The TWO women who came from Greece with a thirst for knowledge: As Pulp tour again… the guessing game continues over the true identity of the art student whose ‘dad was loaded’ from their biggest hit Common People
- Fans have been guessing for 28 years about the woman behind Common People
- Even Jarvis Cocker can’t recall the identity of the woman from the iconic song
- But the Pulp frontman has long insisted she IS real, and they met in the pub
It started in a supermarket. He wasn’t sure why, but he had to start it somewhere. So he started, there.
Nearly 30 years ago Pulp frontman Jarvis Cocker sang of his chance meeting with a Greek art student whose ‘dad was loaded’.
It took 30 seconds for her to ask for his help, confessing her dream to live a more downbeat existence among her peers at St Martin’s College, London.
He said he’d ‘see what he could do’… and the rest is history.
It’s NO Pulp fiction: Jarvis Cocker has always insisted he met the woman who inspired Pulp’s smash hit Common People during a chance meeting in a pub in the early 1990s. The song was sthe third on the band’s fifth studio album Different Class, which sold 1.5M copies in its first year, and saw them scoop the Mercury Prize in 1996.
Her father was certainly ‘loaded’: Danae Stratou is the daughter of wealthy industrialist and wife of former Greek Finance minister Yanis Varoufakis, pictured beside her at his 2017 book launch
The identity of the woman who inspired the band’s biggest hit remains a mystery as the Britpopers go back on tour this year, their diehard fans awaiting their chance to scream ‘you’ll never fail like common people’ in a mix of ire and ecstasy.
But the lingering question over the mystery identity has long left fans and followers guessing, with two women positioned as potential wannabe commoners to this day.
In 2015, Greek newspaper Athens Voice appeared to solve the mystery, revealing the smash hit may have been written about Danae Stratou, the wife of then Greek Finance minister Yanis Varoufakis.
She studied at Central Saint Martins between 1983 and 1988, the same year Cocker enrolled in a film studies course during a break from the band, according to the paper.
Ms Stratou’s father, Phaedon, was a super-wealthy industrialist and the family ran one of the country’s biggest textile firms.
Today, the 58-year-old is a visual and installation artist, who exhibits around the world, dividing her time between Greece and Texas.
Ms Stratou has not commented on the claims, but her husband has.
Asked about the report, Varoufakis told the BBC in 2015: “Well, I wouldn’t have known her back then. But I do know that she was the only Greek student of sculpture at Saint Martins College at that time.
‘And, from personal experience, she is a very fascinating person’.
The second woman whose name has come into the frame is Katerina Kana. She studied art at Saint Martins from 1990 to 1993.
Today, she lives Cyclades, Greece, and continues to produce art, exhibiting in galleries across Europe.
In 2012, she spoke to a Greek Magazine about meeting Cocker at a pub. The pair spent the evening chatting and drinking together.
She also came from Greece: Katerina Kana claims to have uttered the famous desire to live like ‘common people’ in a conversation with Jarvis Cocker in a Hackney pub in the early 1990s.
She said: ‘He was amazing and suddenly in the conversation I told him, ‘I wanna live like common people.
“That grew into something bigger than what happened that night. The song became the national anthem of an entire social order’.
Of her time in Britain, she recalled in the same interview, her ‘terrifying’ time at Saint Martin’s.
She said: ‘St Martin’s, which was a terrifying experience, not only in terms of the teaching staff but also the contact I had with my classmates.’
Cocker confirmed to NME in 2013 that he did indeed meet the Greek girl during ‘Crossover Fortnight’, when Saint Martins students switched into another discipline for two weeks.
In an interview with BBC Radio 5 Live, he told how he wrote the song after meeting the woman who told him that, while her father was wealthy, she wanted to live like ‘common people’.
He recalled: ‘I did meet this girl. She was at Saint Martin’s, doing a different course. We were at a bar and she was going on about how she wanted to go and live in Hackney with the common people.
‘And I thought, well, that’s a bit much. But I did fancy her, so I thought, am I going to let it go or shall I take her to task?
‘That’s where the reality of the song finishes… I wanted to get off with this girl but she wasn’t interested at all. She never said that to me.’
And, the puzzle continues for both the singer and his fans, with Cocker telling BBC Radio 4’s This Cultural Life only last year that her true identity remains a ‘mystery’ to him, because he has no memory of her.
I Spy: Jarvis Cocker was among the stars at the funeral of legendary fashion designer Vivienne Westwood at Southwark Cathedral on Thursday, February 16
He said: ‘We went to the pub and she just came out with that she wanted to live in Hackney with common people.
‘In 2011 we played at St Martin’s and someone showed me a picture on their phone and said, ‘Is that the girl you wrote the song about?’ I went, ‘Yeah, I think it is’.
‘Unfortunately, I didn’t ask them for the picture and I can’t remember who showed it to me so it’s still a mystery’.
Described as the album that defined an era, Different Class was the band’s fifth studio release in 1995, selling 1.5million copies in the year to follow.
It’s third track, Common People, the lead single reached number two in the charts – and it remains the song that most, if not all, will most closely associate with the Britpop icons.
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