Magenta Devine obituary: Face of ‘yoof tv’ in the 1980s and 90s

Magenta Devine (Kim Taylor)

Born: November 4th, 1957

Died: March 6th, 2019

Magenta Devine, who has died aged 61 after a brief illness, was Britain’s most recognisable youth TV presenter of the 1980s and 90s, with the highly influential travel show Rough Guide, but she was also a champion observer and storyteller, a skill that would set her apart from many “yoof” presenters of that period.

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Her red lipstick and imperious resting face could have been extracted from Robert Palmer’s Addicted to Love video, while the sunglasses added an extra layer of hauteur, yet there was composure and intelligence cogitating beneath the impressive surface.

Punk anti-heroes

This was first given full rein when she landed a presenting job on Janet Street-Porter’s hip new magazine programme, Network 7, in 1987, for Channel 4, and was interviewing punk anti-heroes such as the former Sex Pistol John Lydon – not as an acolyte, but as an equal. She was the embodiment of cool herself by then, and her encounters with the stars were turned into well-prepared pieces of journalism – this at a time when many of her peers were have-a-go types chosen for ambition and looks.

Even in youth programming airheads did not last long, and Devine’s run at the top attests to her ability: a year after Network 7, Street-Porter took her protege with her to BBC2 and her Def II show, where Devine hosted the Reportage slot, alongside the future Channel 4 broadcaster Krishnan Guru-Murthy; and its Rough Guide travel segment. This was successful enough to be given its own series, which ran until 1996.

As co-host, with Sankha Guha, her broadcasts from Saigon, Havana, Rio and other destinations helped to pique young Britons’ curiosity about long-haul, non-resort travel before the gap year became a required middle-class rite. Devine gave hip-but-informative depictions of exotica such as Ho Chi Minh City’s horseracing scene, through which she strode like a black-clad wading bird.

Star descended

Her star descended in the mid-90s following heroin addiction and rehab – the latter being “a complete waste of money” according to Devine – and by 2005 she had reached the point where she agreed to spend a week “purging her body” on the reality show Extreme Celebrity Detox.

Born Kim Taylor in Hemel Hempstead, Hertfordshire, she had a happy, comfortable childhood with “fantastic, loving parents” – her father, Gerald, owned the Taylor and McKenna hobby-store chain, and her mother was a former model.

By the mid-70s Kim had become fascinated by the punk scene unfolding in London, but, closer to home, was not averse to hanging around a folk club run by the musician John Otway in Aylesbury. Its denizens, who included music journalists Kris Needs and Pete Frame, saluted her then vibrant dyed hair by nicknaming her Magenta, but the hair was the least of it: she was a head-to-toe fashion plate who carried a cigarette holder and wore sequined cocktail dresses around the provincial town to startling effect.

She was then a contributor to a fanzine titled the Aylesbury Roxette, which ran her musings in a column called Slinking Around With Magenta De Vine (it later changed to Devine). “I have to confess that for once in my life I had CLEAN forgotten about my monthly bitch due to other PRESSING engagements, but once reminded I endeavoured to ETCH a few syllables,” she wrote in 1977.

Cool music crowd

The column was a precis of her social life, which was lived on the periphery of London’s cool music crowd. “Yes, kittie-puffs … it was rather surprising to see young punks like the Pistols, Clash and Heartbreakers LAUGHING at the bar … and terribly SWEET young men they are too, even if they don’t have any awe-inspiring things to say. I spend much of my time CHATTING to Angie Bowie.”

The column got her noticed outside Aylesbury, and she was offered a job by Tony Brainsby, press officer for Paul McCartney and Queen, among others.

By then she had set up home in London with her boyfriend, Tony James, later of the band Sigue Sigue Sputnik; when Sputnik took off in 1985, she became their publicist. Brainsby’s staff were tasked with phoning her at 10 every morning to wake her, which prodded her into arriving at the office by noon, “always in shades and a military hat”, said a former colleague.

Devine’s break on Street-Porter’s Sunday lunchtime current affairs show, Network 7, made her nationally famous, but with celebrity came exposure to a drugs lifestyle, and she began to use heroin, which ultimately did for her career. “I started taking heroin simply because I was mixing with other people who took drugs without appearing to show any ill-effects,” she said.

Husky tones

Her distinct, husky tones meant she was still able to find voiceover work in ads, and her name still had enough currency to see her appointed a UN goodwill ambassador, for women’s equality and reproductive rights, in 1998.

In the early 2000s she hosted the reality show Young Gifted and Broke, but in 2003, ironically, she declared bankruptcy.

She is survived by her father, and her siblings, Gillian, Georgina and Nicholas.