Perfect timing

Singer Eddi Reader and Mark Nevin tell how the 1980s chart-toppers have buried the hatchet and are about to embark on a tour of Japan - where it all ended 35 years ago

- PAUL ENGLISH

THEY pressed pause on huge success at the height of their powers 35 years ago in Japan.

Now Eddi Reader and her band Fairground Attraction are climbing back on the carousel-by returning to the place where it all fell apart.

The band, who scored a Nol hit with their debut single Perfect in 1989, patched up their differences earlier this year to announce a surprise tour of the Far East in July.

Eddi said: "We only intended to go back to Japan and do a few gigs there, because that's where we split up.

"It will be good to go back and depress the pause button we pressed there all those years ago, and start where we left off.

That will be wild for us to do that again." In the space of a year, Fairground Attraction sold three million records, won two Brit Awards - then split up and didn't speak for three decades.

But now Eddi Reader and Mark Nevin have buried the hatchet, returning to the scene of their end to start again 35 years later.

The songwriter and singer behind the Brit award-winning album First of A Million Kisses have finally reunited with bandmates Roy Dobbs and Simon Edward to record a follow-up with a UK tour later this year.

And it's all because of a love story about two cowboys.

Speaking exclusively to the Record, Eddi said: "I was working in theatre in London last year, as the singer in the stage version of Brokeback Mountain.

"I was working with people who were our age when we had released Perfect and was thinking how you make so many big decisions at that age and you can lose so much without paying attention. I decided I wasn't going to let this lifetime go by without these people reconnecting to