‘I’m 70! So what?’ - CYNDI STILL WANT TO HAVE FUN

Time after time, the popstar surprises music lovers with her kinky comebacks

She’s not as famous as she used to be, but it makes no difference to Cyndi Lauper. “You can’t live your whole life worrying about staying famous,” muses the ’80s hitmaker. “If losing some fame means doing what you want, you gotta go with what you want.”

Getting what she wants is something Cyndi has always managed to achieve – although she’s the first to admit it hasn’t been easy.

On June 22, the colourful music icon hits a major milestone, marking 70 years on the planet, 40 of them as a household name, but her future was never so clear-cut when she was growing up poor on the outskirts of New York.

Her parents divorced when she was little and as teenagers, she and her sister Ellen lived in dread of their abusive stepfather. She feared him enough to keep the bedroom door locked.

At 17, she fled the family home and ended up living alone in a New York apartment, unable to afford food. Once, she ate a squirrel that her boyfriend shot.

“I thought, ‘Hmmm, there’s not a lot of meat,’” she remembers. “But I took whatever was there and chopped it up. Then I cut up an onion, put olive oil in a pan with some basil, a little garlic and a bay leaf, and sautéed the squirrel.”

Cyndi was determined to make a living as a musician and at one stage became the lead singer of a covers band. One night, one of her bandmates assaulted her while two others held her down.