‘I shared a bottle of wine with Michael Jackson’

The musician and actor, 61, tells Miranda Thompson about Christmas Babychams, why he can’t stomach peach schnapps and the night out with a legend that he’s only just remembered

My Life in drinks

We never used to have any money. I grew up with my parents [Frank and Eileen] and brother Gary [also in Spandau Ballet] in a three-storey Georgian house in the middle of Islington that had been left to rot. I remember drinking R White’s cherryade. It came in a big glass bottle, and if you took the empty bottle back to the shop, you’d get your tuppence back. The cherryade and tuppence went hand in hand for me, so that’s always been a favourite memory.

My first taste of alcohol was a Babycham at Christmas.

I was about eight years old – I remember it was very sweet, fizzy and made me screw up my face. It was like the prosecco of the early 1970s. Our drinks cabinet at home used to have two champagne glasses with the Babycham deer logo. Looking back, I don’t know how my parents even gave us a Christmas, because they had next to nothing. It makes me very proud that they put it together for us.

The first pub I hung out at was next to where I used to go for my weekly bath. We never had a bathroom, so my dad had to take us to Tibberton Baths once a week. I remember sitting in a bath and shouting to a man outside that I needed more hot water. It was the strangest thing. Across the road was the Tibberton Arms and I started going there with school friends when I was about 15. The big drink back then was snakebite and black (lager and cider with blackcurrant cordial). In the late 70s the pubs lost their pianos and put on pop music instead – they became disco pubs.

I like my tea to be PG Tips. Quite strong, with milk, no sugar. That’s my first drink of the day.

An ‘old-fashioned’ reminds me of Spandau Ballet days in the early 80s. Our rider used to have bottles of Jack Daniel’s, and every night we would drink it on the rocks. An old-fashioned, which is a bourbon-based cocktail, takes me straight back to those times.

My first drink with my wife Shirlie was a bottle of lager, with a tequila chaser. I’d seen Wham! on Top of The Pops in 1983, and I couldn’t take my eyes off her (Shirlie was their backing singer). Two weeks later we were

at some VIP screening and there she was. Our first date was at the Camden Palace, on the main drag in Camden. As I was walking down Camden High Street, I saw Shirlie standing on the corner and my heart sank because she had brought her mate – and her mate was George Michael. We spent the evening trying to lose him.

Spandau always used to sing ‘When Your Old Wedding Ring Was New’ when we were drunk. It’s an old pub song. My first experience of music was from the pub I grew up next to, the Duke of Clarence. On Saturday nights I used to lie in bed listening to ‘Roll Out the Barrel’ and ‘Knees Up, Mother Brown!’.

The first time I went to Australia, it felt like we’d left the planet. The world has shrunk a lot since Spandau went there in the middle of the 80s. All our parents came to see us off at the airport because it was so far away – you didn’t just go to visit back in the day, you went to stay there. We all went down to Sydney Harbour – wives and girlfriends too – and caught a boat around the bay and opened some champagne.

I completely forgot I went on a night out with Michael Jackson. I was reminded by someone at a Q&A in Wales a few years ago. I’d been with Steve Strange of [pop group] Visage, who was a good friend of mine, and he took me to a club called Legends where we met up with Michael Jackson and his manager. After an hour we walked down Tottenham Court Road together to another club called Limelight. It must have been in 1980, after he’d released Off the Wall. I remember he was quite shy, and that we shared a bottle of wine. But what was more unbelievable was the fact I’d forgotten about it!

‘On our first date, my heart sank because Shirlie had brought her mate George Michael’

We have two fridges in my house. One is stocked with champagne – I always ask for a bottle when I do my 80s throwback shows across the country so I can take it home to Shirlie. Then she doesn’t mind me going out. The other has pinot grigio that I buy from Sainsbury’s. It’s about £8 a bottle.

Alcohol still makes me screw up my face sometimes. I hardly drink nowadays. Spandau was a proper drinking band; it was the 80s, everything was done to excess. I always look back and think, we were like five boys who went to Benidorm for ten years. We reached a point where we were all drinking far too much. One night in 1988 I couldn’t go to sleep because I’d realised there was a magnum of champagne out that someone had given to me. I had to get up and pour it down the toilet because it was playing on my mind. That was the turning point for me, when I started to cut back on alcohol.

I can’t stand peach schnapps. You know how sometimes you only have to get drunk on something once and you can’t face it any more? In 1984 and 1985, Spandau spent a long time in Munich recording two albums and it was one of the drinks everyone used to have in Germany. To this day, it makes me feel ill if anyone has it.

I’d love to have had a drink with Neil Armstrong. A few years ago I was lucky enough to meet Buzz Aldrin, the second man on the moon, on a TV show. His stories were the best ever. It was the most confusing conversation I’ve ever had, because I couldn’t stop looking at his feet. They’d walked on the moon!

I’d like people to toast me with Jack Daniel’s at my funeral.

It would take people back to the 80s and the height of my days as a rock and roller.

Martin Kemp’s new book, Ticket to the World, is published by Harpercollins, £22*