Monday, 06 October 2025

Tiffany the teenage pop star who’s all grown-up

Tiffany the teenage pop star who’s all grown-up

SINGER Tiffany was just 16 when she had her only UK
No 1 in 1988, so wasn’t able to celebrate with anything stronger than a soft drink.

While her famous friends went to the pub, the American pop star had to stay in her hotel room.

But she will be able to make up for lost time when she and her Eighties contemporaries are reunited at Rewind South.

Now 52, Tiffany lives in Nashville and is still recording music and also works as an actress and is a talented chef.

She is looking forward to appearing on stage with the likes of Kim Wilde, Nik Kershaw and Billy Ocean.

“What I love about doing the Rewind Festival is I’m a fan as well,” she says.

“When I met a lot of these artists, I was only 15 or 16, so I would do shows with them but they were in their early twenties, so everybody was doing their thing, hanging at the pub while I was put up in a hotel room and didn’t get a chance to really talk to them.

“Now I’m grown up and I get to see my favourites still releasing music and being amazing on stage.

“People like Howard Jones, Kim Wilde, T’Pau, I’ve worked with them and now I actually get to sit down and have a glass of wine with them and get to know them. It’s fun to see them every year and go, ‘Oh, hi’, especially Kim Wilde.”

Tiffany, whose surname is Darwish, covered the Tommy James and the Shondells song I Think We’re Alone Now and also had top 10 hits with Could’ve Been and a cover of the Beatles’ I Saw Her Standing There.

She and Wilde were both signed to MCA Records.

Tiffany recalls: “I spent a lot of time with Kim as she was my label mate and we always had somebody around from the label — we called them our ‘handlers’. We had the same handler, called Maura, who was lovely.

“Kim’s beautiful, talented, a hard worker and has stayed in the game, so she’s definitely somebody that I look up to as a female.”

Nowadays, she enjoys watching the other evergreen stars from the side of the stage when they’re appearing together.

“I think maybe they kind of got the message that I just love to do that,” says Tiffany.

“I always have my little spot and got to see Kim of course. She was fantastic and the red outfit she was popping was off the hook.

“Billy Ocean was also fantastic. I got to see him in Florida. I had just finished my show at Epcot and he was going to be taking over the stage so I got to see his sound check.

“I’d never met him and he was so wonderful and kind and down to earth so it was really a treat to see his whole set. He is an amazing entertainer.”

She will have friends and family with her at Rewind.

“We’re going to have a good time,” says Tiffany. “It’s so easy to perform because everybody’s there ready to rock and to sing and just share in the moment with you. Everybody likes to do the dance moves and it’s still with me.

“The other day I looked at some old pictures that a fan showed me and even though it was a while ago it seemed like just yesterday, you know? There’s something about Eighties music that is fun — a good Eighties song that makes you smile and you just start singing along.

“For me it’s comforting because I grew up in the Eighties.

“It’s great to see the youth of today embrace the Eighties, even the fashion. People are wearing jean jackets and doing patches on them again and even stuff like mom jeans came back — I mean, that’s so old school.”

Her own music — she has recorded 11 albums — has developed since she first found fame.

Tiffany says: “I’ve been touring a lot in America and then I brought the band over here last year.

“We did a few shows where it’s more the new music, which is kind of rock retro, you know, it’s got an Eighties flair to it but definitely has more of a rock production, so a little bit of Foo Fighters, kind of Blondie.

“We will be doing that again next year and I have a greatest hits album coming out.”

So how does her music career fit in with her love of cooking? She says: “I’ve been cheffing for a long time and I started a company called Let’s Food with Tiffany. I did some stuff with the Food Network.

“It’s something that I love to do for therapy really. When I’m off the road I just immerse myself in my kitchen as I love to feed people.

“Living in Tennessee, I love to have barbecues and have people over. I come from a long line of women that love to entertain, you know, my grandmothers, my mum.

“Being on the road full time, I can’t eat processed food or late at night, so I started a thing called Feeding the Band, where I would turn on the camera and the fans would see us behind the scenes and get to know the band and what I was cooking.

“Now I have a couple of cook books coming out, Breakfast with Tiffany, and one next year called Pop Life, with a celebrity chef in Vegas, which is all about your fun after-school special foods, you know, kind of snacks but reworked. I call it zhuzhed up.”

Tiffany also recently launched her own menu at the Camden Club, a restaurant, bar and live music venue in Chalk Farm, north
London.

“They are featuring my food and I’m over the moon,” she says. “You can go have the Tiffany Burger, you can have the Tpop Thai turkey burger or the Mediterranean Portobello mushroom for all things veggie.

“I do these things called ‘Tiff takeovers’, where it’s an intimate experience, the fans get to see me as I go walking from table to table chatting and they get to taste my food.

“The first night was a big breakthrough for me and I started bursting into tears. I was like, ‘This is just like winning a Grammy, it’s amazing’.”

• Tiffany plays Rewind South at Temple Island Meadows, Remenham, on Saturday, August 17. For more information and to buy tickets, visit south.rewindfestival.com

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