Debbie Wilson
Debbie Wilson (aka Debbie Juvenile, Little Debbie and Debbie Destroy) was from Burnt Oak North London and was a small teenage peroxide blonde with an outgoing streetwise personality and incredibly photogenic as the many pictures of her show. Her tale though isn’t all sweetness and punky features, there’s horrific experiences and all time lows, before a punk lifeline and then sadly death way too early.
She was a close friend of Siouxsie and Tracie O’Keefe and a member of the Bromley Contingent. She was involved in some of the key punk moments including the ‘Wreckers of Civilisation’ Prostitution exhibition at the ICA in 1976, attending the club Louise’s, selling ‘Anarchy in the UK’ mags on the Sex Pistols infamous ‘Anarchy’ tour of 1977, the Roxy Club and being arrested with friend Tracie at the Jubilee boat party arrest.
She used to work as a shop assistant in Vivienne Westwood & Malcolm McLaren’s Seditionaries in London again with best friend Tracie but by mid-1978 had been sacked and Tracie had died tragically young.
Debbie chips in: “She makes enormous profits. She sells T-shirts for four quid and they only cost a quid to make. I was sacked. She doesn’t explain the dismissals but her loyal friendship with John obviously didn’t enamour her with Viv. Record Mirror, 6.5.78
Debbie Wilson in Seditionaries – Photo Credit?
Jamie Reid used her image for the song No Feelings on his poster for the classic 1977 album Never Mind The Bollocks. She also appears briefly at the Roxy Club in Don Letts’ Punk Rock Movie.
Debbie Wilson can also be seen singing backing vocals with Steve and Sid during their rendition of The Great Rock ‘n’ Roll Swindle in the film of the same name at around the 1.41 mark. She was earmarked for a larger part in the film along with John Lydon under original director Russ Meyer.
John [Lydon]: “Do you know what they wanted us to do in Meyer’s movie? Have it off in a telephone box. I mean – how twee can you get? They imagined we wanted to have it off with each other so they were going to arrange it for us.”
Says Debbie: “I was supposed to stand on a crate of beer.” Record Mirror, 6.5.78
There was however a darker side to her life that she got pulled into. Through attending the club Louise’s she mixed and became friends with people like dominatrix sex worker Linda Ashby who also became part of the nascent punk scene. Both Debbie and Tracie also got involved in the sex trade which as Bertie Marshall in his book Berlin Bromley recalls, consisted of ‘clipping’ and a spot of prostitution.
Bertie Marshall Tracey [O’Keefe] and Debbie had been ‘clipping’ in Soho. Clipping meant luring some old sod up an alleyway to have sex, then grabbing his money and running like buggery – if the punter got stroppy, you just kneed him in the balls.
Odd thing about prostitution was it seemed to be catching; Blanch, Jon. P, me and now Little Debbie and Tracey were doing it, parading up Park Lane, outside the Hilton Hotel. What a bizarre and exotic pack of whore hounds we were.
Debbie Wilson People think the early days of Punk were all banging along at Sex Pistols gigs. But for me it was camping it up down Park Lane with a gang of trannies. All my friends John, Blanche, Tracey [O’Keefe], Berlin were on the game. Linda [Ashby] of course was on the whipping sessions. It was all in Park Lane: it was the most outrageous place in the world. All these queens going round in Punk gear and black leather going ‘Oooooooh!’ They actually became quite famous down there; it got to the stage where prostitution wasn’t that bad a thing to do. It became part of the new London. England’s Dreaming – Jon Savage
While these quotes in 2006 and 1991 respectively might have sounded like it was fun, a two-page feature in the magazine 19 (a glossy monthly magazine for 16-19 years old young women that ran from 1968 for 36 years) in the early Eighties revealed her horrific experiences as a prostitute which included being raped.
The article also had a couple of photos of Debbie at the time including the rather surreal one on the right where Debbie is standing in Soho and in what looks like its unstaged catches a punter transacting with a prostitute in the background.
Unlike virtually every other face at the time, She never sold her memoirs and seemingly disappeared. Mick Mercer’s fanzine Panache 13 from 1980 featured a Siouxsie & the Banshees interview where they talked about where members of the Bromley Contingent were now.
Severin: Debbie writes for Men Only
Su: No she doesn’t now. She’s a telphonist at Paul Raymonds Revue Bar
The photo below from 1980’s is likely to be Debbie and from the magazine Men Only (for readers Men Only was a soft porn publication published by Paul Raymond. French lessons is prostitution slang for blowjobs and the Raymond Revue Bar was a strip club in Soho).
Thankfully she escaped this life and it would be punk that would give her an entry into working in the film industry.
This came via Alex Cox who got in touch with Debbie while writing Sid and Nancy and also worked with Daoud Sarhandi on the editing of the film. She was also involved in the making-of documentary England’s Glory (about the making of Sid And Nancy), produced by Alex Cox and directed by Martin Turner.
From there she continued and her work included set design on the series ‘Little Dorritt’ and prop buyer on films like ‘The Deep Blue Sea.’
“Punk made me want to go and do things, it gave me a chance to see another life. It’s definitely had a lasting effect on me, everything I’ve done since hs related to it in some way.” Debbie Wilson has been working in films for the last couple of years and has just completed research and art department work on the Sid’ n’ Nancy biopic, Love Kills. The Face, February 1986
She really was stunningly photogenic, but out of all the pictures the one below on the right in the PIL t-shirt, and one of the latest taken of her around late 1978, is Punk77’s favourite.
Sadly Debbie Wilson died young in the summer of 2011, having never told any of her colleagues how ill she was.
Photo Credit Left – Peter Stone Mirrorpix – Right??
TalkPunk
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