Singer and money not easily parted

EVEN at the height of her fame as lead singer of T’Pau, Carol Decker never frittered her money away.

But in later life she admits to buying a lot of “nonsense” online.

Carol, 66, who lives in Henley, told website This is Money: “I remember my father quoting me a famous line from Hamlet: ‘Neither a borrower nor a lender be’ and I’ve always liked to live within my means. So even at the height of T’Pau’s success I didn’t go crazy.

“My attitude to money was influenced by my upbringing — I spent my first couple of years in a Liverpool council flat. But my dad worked his way up to become a supermarket manager, so we moved to Shropshire when I was seven and he bought us a three-bedroom house in the late Sixties for less than £3,000. What would that buy now?”

Carol “blew” her A-levels so didn’t go to university and ended up doing a series of dead-end jobs. Then, aged 22, she decided to make it in music with her boyfriend Ronnie Rodgers, the rhythm guitarist with whom she wrote hits including China in Your Hand.

She recalled: “I was so broke at one point I had to watch telly in my sleeping bag to stay warm because there was ice on the inside of the windows of my chilly Shrewsbury flat.”

When the royalty cheques started flowing she bought a three-storey town house, mortgage-free, near London’s Hampstead Heath for about £200,000, plus a 10-acre farm near Monmouth.

When Carol and Ronnie split up, he kept the farm and she kept the London house, which she sold in 2005 for almost £1million, which she described as the best money decision she has made.

She now lives in a bungalow with an outdoor swimming pool and a half-acre of land with husband Richard Coates, a restaurateur, and their two children.

The most expensive thing she has ever bought for fun was a new, silver Mazda MX-5 which she described as a “real head-turner in its day”. This cost £16,000 in 1990.

“It was the first car I bought,” she said. “I didn’t pass my driving test until I was 33. I used to race around the lanes of Monmouthshire and drive around with the roof down, showing off.”

When it comes to money mistakes, Carol said she can’t help buying cleaning products.

She said: “I keep being suckered into buying cleaning gadgets online that claim they’re going to change my life but turn out to be rubbish.

“I lately bought a chargeable, lightweight patio cleaner on the web for £60 that looked nice but turned out to be a glorified hair dryer. I must spend £500 a year buying nonsense online. Perhaps I need therapy.”

Carol says her number one financial priority is to ensure she has enough money for when she stops touring but added: “My husband’s seven years younger, so he can pick up the slack and work until he drops.”