Sunday Express Interview 1
Gary Kemp is getting on famously with his ex-wife Sadie Frost and her husband Jude Law but, he tells David Stephenson, he’d be even happier if he could re-unite his former band Spandau Ballet after the bitter court battle that left their friendship in tatters.
Continued
Eighties pop icon Gary Kemp is not the sort of man to bear a grudge. And he has every reason to feel a touch hurt. In the space of a few years in the late Nineties, his ex-wife Sadie Frost left him for the actor Jude Law while three of his fellow Spandau Ballet band members sued him for royalties in a bitter court battle. But both of these events, with the emotional baggage that goes with them, appear not to have left him feeling hurt or betrayed. Quite the opposite, in fact.
  Kemp is blessed with a forward-looking and forgiving character. He’s no saint, but he’s always keen to move on to the next chapter, which includes the release next month of Reformation, a new three-CD compilation, together with the screening of a new documentary about Spandau Ballet on ITV1. But, most importantly, five years after his divorce from Frost, Kemp has found love again with advertising stylist Lauren Barber.
  “It’s the first proper, full-on loving relationship since my marriage,” he tells me. “We’ve been together for two-and-a-half years and we’ve just moved into a house in the centre of London W1.”
  But the most extraordinary aspect to this relationship is how well everyone gets on in Kemp’s modern, extended family. It would gladden the heart of every marriage counsellor.
  “It’s great, because Lauren gets on really well with Sadie and Jude. We all seem to have a really nice family life with the kids. It’s very cool.”
At the centre of this coolness is 11-year-old Finlay, Kemp’s son from his marriage to Frost. The performer is wary about going into too much detail, but says the situation is very amicable.
  “I don’t want it to seem like I’m using them for publicity, but Jude and I put our families first, so being fathers is really high on our priority list.  It’s the thing we bond over. We share children, so it’s really important that we get on. I don’t have time for people who won’t eat humble pie and get to make their relationships with their exes work.
  “It’s just so important for the children because if there’s no communication between their divorced parents, it puts so much pressure on them. Of course, Finlay loves Jude and of course Finlay loves me. If we didn’t get on if would be such a dilemma for him.”
  Kemp says there are rewards for making an effort. “You end up having fantastic get-togethers. We often spend time together with all the kids and Jude. I like nothing more than watching our two boys (Finlay and Jude’s son Rafferty) playing together and Sadie does, too.”
  Happy families indeed. If only the same could be said of his relationship with his former band members. With the exception of his now more famous brother, former Eastender Martin Kemp, the Spandau Ballet boys don’t get on. At all. This was lead singer Tony Hadley’s generous response to seeing Gary Kemp recently at a celebrity event: “I’m telling you, **** off or else!” As snubs go, it was fairly complete. The court case, in 1999, centred on who owned the rights to not only the name Spandau Ballet, but also the band’s many hits, such as True and Gold.
  As the songwriter, Kemp claimed he held them, while Hadley, Steve Norman and John Keeble thought otherwise. The trio claimed Kemp had agreed, before any records were made, that he would give them money from the publishing rights for the rest of their lives.