Here’s an interview from Pink Paper. The rest of it will be online next week…

There’s a million things you want to say to Bananarama. But it’s entertaining enough just being around the duo having a conversation, without even beginning to touch on their near 30 years in the business. Sara deadpans a lot. She’s officially the Jennifer Saunders of pop. Keren’s equally as hilarious which, of course, means that they’ve got their in-jokes, talk over each other and just have too much fun. Basically you just want to do a little bit of a gay scream. And you might scream a little bit louder when you hear their tenth studio album, Viva, which has just been released. It’s a bit gay. Here’s part one of our exhaustive (but not exhausting) interview with the girls.

Pink Paper: So I heard this was going to be an album of covers…

Sara: It started off that way. Someone came to us with the idea of ‘do you want to do an album of your favourite songs’ and we thought ‘yeah, why not’. We started doing that and it fell through with the person we were working with. So Ian Masterson, who’s the producer of this album, said ‘lets write some of our own stuff’, which we started doing. Then Fascination records got to hear about it and we played them some tracks and they really loved it…

Keren: They asked us to write some more of our own stuff. Everyone preferred our own stuff to the covers we’d done, which is fantastic. So we knocked out another couple more of – hopeful – hits.

PP: So is there another whole album hidden away somewhere?

S: What, of covers? Yeah, I think they’ll probably be added to…

K: We’re using them for different singles, extra tracks. I don’t think any of them will be wasted. And we’re sticking a few of them in the live show as well.

PP: Yeah, I’ve heard Run To You on YouTube. (Keren starts laughing)

PP: Why are you laughing?

K: It’s not on the album. It’s a cracking one to do live though.

S: We weren’t sure, because Bryan sings it so well, we can’t sing it as well as that.

K: No we do! We just sing it differently.

S: We don’t sing like Bryan Adams, obviously.

PP: That’s a good thing. (Both laugh) I have to ask because I’ve been slightly obsessed about this for years now – Voyage Voyage.

S: It’s not on the album but it’ll be on one of the singles somewhere along the line.

PP: I’ll hold to you that. [It actually made it to the b-side of Love Comes] [Oh, and it’s amazing]

K: That was the first one we did and it’s so long ago now. We’ve actually performed it several times in Europe, it’s been in the show quite a few times.

S: It’s a real trick to remember the words, isn’t it?

K: God yeah. We have to sort of like (makes up French words)

PP: I’ve always just made up the words.

S: That’s what we tend to do, isn’t it? Well our first single was sung in Swahili, so we’re quite good at that. And we can just about master the French thing.

PP: So why Voyage Voyage?

K: Well we were doing loads of stuff in France at the time. A couple of years when we did it we just seemed to be in France every other weekend doing some TV or some live show and we thought, it was such a massive hit in Europe and it just goes down a storm when you do it in Europe, that one, so that’s why we did it first.

PP: I think it’s the one that the gays I’ve spoken to are most excited about.

S: Is it?

PP: I think that’s because it was when there was rumblings of a covers album, but now people know you’re not doing covers…

S: (deadpans) How disappointing. (Both roar with laughter)

PP: Are there many more covers?

K: I think The Runner might be going on.

PP: Is that a cover?

K: (looking shocked) The Three Degrees. I’m surprised you don’t know that one, it’s a little gay anthem The Runner.

PP: Gay fail! The album’s called Viva – does that mean we can look forward to more in future)

S: I hope so.

K: Yep!

S: Because we really, really enjoy doing that side of it. It’s the sort of promotion stuff… I hate doing photoshoots but love, love being in the studio, especially with Ian because we’ve known him for so long and he’s one of our best friends and he’s also very talented.

K: We felt a bit guilty I think, well he certainly did, he said ‘It’s not like work, I feel guilty having so much fun when I’m supposed to be working’. We just go round to his and do it with his dog on our lap. We take it in turns with Marilyn.

PP: Did you think you’d still be doing this 30 years on?

S: It’s 27 isn’t it. Don’t age me. (Keren laughs hard)

PP: I don’t think you’ll ever fucking age! How the hell do you stay looking like that?

S: I don’t know. We haven’t got a face full of botox or anything. Might get filler there though (points round her mouth)

K: Oh don’t be so stupid. You know what I think ages you more than anything, in my experience, and it goes for people in their 20s, is being miserable. I think you get that bitter, twisted look. We just seem to have so much fun. It’s shocking how much of a laugh we still have and I just think with having kids that we hang out with it just keeps you young really.

PP: Talking of having a laugh, there’s a lot of TV appearances showing up on YouTube, Going Live, Ghost Train, that sort of thing and you’re always having a right hoot. You punch Nobby the Sheep. (They both laugh)

K: (laughing) Who’s Nobby the Sheep!

