Lynsey De Paul became only the first woman to write her own number one song when she sang her way into our hearts with Sugar Me.
As a schoolboy I was besotted by Lynsey De Paul. I think every boy was. Looking at this video now, I can see why: she’s beautiful and she oozes personality (and sexuality), never more so than when she gazes right into the camera and opens her eyes wide at the beginning.
Then there’s the little smirk that seems to say: “Yes, I know “sugar me” is a cheesy euphemism. I wrote this song.” And what a song it is – SO much better than I remember, with an interesting production (by Lynsey herself) featuring nice elements of Hammond organ and a little violin solo.
I particularly like the little whipcracks which seemed a little like spanking sounds to my fevered 14-year-old imagination – and, let’s be honest, still do. And were probably intended to be exactly that.
This song is actually a little bit of pop history too because it was the first self-penned song by a British woman to top the charts – although not in the UK, where it peaked at No.5. Lyndsey Rubin came from a Jewish family in Hampstead, and went to Hornsey School of Art, alma mater of Anish Kapoor, musicians from Ray Davies to Adam Ant, Viv Albertine and Alison Goldfrapp.
She wrote this song for Peter Noone (of Oh You Pretty Things fame) but was persuaded by her boyfriend, Dudley Moore, to record it herself – and, shockingly, advised to change her name in case of any anti-Jewish backlash after the massacre at the Munich Olympics. She had a run of hit singles, won two Ivor Novello awards, and sang (well, spoke) on the call-and-response section of Mott The Hoople’s song Roll Away The Stone.
I still have her debut LP Surprise, which she wrote and produced herself and I now discover that she also co-wrote Storm In A Teacup, the hit single for The Foundations earlier that year, with her version on the B-side of this.
I was far from being the only one to be enchanted by Lynsey’s beauty: her boyfriends after Dudley Moore included Sean Connery, George Best, James Coburn, Ringo Starr, Roy Wood, Chas Chandler, Bernie Taupin, David Frost, Bill Kenwright and Dodi Fayed.
By all accounts a lovely person, she never married, rejecting at least five proposals, saying her first love would always be music. It was also her last – she died of a brain haemmorhatge in 2014.
A lifelong animal rights campaigner, she lived until her death with her three-legged cat Tripod in a gothic mansion in Highgate that she called Moot Grange, an anagram of “No Mortgage”, after considering Gnome Groat and No Meat/Grog – due to her healthy vegetarian, teetotal (and non-smoking) lifestyle.