Carol Decker cannot wait to get back on stage in a touring production of new show NOW That’s What I Call A Musical. Inspired by the classic mix tapes of pop in the 1980s, when she was the lead singer of T’Pau, it is being directed and choreographed by Strictly judge Craig Revel Horwood.
Its tour of the UK and Ireland, starting next month, will also feature former EastEnders actress NinaWadia, and guest stars including Sinitta, Sonia and Jay Osmond.
But for Carol, 66, a large growth discovered after suffering gut pain almost put her career on hold in what was the most frightening time of her life.
After a four-hour operation to remove a lump blocking her colon at a hospital in Oxford a year ago, it was shown to be benign.
“I was put on the two-week cancer pathway. It was nerve-wracking and terrifying waiting for that allclear, but I was one of the lucky ones,” she says.
Carol, who is now fully recovered, says when she heard about the Princess of Wales’s health earlier this year it resonated with her own experience.
“I wondered if Kate had the same thing. It sounded so similar and my heart went out to her, because she was told not to worry, and then whatever it was they got out of her in her abdominal surgery, they then found something in it. So that was the same kind of thing for me.”
Like the 42-year-old royal, Carol decided to be open about her scare in a bid to tell people not to dismiss symptoms. “I love Kate. She is such a modest person and must have thought long and hard about being open about her diagnosis.
“I do feel she was backed into a corner about having to say something to the world but I also think it’s important that as they are public figures, we do get the information so we know what’s going on and to stop the speculation.
“I’m so happy she looks really well in her recent appearances.”
Carol started feeling unwell in December 2022: “I was on a huge tour across Germany with a big concert called Night of the Proms.
“I have always had a nervous tummy before big shows and I thought it was that. It didn’t seem to go away and I was living on Imodium. By February, it still hadn’t calmed down, and my husband, Rich, said, ‘You’ve got to go to the doctor’s’.”
After blood was found in her sample she was sent for scans and booked in to have surgery to remove the growth last August.
A year on she is keen to embrace the rest of her life: “I feel more relaxed and less worried. I look at the life I’ve got in front of me and don’t compare myself to say, some of my peers.
“I don’t look at their Instagram and think, ‘Oh they’re touring Italy for a month and I’m in Wigan’. I used to be a bit like that.When you hear what other people go through, I’m so lucky.”
For a long time she was disappointed her career had peaked relatively quickly by the early 1990s.
“There’s more to me than China In Your Hand but there’s no point bashing your head on a wall about it. I’ve moved from feeling sad it ended, to gratitude we had three Top 10 albums and eight top 40 singles.We had a really good run.
“I realised I would probably never have another hit record but in a very fickle business to be remembered at all is fine.”
While T’Pau split in 1992, they have reformed and had a renaissance as part of 80s nostalgia tours starting more than 20 years ago.
“This so-called revival has been going on for longer than the 1980s did!” she jokes. Her mane of red hair is still her trademark, as well as her rich, powerful voice and Carol has retained her youthful sense of fun and playfulness.
“My daughter says that I have never grown up. She’s much more mature than I am,” she laughs.
She has two children, Scarlet, 26 and Dylan, 22, who both live with Carol and Rich, 60, in their home in Henley, Oxfordshire.
Liverpool-born Carol did not start singing until she was 22 after a series of dead-end jobs and was fronting The Lazers when she met BT engineer and musician Ronnie Rogers, with whom she would go on to form T’Pau in 1986.
After grafting for years, the group hit the big time when their song China In Your Hand reached No 1 in October 1987 and stayed at the top for five weeks.
“I was 30 by then and we were touring Europe with Bryan Adams.
“The first Top of the Pops was massive and then unbelievable success in America. We had a great six years.
“The 1980s were an amazing decade. Unique and wonderful. The success of T’Pau surpassed all my hopes and dreams.”
But everything came crashing down for her after six years.
“EMI bought our label, Virgin, and 80 bands got dropped, including us, even though our last record went Top 10. My dad died of a sudden heart attack in 1990 and Ronnie wanted to break up after 13 years.”
Carol admits to not coping with this well and trying to drown her sorrows with booze, but has since found work as a presenter, actor and in the West End.
Carol also took part in Celebrity MasterChef in 2018. So would she consider doing Strictly?: “I’m not sure I’d want to. It’s been reported that one contestant was kicked by her pro partner. The guy would do that once to me and he’d be minus a few teeth!
“I’m good friends with Toyah Willcox who is doing it. She’ll be really good because she’s competitive and really likes to get stuck into things.”
She adds: “I am fortunate to get the quality of the work I do.
“I sing with orchestras, choirs. I’m doing the Generations Tour with Human League and Sophie Ellis Bextor in December.”
On a personal level she has found lasting happiness with Rich, who works in hospitality. They met in 1997 through mutual friends.
“He had a girlfriend at the time and when he told her he was leaving her to be with me, she said mournfully, ‘The sad thing is, I really liked T’Pau’.”
The couple married in 2006. “We are still very much in love even after all these years. He’s a perfect foil for me. A blend of an ex-paratrooper and a classically trained French chef. He can protect me and also cook amazing food.
He coached me through all my dishes on MasterChef.”
And Carol is still friends with Ronnie: “He came back into the band about 10 years ago. I was up at his studio in Monmouth recently and we finished off a new song. He and Rich get on brilliantly. He is one of my oldest friends now.
“We had to let a few years go by in different directions to come back together as friends with no baggage. And we have.”
- Carol Decker guest stars at certain venues in the tour of NOW That’s What I Call A Musical. Go to //thenowmusical.com/.
