Pauline Black of the Selecter, the girl who invented the Rude Girl

Pauline Black of the Selecter, the girl who invented the Rude Girl

Author: Mark Ellen, David Hepworth and Alex Gold August 5, 2026 Duration: 34:19

Pauline Black was seen singing Leonard Cohen and Joni Mitchell songs in Coventry folk clubs and recruited by a local reggae band. Then converted to ska and joined the Selecter - back on tour this summer and with a box-set of live recordings, ‘The Selecter at the BBC’. She looks back here at …

 

… their first gig with Madness for 47 years in Brighton – “very red fezzy!”

 

… her Sliding Doors moment supporting Bert Jansch

 

... discovering the Pioneers, Prince Buster and the Skatalites through white skinheads in Coventry

 

… the famous 2-Tone Brighton Beach photo of 1979 with the Specials and Madness

 

… “there were three looks for a black girl singer back then – Tina Turner, the I-Threes Earth Mother … or invent something new. So I invented the Rude Girl”

 

… seeing Pentangle playing the theme from ‘Take Three Girls’ in 1971 and then the MC5 and Arthur Brown with his “papier-mâché brain”

 

… training as a bio-chemist and radiographer – “there isn’t an orifice I haven’t inspected”

 

… the first Selecter gig – “flares, safari suits and me in pink spandex trousers like the girls from Chic”

 

.. how Jerry Dammers created the cartoon 2-Tone look and the night radio played the first single

 

… and “a black man with a gun and a stage invasion” on the BBC’s Pebble Mill.

 

Order copies of ‘The Selecter At The BBC: The Complete Recordings 1979-1981’ here: https://theselecter.lnk.to/AtTheBBC

 

Tickets here: https://theselecter.net/live-dates/

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There’s a particular kind of conversation about music that happens between friends who’ve spent a lifetime immersed in it-not as distant critics, but as participants in the culture. That’s the atmosphere you’ll find in Word In Your Ear, a podcast from Mark Ellen, David Hepworth, and Alex Gold. With a collective eighty years of writing and broadcasting for titles like Smash Hits and Mojo, and shows from "The Old Grey Whistle Test" to VH-1, they don’t just recount history; they unpack the stories behind it with the ease of a shared laugh. This podcast grew naturally from their work on the late, great magazine The Word, where they began recording over thirteen years ago, building a dedicated following who found something genuinely special in the mix. Each episode weaves together music, commentary, history, and interviews, moving seamlessly from deep-dive analysis of a seminal album to a frank chat with a surprising guest, all delivered with the warmth and wit of a late-night chat. It feels less like a formal show and more like you’ve been invited to pull up a chair in a room where the anecdotes are plentiful and the expertise is worn lightly. The result is a consistently engaging listen that treats music not as a museum piece but as a living, breathing part of our lives.
Author: Language: English Episodes: 50

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