S: We were always so irreverent on those shows and just silly.

K: We got so many complaints. Saturday Superstore!

S: Saturday Superstore, they had the babies that wiggled.

K: They said – they all said – that we can’t have them on again, they behaved too badly. It’s with your mates, isn’t it? It’s just like being at school, being stupid and messing around in the classroom. We just have ALWAYS done it. And still do.

PP: You don’t see that in modern day pop.

K: No I think everyone seems to be very controlled these days in a lot of ways, we never really had that.

S: Well we weren’t put together by anybody, so there’s nobody saying ‘oh you must do that’ or behave like that, or learn how to say this or say that.

K: Don’t answer questions…

S: ‘Don’t say you’ve got a boyfriend’. We just were exactly how we were, natural.

PP: And did you think 27 years later…

S: Oh god no.

PP: What would you have done?

S: I don’t know. I’ve no idea, I’m sure I would’ve just written songs for other people..

K: Which is what we’re looking to in the future probably. But while we’ve still got legs that work then we’ll be up on stage. (Sara howls with laughter)

K: They’ll be wheeling me off. I’ll be using a zimmer.

PP: Any plans to tour? Please just say yes.

S: LOVE to tour.

K: Really love to. We do lots of little live shows, I’d love to do our own show. It’s the sort of thing where you’d have to know there’s a demand for. I don’t know, if it takes off, the album, maybe we will.

S: Well we’ve got the band.

K: Even just a little theatre tour or something.

S: We did the Isle of Wight festival so we’ve got our own band. We’d be kind of ready to go.

K: Yeah. Ready when you are.

PP: You’ve done a couple of Pride’s. Do the gays go a little bit funny when they meet you?

S: (giggles) The Gays…

K: She had a moment with a gay at the weekend, didn’t you…

S: (quickly cutting in) I’m just so flattered.

K: It is!

S: They just say what we meant to them.

K: I think the more flattering thing of late is that straight people behaving in the way. We never stopped doing the gay clubs, we always felt that affinity with our gay audience and having so many gay friends and gay dancers… I mean, virtually everytime we go out it’s just us and gay men. So I think doing things like the Isle of Wight, when you don’t have a predominantly gay audience and they’re still singing along and waving their arms in the air. That’s almost more surprising to me. Straight men showing their camp side (laughs)

PP: Do you have that sensibility when you’re putting a song together? The new album hits that button with me.

S: No, I think that’s what we naturally like, isn’t it?

K: Yeah. We do pop dance music, it’s sort of what we’ve always done, it just naturally seems to.

S: It’s naturally camp. We have to be told it’s a bit too camp… (Keren laughs)

K: We had to rein it in if anything. (Both laugh)

S: We had backing vocals that ended up so like I Will Survive. They said ‘you can’t have that’. [Readers note: This is before we heard the campfest that is Single Bed]

PP: There’s a similar sound to Drama, which was one of the better pop albums of recent years, yet that didn’t really take off…

S: It wasn’t in the shops. No-one could buy it.

K: It was on a very new independent label and I think we were the first act they had an album for and, you know you’re talking about four people in an office, you’re not really talking about the same sort of clout behind you as a major record company I suppose. And just the organisation and the releases and the co-ordination maybe wasn’t there. Or maybe just the timing wasn’t right. I don’t know. It’s difficult.

(Pause. Silence.)

S: Can’t really say anything… (Keren bursts out laughing)

K: We might end up in court! I’ll zip my lips.

PP: Ok…. One thing that did come from that was a DVD of the two singles. Every person I’ve spoken to says they want a comprehensive DVD collection please.

S: Yeah what does that mean? All the videos and songs together?

K: Well I don’t think we’ve had anything like that since the greatest hits… video! That was a long time ago.

S: Maybe it’s time for that now.

K: Yeah.

S: It’d be great to do it through the ages, it really would. It could be quite a package that one, couldn’t it? All the fashion disasters for all to see.

PP: I’m going to get to that in a minute. (Both laugh) I was going to mention the re-releases.

S: They have nothing to do with us, it’s just Warners releasing them.

PP: Did you have any say on that?

Both: No.

PP: So there’s no chance of the rest of them getting a similar treatment?

K: I think it’d be nice to do some sort of compilation of later stuff. Maybe if this works we’ll be able to work with them a bit closer on that and try and do something with them. It hasn’t happened as yet, but it would be good to have some sort of control over it.

Unfortunately once people have something in their catalogue they think ‘ooh, they’ve got something coming out, let’s stick ‘em out’. We don’t really have a say.

PP: Are you expecting that to happen again this time?

S: Dont know, we’ll see…

The album VIVA is out now. Part two of our Bananarama interview will be on PinkPaper.com next week.