Nick Heyward Fantastic Days: Fame, Fallout and Finding the Way Back

About

In the early 1980s, Nick Heyward seemed to have everything. As frontman and principal songwriter of Haircut One Hundred, he went from playing with school friends to becoming one of Britain's biggest pop stars with astonishing speed. The band scored four Top 10 singles, including Favourite Shirts (Boy Meets Girl), Love Plus One, Fantastic Day and Nobody's Fool, while their debut album Pelican West reached number two and went platinum.Heyward's face appeared on countless magazine covers and a million teenage bedroom walls. It seemed that all his childhood dreams had come true.Less than two years after Haircut One Hundred signed to Arista, however, Heyward had left the band. Behind the exuberant songs, sharp clothes and seemingly effortless success lay a much more complicated story of ambition, jealousy, depression and the pressures of sudden fame.In this revealing talk, based on his long-awaited autobiography, Fantastic Days, Heyward tells that story with candour, self-deprecation and infectious good humour. He reflects on the extraordinary exhilaration of early success and the painful transition from pop heartthrob to commercial outsider; his solo career; his signing to Alan McGee's Creation Records in 1998, where he was embraced by a new generation of musicians and celebrated as an influence on Britpop; and the personal and spiritual journey that followed.As Heyward puts it: "Underneath it all they've all been fantastic days, but I had to find that out the hard way."And the story has now acquired an extraordinary new chapter. More than four decades after Pelican West, Haircut One Hundred reunited, returned to the stage and in 2026 released Boxing the Compass, their first new studio album with Heyward since 1982.Nick Heyward joins us to discuss the exhilaration and cost of fame, what really happened inside Haircut One Hundred, depression and recovery, songwriting, Britpop and the changing music industry - and why sometimes it takes a lifetime to understand your own Fantastic Days.Nick Heyward is a singer, songwriter and musician best known as the frontman and principal songwriter of Haircut One Hundred. Their 1982 debut album Pelican West reached number two in the UK and produced a remarkable run of hit singles, establishing Heyward as one of the defining faces and songwriters of early-1980s British pop.After leaving the band, he established a successful solo career, beginning with hits including Whistle Down the Wind, and went on to build a devoted following for his distinctive melodic songwriting. In the 1990s he signed to Alan McGee's Creation Records, winning a new generation of admirers during the Britpop era.In recent years Heyward has reunited with Haircut One Hundred. Their return culminated in a successful series of concerts and the June 2026 release of Boxing the Compass, their long-awaited first studio album together in more than forty years. A new career-spanning compilation, The Essential Nick Heyward, is also being released in November 2026, and Heyward is working on new solo material.A Q&A session will follow.