used on the bad tags that would follow me around the world uh the laminates that would follow me around the world when I was in Spandau and it was like the pseudonym that I used to check into hotels with so that the young fans didn't find you when they knew what hotel you were in so the name was always there with me and it was just about it was more about putting it down on paper than it was about thinking of something brand new yeah yeah but it still must be quite a different process even to writing film scripts or the you

know biographies that you've done in the past yeah um so you know hats off to you that you've managed to thank you write such a brilliant, brilliant book. Oh, thank you. So it's not easy. Finally, Martin, what's next for you? Is there any stone left unturned? It feels like you have had a go and done brilliantly at so many things. Do you have any more novels in you?

Would you like to write any more? Well, I'm in the middle of writing the next one, the follow-up to this one, the game, which is a weird experience because, you know, when I wrote the game, it was, I could take as much time as I wanted to. I didn't tell anyone that I really had it until much later. No pressure. Yeah, no pressure. The second one, there's a time pressure,

which I've never experienced before. And so that's something new for me to deal with. But I've already laid out the characters. I've already laid out the boundaries. So it's just about pushing it on. But I can't tell you, I have so much fun writing. You know, a lot of it comes from when a lot of the ideas come from i spent a long time out in los angeles i lived out there for a few years when in the middle of the 90s and there was this thing

called flotation tank do you know that right where you get a little drop of salty water with exactly the same temperature as your skin which is the same temperature as your blood and so you forget that you're floating in water and all you're aware of is your imagination so i find when i get in the bath in an evening my imagine i can let my imagination run wild and go back to when i was in a flotation tank and so as soon as I get in there all the ideas for the book start coming out and then I get out and I make notes on my phone and uh within a couple of days I've written them down that's brilliant that's great well thank you so much for joining us today Martin I feel like we have got um creative writing tips from you

we've got parenting tips we've got life advice advice. It's the whole shebang. So it has been a joy to talk to you. Thank you so much. Thanks for having me on.