Attempting to sing again was nerve-racking ...I know I won’t look, sound or dance the same
did. It was the worst timing. Jay and two of her original Bucks Fizz bandmates, Cheryl Baker, 64, and Mike Nolan, 63, had been performing successfully as new band The Fizz, and working on an album deal with legendary pop producer Mike Stock.
Before her biopsy, Jay recorded vocals so she could mime at gigs. She continued to do so ahead of her operation and the band brought forward recording time in the studio, unsure if
Jay would sing again.
She describes coming round in intensive care after the surgery in a “fog” of drugs. “I had tubes coming out of me everywhere. I was on a drip, I had a feed through my nose, I had drains in my neck and leg, and the tracheotomy. The first week was really grim. “After day four, the pain really kicked in. I couldn’t sleep and I couldn’t drink.” Initially, she wouldn’t even let her daughter visit, saying: “I wasn’t a pretty sight.”
All the time the tracheal tube was in, Jay was unable to speak. She says: “The nurses give you a white board. I did a lot of writing and wiping. Basic stuff like: I need to go to the loo.” Returning home 10 days after surgery, Jay survived on “mash and soup”.
It is only in the past week that she has been able to try solid food. She has energetic days and others where she stays in bed, exhausted.
And she says that Cheryl and Mike have been extremely supportive.
In the past, the group weren’t always so close. Jay originally left Bucks Fizz in 1985, four years after they won Eurovision with Making Your Mind Up.
There were years of acrimony around contractual disputes and she did not speak to Cheryl for 23 years. After the band re-formed in 2004, Mike, Jay and Cheryl became embroiled in a legal feud with Bobby G, 65, one of the original members.
His wife Heidi Manton, who joined the group after Jay left, had trademarked the name Bucks Fizz.
But Jay says they are now closer than ever and reveals that although the band has been forced to perform a string of gigs in her absence and hire two backing singers to cover her, they have insisted on paying her. “Mike said, ‘We don’t want you to have any more stress’ and financial stress would have been difficult.”
In return, Jay has stayed involved with artwork for album covers, chosen costumes and is even determined to join The Fizz for a short set in October although she will need to mime.
She keeps upbeat by appreciating the little things she feared she would lose.
“The first time Dave took me out in the car, I just cried,” she recalls. “Seeing the trees and the sun. It makes you realise how we take everything for granted.”
One thing’s for sure – she is adamant that whatever the future holds for her voice, once her leg is strong enough, she will join Cheryl for that famous Fizz skirt-ripping routine once again.
“I’ll just put two pairs of tights on – that’ll cover the scar a treat,” she laughs.