Tracey Thorn, Ben Watt

Tracey Thorn and Ben Watts spent many years as alt-pop duo Everything But The Girl. Writing has become increasingly important to both of them, and they come to the Festival to talk about their new books.

In her bestselling autobiography Bedsit Disco Queen, Tracey Thorn recalled a thirty-year career in pop music. But with the touring, recording and extraordinary anecdotes, there wasn’t time for an in-depth look at what she actually did for all those years: sing.

She sang with warmth and emotional honesty, sometimes while battling acute stage-fright. Part memoir, part wide-ranging exploration of the art, mechanics and spellbinding power of singing, Naked at the Albert Hall offers a unique, witty and sharply observed insider’s perspective on the exhilarating joy and occasional heartache of singing.

Ben Watt’s father, Tommy, was a working-class Glaswegian jazz musician, a politicised left-wing bandleader and a composer. His heyday in the late fifties took him into the glittering heart of London’s West End, where he broadcast live from the Paris Theatre. Ben’s mother, Romany, the daughter of a Methodist parson, schooled at Cheltenham Ladies’ College, was a RADA-trained Shakespearian actress, who had triplets in her first marriage before becoming a leading showbiz columnist in the sixties and seventies. They were both divorcees from very different backgrounds who came together like colliding trains in 1957.

Both a personal journey and a portrait of his parents, his book Romany and Tom is a vivid story of the post-war years, ambition and stardom, family roots and secrets, life in clubs and in care homes.