So Tell Me What You Want by Nicki Chapman review – breaking pop’s glass ceiling

The TV presenter and former music PR on her eventful rise through the ranks of a male-dominated industry

When she was in her early 20s, Nicki Chapman worked as a television assistant at a record label. Her job was to help promote the bands on the label’s roster by booking them on 1980s staples such as Top of the Pops or Surprise Surprise
. She was passionate about music and good at her job. But there was a problem: the industry was a boys’ club and the boys wanted it to stay that way. At one point she was told, “You’re never going to make it in this world, Nicki”, after failing to laugh obediently at a man’s joke.

As she gleefully points out in this easily digestible behind-the-scenes memoir, that prediction didn’t come true. Chapman, born in Herne Bay, a quiet seaside town in Kent, quickly made a name for herself in the big city, moving to London and up the music industry ranks. She worked with a who’s who of UK pop talent, from Take That to Annie Lennox, the Spice Girls to Amy Winehouse. She later became a TV star in her own right as a judge on entrepreneur and artist manager Simon Fuller’s prototype TV talent show Popstars and its follow-up Pop Idol. And while fellow panellists Nigel Lythgoe, Simon Cowell and Pete Waterman morphed into pantomime villains, Chapman was compassionate and nurturing. (She has since gone on to host TV’s most soothing balm, Escape to the Country.)

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