Her agent had warned I’d have exactly 75 minutes with her. Sharleen Spiteri doesn’t do many interviews. She finds biography questions boring. I decide not to ask her any.

She strolls into her choice of coffee shop, Tupelo Honey in Camden, North London, punctual to the second. She’s casually rock ‘n’ roll in loose jeans and light blue shirt, discreet henna tattoos curling round her wrist and ankle. The ‘Hair’ is such a vital part of her lesbian appeal, I study it to make sure my description is accurate and specific. Very black. Collar length. Some oily product making it flop over one eye and give off an expensive smell. If you passed her on the street you’d think ‘She’s cute’ first and ‘She’s Sharleen Spiteri’ second. She orders tea and a sandwich, ignores the long choice of speciality breads and asks if they can make it “with ‘Mother’s Pride.’ ” It’s the first clue to her lack of pretension. I ask her if she’s ever actually been to Texas.



When we first arrived in Dallas it was all big hair and false nails and I remember thinking, ‘Oh shit, why did we call ourselves Texas?’ ”

I don’t ask why. Her love of the film Paris,Texas and it’s slide-guitar-driven Ry Cooder soundtrack is well documented. Instead I suggest that there’s a real connection between Scottish people and Country music. She nods. “It’s in the genes.” Acknowledging that it’s become de rigueur for hip new bands to profess a love of Country she remarks “Now they’re all quoting fucking Gram Parsons. I mean I could write a good Country song in two seconds. I really love Country music. It’s so different now. You got into a band then (indicating The Past with a jerk of her thumb) just because you didn’t fit in. It was like, ‘I don’t want to do a normal job’.”

Her ‘normal job’ – which she still doing when Texas released their first single - was as a hairdresser in Glasgow Salon Irvine Rush, in 1986 which she describes without irony as being “dead glamorous”. She gives the impression that if it weren’t for the inconvenience of having the voice of a sulky angel and the ability to write polished, bluesy rock anthems, she’d be happily cutting hair now. I ask her what she’d do with mine. “I quite like your hair.” She peers at it. “I’d add a bit of colour. It sounds strange but green and blue look really good on brown, mousy hair.” Brown and mousy. She has the demeanour of an old mate you haven’t seen for ages and who in the meantime has embarrassingly won the lottery.

Sharleen Spiteri was born in Glasgow on November 7th, 1967, to father Eddie, a violin-playing merchant seaman of Maltese/ Italian descent and mother Vilma, a singer of German/ Irish roots. When she was young the family moved from the Glaswegian suburbs to nearby Balloch, Dumbartonshire, close to the bonny banks of Loch Lomond.

At school her nickname was ‘Spit the Dog’, after the gobbing mutt on the TV show Tiswas. Seeing as she’s brought up the subject of spit I ask if I can photograph her drinking from the teacup she’s holding. I explain I need evidence as I intend to steal it and sell it on ebay. “You’d get nothing for it. Texas have never managed to sell anything on ebay.” This suggests she’s tried. “Mind you I’ve seen a few rare vinyl pieces that have sold for quite a lot of money”.

She’s mentioned vinyl, reminding me we’re supposed to be on our way to a record shop to talk musical influences and rummage through some boxes of old 45’s. I sneak a look at my watch, aware we’ve used up 35 of my allotted minutes.

She doesn’t seem like she’s in a hurry to leave so I inquire after her four-year-old daughter, Misty. The name was inspired by the cult Clint Eastwood stalker film ‘Play Misty for me’.
“I saw it when I was very young and it stuck in my head. Realising about obsession at a young age is a good thing. It teaches you how scary it is.”
I’m regretting my stalker-ish teacup-stealing joke now but she doesn’t look too concerned. She claims she doesn’t get recognised that much. “Sometimes I wake up in the morning and look dog rough. I don’t need a disguise. That’s not the person in those retouched photographs.”

She’s been up since 6am (“because of Madam”), but you wouldn’t know it. She looks relaxed and fresh-faced, black mascara on long lashes the only obvious sign of make-up. How much, I ask, on a scale of one to ten, does she hate the phrase ‘Yummy Mummy?’ She looks blank, as if, up to now, she’d quite liked it. “It is a stupid phrase but I’d rather be called ‘Yummy Mummy’ than ‘Dog-Ugly’.” Her image as a Mum is clearly an issue. She announces she drives a G-Wagon and, completely unprovoked, states “It’s not a Mummy-Car. Trust me, it’s not a fucking Mummy-Car.”

