Pink Prose

Surviving a headline grabbing decade as the wife of a founding member of one of the 80's biggest bands, Culture Club, equipped Alison Hay with a unique take on what happens behind the curtains of Oz. Whether it's rescuing her cat from Ray Charles's bathroom sink, hiding from naked French policemen, groping Donny Osmond, Christmas dinner in a crack house, comforting Boy George in the back of a transit van, haggling with Arab car salesmen or stuffing Christina Aguilera into a rubber corset, Alison Hay's caustically funny and unflinching observations on the dark side of celebrity, drama and personal disaster will have you laughing despite being deliciously aghast.

Surviving a headline grabbing decade as the wife of a founding member of one of the 80's biggest bands, Culture Club, equipped Alison Hay with a unique take on what happens behind the curtains of Oz. Whether it's rescuing her cat from Ray Charles's bathroom sink, hiding from naked French policemen, groping Donny Osmond, Christmas dinner in a crack house, comforting Boy George in the back of a transit van, haggling with Arab car salesmen or stuffing Christina Aguilera into a rubber corset, Alison Hay's caustically funny and unflinching observations on the dark side of celebrity, drama and personal disaster will have you laughing despite being deliciously aghast. Unafraid to punch holes in the myths of stardom and its aftermath, she takes the reader on a tour of profane adventures. From life as a rock wife, then working for Agent Provocateur in Hollywood, being the sole pink haired woman in a prohibitive Middle East to crashing back down to earth in England, this journey of behind-the-curtain chaos is decidedly not through rose tinted glasses but alternatively hilarious and heartbreaking. Pink Prose is an emotional collection of stories, pictures and music that paints a vivid and outrageous portrait of the diverse characters along the way, famous and infamous, rough, smooth and occasionally furry, that have starred in the absurd soap opera that is unapologetically Alison.

Assuming Alison was a cat, it would be safe to say she had already used up a fair proportion of her nine lives.   Not long after leaving school as a disgraced convent girl she met a young hairdresser and became a canvas for multiple styles, cuts and colours as his model in competitions, but fortunately for her scalp he was to find fame as a founding member of a global phenomenon called Culture Club. Careening around the continents as Eighties Ambassadors For Excess was only part of the story as their relationship weathered a move from London to Los Angeles in what is commonly known in 12 Step circles as ‘doing a geographic’ in the erroneous hope that a) life will improve and b) the tax man will not catch up with you.   They paused from their mission of world domination in 1986 to bring forth a daughter in an earnest bid to propagate the wildest offspring on the planet; would that every day could begin at 4 am with a voice on the telephone saying, “This is the LAPD – are you the mother of Sunny Hay?”  Divorce followed in the mid nineties and Alison embarked upon the wonder of American Men, including a former Playgirl Man of the Year, satisfying herself that everything is indeed, bigger in America, and occupying herself with the occasional spate of interior design for Sharon and Ozzy amongst others.   Later she assumed the job of growing the company of English lingerie purveyors Agent Provocateur in the U.S, affording her the opportunity of seeing the world’s most famous women naked and introducing her to the London based and married CEO with whom she eloped on a rashly considered two year stint in the Middle East as the only pink haired woman in the region while rearranging the face of Middle Eastern retail.    Keen to fuck up her life on a fresh continent, she escaped back to London to spend a year living with her old friend Boy George as a refugee in his Gothic mansion until finding her own sanctuary. Alison is currently Nana Pink to LA’s coolest kid, Lion, and resides in East London. Hobbies include collecting orange carrier bags and research into disposing of moths in ways that don’t leave obvious scuffs on walls.