Renaissance man | 13 December 2018

The first thing Gary Kemp bought when Spandau Ballet started making money was a chair. He’s very proud of that chair. He talks about his chair in tones midway between one of Monty Python’s four Yorkshiremen and Nicholas Serota. ‘I wasn’t making any money until “True” was successful, in 1983,’ he says. ‘The first thing I really bought was a William Morris chair. What the fuck is a 22-year-old boy living in a council house with his mum and dad doing going out and buying a William Morris chair?’

It was the first chair anyone in the Kemp family had ever owned outright, he says. ‘Everything in our house was on HP, apart from the cat. It’s very different to the old Alan Clark thing. We were handed down no furniture. Once you’d paid off the HP, you’d sell it and get something else on HP. Still have that chair. It represents a kind of hunger for things.