A movie based on the life and career of Bucks Fizz is in the works.
The band shot to fame after their iconic skirt-ripping performance of Making Your Mind Up led them to victory at the 1981 Eurovision Song Contest – a career milestone they’re celebrating 40 years of throughout 2021.
Speaking to the Sunday Mirror, Cheryl Baker, Mike Nolan and Jay Aston – who now perform as The Fizz – revealed revisiting old diaries during lockdown has encouraged them to map out four decades of hits and begin work on a film project.
“I kept diaries throughout the last 40 years,” says Cheryl. “Bizarrely the diary for 1981 – the year we hit the big time – went missing.”
She asked Mike to fill in the gaps and found he also had a stash of diaries.
He adds: “Why I keep them, I don’t know, but I’m glad I did. It’s a fantastic record of the bizarre stuff that went on.”
Teasing details of the movie, the London Town singers admit it’ll offer a “warts and all” insight into the career of the group, which has been characterised by infighting, lawsuits and the group’s terrifying 1984 coach crash.
After a gig in Newcastle in December, their tour bus had its roof ripped off in a collision with a lorry, during which Cheryl and Mike were thrown out through the windscreen, Jay suffered back injuries, bruising on the brain and broken ribs, and Bobby G was treated for whiplash.
Cheryl broke three vertebrae in her spine during the incident, while Mike suffered major head injuries and fell into a coma, with the singer remaining on life support for three days and still suffering from the effects of the crash.
“We were all lucky to walk away with our lives that night,” says Jay, with Cheryl adding: “The coach crash caused so much pain and devastation for us all, it was dreadful.
“How on earth will we dramatise that? This film is going to be full of drama. It will be warts and all… and there are some warts.”
And despite their success, Jay insists the group wasn’t daily paid during their heyday, revealing they earned a “ridiculously small amount of money” while soaring high in the charts.
“Our accounts from year one, having had a Eurovision winner and then Land of Make Believe – selling four million copies – show each of us made just £6,700,” she reveals.
“It’s a ridiculously small amount of money. I still have all the paperwork, I kept everything.
“We were earning one half of one pence per single. We had to live with our parents until we were in our late 20s, we couldn’t afford to move out.”
However, Cheryl insists: “Now we’re in control. We actually earn more today than when we were at the top of the charts, won Eurovision and sold millions of records.”
Bucks Fizz released five studio albums throughout the 1980s, with various line-ups of the group existing through the ’90s.
Cheryl, Mike and Shelley Preston – who replaced Jay in the group following her 1985 departure – continued to perform together through 2009, when Jay returned to the fold.
They later adopted The Fizz moniker and have since released three albums, including UK Top 40 releases ‘The F-Z of Pop’ and ‘Smoke & Mirrors’.