In 2004 she separated from Misty’s father, magazine executive and former editor of Arena magazine, Ashley Heath. The break-up is famously off-limits but she’s happy to describe herself as currently single and not in a hurry to change that.

I decide to go for broke and ask her if she’s ever ‘done it with a lady’. Completely un-phased she shakes her head. “Never. I adore women. I just don’t sexually fancy women. I mean, who knows, maybe in my life at some point a woman will come along and I’ll just fall madly in love with her.” Silently, we both pretend we believe this to be a possibility. I almost feel compelled to hug her and tell her it’s ok that she’s straight: it doesn’t make her a bad person. I want to know why she thinks she’s such an enduring Lesbian Icon. She smiles. “Because people are probably clear that it in no way bothers me.”

When Texas released their debut single ‘I don’t want a lover’ in 1986, Sharleen was adamant she didn’t want a girly image and insisted on ‘Big E’ Levi jeans and a leather jacket. She launched a loyal lesbian following as a result. Although contentedly heterosexual, rumours of a more ambiguous sexuality were fuelled by her fondness for androgynous role play in Texas videos. In the 2001 Inner Smile video she appeared as a Drag-King Elvis, complete with prosthetic cheekbones, sideburns and shrink-wrap black leather suit. More recently in the video for Sleep she and comedian Peter Kay recreated ‘An Officer and a Gentleman’ with Sharleen in the Richard Gere role. She tells me that when performing the song at a Manchester gig this year “I came on in my Sailor suit. It was my big lesbian moment. People went ‘is that for the boys?’ and I was like ‘No, the girrrrls.’”

It must be hard for the guys in the band to accept that most of the screaming girls at Texas gigs are there for Sharleen, I suggest. She proudly relates a story about how her drummer spent the whole of one night on tour chatting up two “really, really beautiful Dutch Girls.” Not only was he turned down, the girls had left her a single red rose. She re-enacts the bum-wiggling victory dance he had to endure and beams triumphantly. “I always claim that I’m the one member of the band that could actually pull the most beautiful women.”

She insists on paying our bill “I’ve sold a few records, I’m doing alright” and we move on to Out on the Floor, our destination vintage record shop. I can see instantly it was both an inspired and terrible idea, as it becomes apparent that Sharleen is a Vinyl Junkie – hooked on every picture sleeve and track-listing in her line of vision. She can’t get past any record without singing the title or telling some anecdote about the artist. It is fascinating - but impossible to get her to concentrate on the business of questions.

I manage to ascertain that the first single she bought was “‘Oliver’s Army’ by Elvis Costello” and the last album she bought was the “ ‘Hot Chip’ record ”. Currently she’s into “Transylvanian Gypsy Music.” She loves the voices of country/ folk newcomers Joanna Newsome and Martha Wainwright, but can’t listen to Joni Mitchell (“nails down a blackboard”) or Joan Armatrading (“makes me want to kill myself.”) I point out this is ‘Lesbian Heresy’ but she’s unrelenting. In vain I try to steer her towards the Motown section but fail to distract her from the ‘80’s Pop, where she’s delighted to find two marked-down Texas singles. She signs them later for the boys in the shop.

Eventually I win her attention by asking which two famous people she’d be the bastard child of. She likes this question and bites her lip in deep thought. “Erm…Anne Bancroft…. No…Meryl Streep…”. Butting in, I exclaim it’s fantastic that she’s chosen to be the Turkey-basted bastard of two women. She grins. “I could go for that. If Sam Shepard donates the sperm.”

Time’s up. Actually time was up half an hour ago but she didn’t go. She’d barely mentioned the new album Red Book, an accomplished bitter-sweet journey interwoven with shades of electro-pop and folk. It’s been heralded as Texas’ best achievement since the monumental White on Blonde. But she was more interested in chatting about her respect for her lesbian fanbase than pushing her latest product.

She finally walks away down the busy High Street with my lipstick stamped on her cheek. I watch her go and every now and then someone turns and stares, glowing slightly pink as they recognise her. She doesn’t seem to notice.