Frankie goes to the Museum of Liverpool
The Holly Johnson Story at the Museum of Liverpool | Remembering Philip Key | Latest NW arts news
Those of you in Liverpool may remember Philip Key, arts editor of the Liverpool Daily Post for three decades and my desk neighbour in the newspaper’s Old Hall Street office. When I heard the news of his death this week, the very last thing I felt like doing was summing him up on social media. It’s like when a leaving card is passed around the office for everyone to sign. It’s far harder to find the right words to say farewell to a friend than to scribble something apparently heartfelt to someone you’ve only chatted to a few times.
But it feels wrong - like I haven’t made the effort - not to say anything at all, so I’ve written a bit about what he meant, and continues to mean, to me. You can find it below.
On Thursday, I went to the sort of exhibition that Phil regularly covered - a show of the work of Merseyside-based artists at the Athenaeum in Liverpool. Curated by Smithdown Social Arts Hub, it places new work alongside pieces from the club’s archive including a botanical colour engraving by city father William Roscoe from c.1828. There is a large variety of high quality work on display, all of it for sale. Tickets are £10 and include a drink in the Athenaeum’s opulent Newsroom.
Outrageous and unapologetically himself
They arrived inside plain suit bags that seemed to say “nothing to see here”. Unzip, part the fabric, and there they were - six outfits worn by pop icon Holly Johnson at key moments in his career.
They are, says curator Kay Jones, her favourites of the gallery full of items in the Museum of Liverpool exhibition about Johnson’s life, which opens today (September 13).
She says: “I’ve really enjoyed seeing the journey of getting them on to mannequins and making them look great, and then sourcing the music videos and Top of the Pops footage they feature in.
“And we've got a range of Frankie T shirts, all worn by one fan, which are in the museum's collections. And people respond to them so well because they remember when they had their own T shirts and wish they kept hold of them.”
Starting with his childhood in Wavertree, The Holly Johnson Story charts his meteoric rise to fame as one of the first openly gay and openly HIV+ high profile artists in history. It includes items from his own archive and his paintings, as well as posters, video footage, Smash Hits magazine covers and even a Frankie Goes to Hollywood ZX Spectrum computer game on cassette.
You can listen to songs from across his musical career, including by his late-70s group Big in Japan and of course Frankie Goes to Hollywood, and watch an interview in which he calmy confronts Radio One producer Dave Atkey about his decision to ban Relax from being played on BBC Radio: “Only someone with the mind of a sewer could see [the lyrics] as obscene,” he countered.
The exhibition is bright, fun and exciting, but it has a delicate balancing act to manage between the bold, joyful side of Johnson’s creative output and the very important message beneath. In an interview with the BBC ahead of the exhibition’s opening, he described “the gay thing” as “a bit isolating” with other gay singers advised to stay in the closet. He said he was cancelled by the music industry after making his HIV diagnosis public in 1993: "It was a bit like living in a desert for about 10 years.”
This of course, was a time of mainstream homophobia, with Section 28 banning councils and schools from “promoting the teaching of the acceptability of homosexuality as a pretended family relationship”, and those with HIV being stigmatised and discriminated against.
‘It's so dramatic and bold, but there are also sensitive areas with subjects in relation to HIV and Aids, and thinking about local people's personal lived experience of that’
The show includes information panels on the impact of HIV and Aids on the LGBTQ+ community, as well as health advice leaflets from the time and a telephone with the sticker “Merseyside Aids Helpline”, which people could call with their questions. There are also audio recordings of local people sharing their memories of Liverpool’s gay scene.
Jones says: “It's really hard, and it's something we always have to think about - the pace of the exhibition, different areas where people can really take a moment to reflect on more challenging content. That can be reflected through the design, the colours and how we design the spaces.
“The exhibition is so dramatic and bold, but there are also sensitive areas with subjects in relation to HIV and Aids, and thinking about local people's personal lived experience of that.”
Watching Johnson challenge Atkey on the Relax ban, without the flamboyance of his stage outfits, dazzling lights and audacious music as cover, brings home the guts - and bravado - he needed to challenge society’s preconceptions.
Jones says growing up in Liverpool had a profound influence on him, and contributed to his resilience: “He was from a very ordinary working class family but from an early age you could see he was quite a rebellious spirit going to Liverpool Collegiate, dyeing his hair, wearing makeup, being so outrageous and unapologetically himself.
“Then there were the social influences of the city, and of course the music scene of Mathew Street, the counterculture.
“There's a fabulous quote from Ian Broudie about it being odd balls coming together and finding their niche. So against that backdrop of unemployment and people having to find a way out, they were really expressing their identity in different ways. Creativity was a way out for a lot of young people, including Holly.”
