Kirsty MacColl has been killed by a bloke in a motorboat in Mexico.
Well that’s f***in” bizarre,” is probably what Kirsty would have said followed by a laugh. Andy and I used to work with Kirsty at Stiff. Her first single was “They Don’t Know” (which later became a hit for Tracey Ullman) and Andy created this huge questionnaire of deviously obscure pop trivia as part of his press campaign for her. Kirsty was still working in the telephone sales department at Exchange & Mart in Croydon (I think) and I remember her giving me a pair of white overalls with a Rolls Royce logo on the front.
One summer evening we went to some boring industry dinner together and Kirsty was my date. She made everyone at the table laugh and wrote “you bring out the roadie in me!” on the invite and gave it to me at the end of the evening. I still have it in my scrapbook. Then she had a hit with “Chipshop” and we all wondered if it was about Glen who she was living with at the time. She was one of the funniest, sharpest most acerbic women I’ve ever met and I loved “You Still Believe In Me? and the second single she put out after “They Don’t Know.”
We need to preserve people like Kirsty not go around bashing them with motorboats.