Tag: Noreen Rees

Listening back to my interview with musician and writer Julie Grant, a popular nineties song comes to mind; ‘Tubthumping’ by Chumbawamba, famous for its rousing refrain: ‘I get knocked down / But I get up again / You’re never gonna keep me down.’ The professional life of Julie Grant is less a career and more a sustained act of insurgency. From a fractured family start in North Shields, where she felt like an uninvited guest, to a high-speed emergence onto the national music scene, and later, infiltrating the ranks of television’s national institutions, Grant has consistently operated on her own terms. She is the epitome of the 'gatecrasher'- a term that perfectly suits her upcoming memoir - entering elite, often London-centric, creative spaces without shedding her integrity or her regional roots.