‘He really liked the colours and the big images and light boxes. He said we've done him proud’
Johnson wasn’t involved in the exhibition’s curation. He left that to arts organisations DuoVision and Homotopia, as well as the Museum of Liverpool, so stepping inside for the first time must have been overwhelming.
Jones says: “I can't imagine coming to see an exhibition about yourself covering five decades of your life. I think it was a lot to take in because there's so much to see.
“He really loved it. He really liked the colours and the big images and light boxes. He said we've done him proud, so that's what you want. “
The Holly Johnson Story opens today at the Museum of Liverpool and runs until July 27, 2025.
In case you missed it
Remembering Philip Key
The first time I noticed Phil Key in the Liverpool Daily Post newsroom was when the fire alarm went off and he refused to budge from his desk. He was too busy writing, which he did with total focus, bashing away at his keyboard unless his phone rang with a famous actor or theatre director on the end of it.
Sometimes he would pause for a smoke or a lunchtime Famous Grouse in the Cross Keys pub over the road. I don’t think I ever saw him eat, but he did have a midnight diet of omelettes, which he’d cook after filing a same-night theatre review.
The Daily Post features desk of that era has gone down in journalistic history for its eccentricity. There was David Charters, who referred to the internet only as “the Mistress Beelzebub”; Peter Elson (now a maritime tour guide amongst other things), who also wrote under the alter-ego Mr Brocklebank, a Victorian gent who travelled around Liverpool City Centre in a charabanc collecting tidbit’s of gossip; and of course Phil, the moustachioed, leather-jacketed arts editor who was still a member of the Beano Fan Club.
Although I didn’t realise it at the time, having grown up around the folk scene, eccentric, creative types were my normal, so despite being a different generation I felt very much at home with these wonderful writers who were as hardworking as they were unconventional. I did always suspect, however, that I had missed their edgiest years. The file kept on Dave’s Oscar Wildesque reposts to callers to the newsdesk was one clue, as were the stories of Phil’s glass-eating party trick that he’d by then had the sense to stop.
You have to find your own way of doing things. Phil was always, forever, unmistakably himself
But it did mean that I got the older, edge-softened versions who were generous with their time and advice. Phil was never territorial. Although by rights he had first dibs of all arts stories, he was always happy to pass over an interview that he would be on holiday for rather than declining it. He encouraged my interest in arts writing, which I sort of fell into when covering Liverpool’s Capital of Culture bid and ended up hooked.
From him, I learned how to interview (through eavesdropping on his phone calls), and that it’s harder to write an entertaining fair review than a wittily-penned scathing one. And that you can get enough material for a 2,000-word spread in just a 15-minute conversation if you ask the right questions.
But perhaps the main thing I took with me when I succeeded him as Daily Post arts editor in 2009 - and try to continue to remember today - was that you have to find your own way of doing things. Phil was always, forever, unmistakably himself. I feel lucky to have known him.
Latest arts news
🥫 Roaming the street markets of London, Paris, and Taiwan, artist Steph Huang draws on vernacular styles, informal architecture and local culture for her first solo show in Manchester, presented by esea contemporary: There is nothing old under the sun. It opens on Saturday, September 28 and runs until Sunday, December 8.
🏛️ More than 100 works exploring the legacies of British colonial rule of India and the experiences of people of Indian heritage living in Britain will go on display at the University of Liverpool’s Victoria Gallery & Museum. Indian Perspectives with Tony Phillips & Jasmir Creed will show drawings, paintings and video by the two artists, from October 26 to April 26, 2025.
🖌️ Salford Art Gallery has met its fundraising goal to restore the portrait of former Ordsall Hall owner Mary Markendale. Painted in the 1850s by an unknown artist, the painting was discovered - along with one of her husband Ellis Markendale (already restored) - in the outbuilding of a Cumbrian farm in 2011.
🐦 Stage and soap star Faye Brookes and TV personality Brenda Edwards have been announced as Roxie Hart and Mama Morton in the UK tour of Chicago, which is heading to Manchester Palace Theatre from November 4-9.
Opening this week
Rambert’s Peaky Blinders dance adaptation The Redemption of Thomas Shelby calls into the Liverpool Empire this week as part of a UK tour.
Including plot points and characters never seen on screen, writer Steven Knight opens the story in the trenches of The Somme in 1916 to tell a personal story of post-war industrial Birmingham, where the Shelby family navigate the decisions that determine their fate.
The show will be in Liverpool from Tuesday to Saturday (September 17-21) and will also stops off at The Lowry in Salford from October 22-26.
Thank you for reading this week’s Stored Honey. If you liked this newsletter then please do hit the ❤️ button as it helps it get shown to more non-subscribers who may be interested.
I’m off now to read up on the history of Wirral Society of Arts as I’m helping to judge its 75th anniversary Annual Members’ Exhibition next week. In the meantime, you can get hold of me on Instagram, in the comments or by replying to this email.
Have a great week,
Laura