Pauline Black
Date of birth: 23 October 1953 Place of birth: Essex
Marital status & family: Married
Best known as: Enigmatic lead singer in Ska band The Selecter
Honours & accolades: No information
It may seem like an age since Pauline Black dressed in a skin tight two piece suit, with a pork-pie hat and shades bopped and belted out 'On My Radio' -- but that really depends on where you've been for the past 20 years.
Black is still seen bopping and bouncing about on the underground Ska circuit, where her form of music is thrilling a new generation.
She says: "Ska is very much underground now, but having said that there's punk ska, metal ska and even Christian ska -- So it can really be what you want it to be."
Back in the late 70s, ska music was very much the sound of protest pioneered by bands like the Specials, Black's Selecter, the Beat and only band to really achieve mainstream acceptance, Madness.
With hits like Three Minute Hero and On My Radio, Pauline Black was every Harrington Jacket wearing schoolboys poster pin-up during the days when Brixton burned and Margaret Thatcher was well and truly the 'Iron Lady'.
The anti-racist movement was overworked but Two-Tone bands playing ska led the charge against racist thugs, who ironically loved ska music.
"A skinhead came up to me recently and apologised for the behaviour of his mates back at the Hammersmith Palais well over 20 years ago," says Black. "In those days days the first 10 rows were either gobbing at you or screaming 'Sieg Heil'."
Much has changed since then and none of that prevented Black achieving relative success both musically and later as an actor.
Black who lives in the Midlands still tours and records with her band.
...dressed in a black two-piece and a pork-pie, she's still doing the circuit.
The Editor
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