Next Friday (13 Oct) legendary cabaret bombshell and songwriter to the stars, Miss Hope Springs, will be making her debut at the Two Brewers, plus she’ll be there on Sunday as guest of the London Gay Big Band too. Expect a heady mix of gorgeous songs and slightly racy stories from this musical star. Miss Springs rarely courts publicity, so we are thrilled that she agreed to talk us through a day in her ultra glamorous life.
My day starts with what I call ‘waking up’, which entails more effort for me than most. You see, I have triple rows of naturally thick jet-black eyelashes that are both a blessing and a curse (it’s something to do with my Irish-Lithuanian-Eskimo genes). Sometimes in the morning my eyes are sealed shut like Venus fly traps and I have to spend 20 minutes gently prizing them apart with a damp cotton bud. When not on tour or in London, I’m awoken at 6.30am by the gentle hissing sound of the teasmaid, which perches on a little shelf by my bed. I have a cup of Twinings Rose Pouchong with a slice of ginger to get my system going. Then I move on to ‘getting out of bed’, which is even more problematic than the waking up bit…
I live in the charming seaside town of Dungeness (on the Kentish Riviera) in my husband Irving’s camper van. When he told me he was getting a little camper I said “That’s impossible!” It’s a tight squeeze as we live with Irving’s hairdresser pal Carlos.The boys are diminutive, but for me, at a showgirl-tastic six feet tall, the margin of error is negligible. Sometimes, when negotiating my way off the top bunk, I find I’ve stepped smack on poor Carlos’s face on the bottom bunk (which he and Irving share), quite by accident, of course.
I tend to lounge around in a muumuu and fluffy mules when I’m home and spend the morning listening to Radio 3. I have a huge crush on that gorgeous Petroc Trelawny. I use plain soap and water on my face and wear nothing more than tinted moisturiser and clear lipgloss. I suppose those years spent in California during my hippie days have made me a child of nature at heart. Although the weather in Dungeness is hardly what I’m used to, having been brought up by my mother Rusty – that’s Rusty Springs, the legendary exotic dancer – on the outskirts of Las Vegas in a part of town called Paradise (a trailer park), however I do enjoy the bracing sea air. Keeps the cobwebs at bay.
As a self-made woman I’m hugely disciplined. I’m up with the crabs in the morning and down to the seashore to do a bit of foraging to see what the tide has brought in. It’s where Irving says he found Carlos. Sometimes I just lay there taking in the sun doing my vocal exercises. One day Irving and Carlos called the the coastguard who sent out a beached whale alert – aren’t they just a hoot?!
I gave up a lucrative career in Vegas for the promise of my own series of TV specials for Granada back in the late Sixt… Seventies, which were shot but never released – and to this day are considered unaired classics. I languished in obscurity for a few decades before my recent resurgence in popularity. Times were tough, but I kept us going by playing the old Joanna in our local pub, The Muscle Inn, when they had a knees up on a Wednesday night. It was a long way from the Starlight Lounge in Vegas where I started out, but that’s showbiz…
Most weeks I’m appearing in the West End and so I stay with my friend Kel (once Kel Suprise, now Lady Kel Goose-Chase) in her Sloane Square flat. We met at the Pink Pelican Casino back in the day when we were both showgirls. She has a beautiful grand piano in her sitting room and her husband Lord Wilde Goose-Chase is 95 and stone deaf so he doesn’t mind.
Since my sold-out Wigmore Hall debut earlier this year I’m increasingly big in the classical world and have to practise more than ever – those scales don’t learn themselves you know! Yesterday I was rehearsing with the London Gay Big Band who are a delightful bunch. I’m doing a few of my original songs with them (next Sunday 15 October) at a gorgeous venue in Clapham called Les Deux Brewérs, which I’m greatly looking forward to. I’m not one to usually blow my own trumpet, as it were, but I’m also at the same Clapham hot spot the Friday before, the 13th in fact, lucky for some and embarrassingly it’s sold out.
After a busy day spent slaving over a hot piano, I jump on the last coach from Victoria Bus Station back to the coast. It’s not until I hear the crunch of shingle beneath my Manolos that I know I’m home. However, as Carlos and Irving have told me time after time ‘If the joint is rockin’ don’t come a knockin’, so when I see the camper windows steamed up and it’s bouncing from side to side I go round the block a couple more times. Why they have to practise that hot yoga in the middle of the night I’ll never know…
Get tickets for the London Gay Big Band show from outsavvy.com
For more information and live dates, visit misshopesprings.com
The Two Brewers, 114 Clapham High Street, SW4.
Recommended for you
