Gbh - The Garry Bushell Hour

Garry’s guest tonight is Pauline Black - the charismatic leading lady of 2-Tone, the musical movement that combined the anger of punk with the joyous bounce of Jamaican Ska.  Arriving after the first waves of punk were receding, the new blue-beat bands put dancing and tunes back into pop. Pauline’s combo The Selecter were one third of 2-Tone’s Holy Trinity along with The Specials and Madness. She was one of the very few women in the male-dominated movement; but as a mixed-race girl growing up in an all-white working class part of Romford, Essex, Pauline was used to being an outsider - and tough enough to confront the sexism as well as the racism of the early 1980s. Today, as a Eton-educated British Prime Minister David Cameron loftily proclaims that “multiculturalism has failed”, maybe we should hear from Pauline – the woman who got both skinheads and rude boys dancing together.  Pauline for Prime Minister? Don’t rule it out. Pauline’s memoir Black By Design is available now. Download the show as m