Toyah Willcox says lockdown videos started because husband Robert Fripp “was withdrawing”

The couple's Sunday Lockdown Lunch videos have become a viral sensation over the year

Toyah Willcox has revealed that her Sunday Lockdown Lunch video series started because her husband, King Crimson‘s Robert Fripp, was having withdrawals from performing.

The pair launched their virtual video series last year, sharing renditions of songs by Nirvana, David Bowie, Metallica, Guns N’ Roses and more through Willcox’s YouTube channel.

Speaking in a new interview with The Guardian, Willcox explained how the popular series, which has seen her perform on an exercise bike, in a cheerleader outfit and while holding a pair of dumbbells, began.

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“Here I am in this house with this 74-year-old husband who I really don’t want to live without,” the musician and actor said of Fripp, explaining that she wanted to occupy the guitarist. “He was withdrawing, so I thought: ‘I’m going to teach him to dance.’ And it became a challenge.”

“I do the lighting, the filming, the conceptual side and the persuading Robert to take part,” she added.

Willcox also talked about the time when she convinced Fripp to don a pair of tights and a tutu for a Swan Lake lockdown video.

“[He was] fucking furious,” she said. “He felt he was being mocked. But the response was so overwhelmingly positive, and now, six months down the line, he can see that it was quite an important thing to do, in that it became a shared experience with an audience that needed to be reminded of the beauty of human laughter.”

Last October, former King Crimson singer and bassist Gordon Haskell died aged 74. The late musician was asked by Fripp to join the band in 1970 following the departure of Greg Lake, their original vocalist.

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Bill Rieflin, the former drummer of King Crimson, also passed away last March. He was 59 years old.

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