Shirlie and Martin Kemp
The Mid•Point with Gabby Logan
The Midpoint
4.3 • 1.6K Ratings
🗓️ 11 March 2026
⏱️ 47 minutes
🧾️ Download transcript
Summary
This week on The Midpoint we’re doing things a little differently. Instead of the usual conversation with one guest, Gabby is joined by one of the most enduring couples in British showbusiness: Martin Kemp and Shirlie Kemp.
Martin, best known as the bassist in Spandau Ballet and for his acting career, and Shirlie, former member of the pop duo Pepsi & Shirlie, have spent decades navigating fame, family life and the ups and downs that come with both.
In this episode, they talk openly about marriage, loyalty, and what it takes to grow together through life’s different chapters. From the intensity of their early pop careers to raising a family in the public eye and facing serious health challenges, Martin and Shirlie reflect on resilience, perspective and the strength that comes from partnership.
A warm, honest and often funny conversation about love, longevity and supporting each other through the many midpoints life throws our way.
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Transcript
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| 0:00.0 | Hello and welcome to the Midpoint. My guest today are woven into the best bits of my |
| 0:08.7 | cultural youth and quite probably yours. He was a member of one of my favourite childhood band Spandau |
| 0:14.2 | Ballet, still loved them, and she was half of Pepsi and Shirley, who of course had their own |
| 0:18.6 | singing success as a duo, but were perhaps more widely known as being the women that Wham, George and Shirley, who of course had their own singing success as a duo, but were perhaps more widely |
| 0:22.2 | known as being the women that Wham, George and Andrew, liked to hang out with as well as |
| 0:26.5 | using their videos and as backing singers and dancers. Now, if you were 12 years old in 1985, |
| 0:31.9 | then this made them women worth obsessing over and knowing. So now I've got the fangirling |
| 0:36.5 | bit over. We can move on. They've been married for nearly 38 years and have two grown-up kids, Harley Moon and Roman. So of course, I want to know how they're still married, why their kids are such lovely, well-adjusted people, as anyone could see if you watch them together on the last series of race around the world, and how they seem to have managed to have taken the best bits of being famous and skirt the worst. |
| 0:57.5 | Let's go meet Shirley and Martin. |
| 1:03.3 | Martin, Shirley, welcome to the midpoint, |
| 1:05.7 | although we've just had about a 45 minute chat, |
| 1:07.4 | I've done the podcast, we've got. |
| 1:09.4 | I'm exhausted already. |
| 1:12.5 | We've covered everything that I really want to get into. So where to start? Well, first of all, it's so great to have you both here, |
| 1:16.8 | because as I said in your introduction, you have managed to kind of walk this line of being |
| 1:21.9 | the nation's kind of favorite couple in terms of, I don't think anybody could say anything |
| 1:26.9 | about you that's, you know, |
| 1:28.3 | that's negative. You seem to be so well loved. You've stayed married nearly four decades. You've |
| 1:33.1 | got a couple more years to go to four decades. I think we're going to get there. And produce these |
| 1:38.1 | lovely humans as well along the way while still working within an industry that has so many pitfalls for couples like you. |
| 1:46.7 | So how'd you do it? |
| 1:48.4 | What's a secret? |
... |
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