Katie Puckrik first came to nationwide attention in the early 90s, on the infamous Channel 4 show The Word. In a career spanning over 40 years, she has played a huge variety of roles - performing as a dancer with Michael Clark and The Pet Shop Boys; as a broadcaster on national television and radio; as a columnist and YouTuber with a niche in perfume critique; and podcaster in pop history. Her latest incarnation as a frontwoman with a live punk supergroup sees her singing the hits of Iggy Pop on the Lust for Life tour.

We attempt to join up the dots of Katie's extraordinary life, discuss the parallels of perfume and whisky, and unveil her secret backstage Japanese cask-strength ritual.

We're huddled in a cosy corner of one of Katie Puckrik's favourite cafes in Bloomsbury, central London. Katie is reflecting on our cover shoot in the iconic Barbican building the previous day.

"It's funny how, with the advent of smartphones, everyone has become a performer. I was aware that there we were in a public place, dolled up to the nines, throwing shapes, and nobody was really paying any attention to us because everyone is so used to people making podcasts and mini TV shows on the street.

"That venue, too. There's something so aspirational about the time right before you were born, or when you were too young to fully understand the mysteries of adulthood and for me, The Barbican Centre symbolises that - the glamourous Martini Bar. A martini is my favourite cocktail, I love a straight vodka martini with a twist with an Italian aromatic vermouth. Drinking a martini, or a whisky, or any of these 'adult drinks' in a space like that, makes me think 'wouldn't it have been wonderful to have been a grown-up in the 50s or 60s'. So getting myself all dressed up and being very playful in here was my chance to indulge in this fantasy.

The Barbican also being a theatre and art gallery seemed apt, too.

My factory settings are that I love to perform, to entertain. It's about transmitting joy and sweeping other people up in my enthusiasms. And I have a lot of enthusiasms. I love sensory overload, I love anything that enhances and elevates any experience, so if it's a great whisky, a beautiful garment, a lovely location, a passionate performance - all those things that make you feel more, that's what I'm all about.

It's impossible to describe you as one thing - you're a bit of a polymath. Perhaps what links it all together is a desire to express creative ideas. You've always been surrounded by iconoclasts and punks and people who disrupt their art forms - is your comfort zone actually about being out of your comfort zone?

I hadn't ever thought of it that way but there is definitely something to that. I enjoy extremes, but I'm not an extreme person. I'm not someone like an Iggy Pop in his 20s type character, someone who just loses themself. I don't want to lose myself, I want to be really present and part of what is going on. Whether it's as a dancer or as a writer or as a perfume critic who makes the invisible visible, or broadcasting where I'm meeting inspirational people.

I like being challenged, and trying new things and I don't mind being scared. I also things and I don't mind being scared. I also enjoy that sense of vulnerability. When I was touring with the Lust for Life band, that was something where I knew the material, I rehearsed with the band, but it wasn't until we got on the stage on the first night that I understood what it was - the missing ingredient was the audience and the communion that we make...

You described it in your tour diary published in ES Magazine as "like an anxiety dream"?

It's always nerve-wracking to make yourself vulnerable and accessible to being judged, but what's even more thrilling is to have this unique experience that you wouldn't have had unless you put yourself out on the line like that.

There's an incredible lineage of people you've worked with. Your first jobs before TV were with Michael Clark (ballet dancer/choreographer), Leigh Bowery (costume designer), The Fall, and then The Pet Shop Boys, who are all icons. That might have been enough for some people!

It's amazing when I look back on my career, it seems very curated, like 'oh, you know I need to tick off these cultural icons to work with'. But really, it was dumb luck. I moved to London from Virginia when I was in my early 20s, and was working as a contemporary dancer and wanted to be a pop singer. I just happened to do a workshop with DV8 physical theatre, which was a lucky break, and similarly I did a workshop in Glasgow in 1987 with Michael Clark, and I was brought into the I am Curious Orange run - his collaboration with The Fall - at Sadler's Wells.

From there I got together with Jacob Marley, who was the choreographer for The Pet Shop Boys' second big world tour, which was called 'Performance'. So it's not like I sat down and made a list and said "I must perform at the top of my profession with every innovator' but it was more right time, right place, and I had the right stuff.

You were ballet trained originally, in the States, and then in Russia?

My background is pretty peripatetic. My dad was in the Air Force so it meant my parents were always working as de facto diplomats which meant I spent a good part of my childhood in Berlin and Moscow.

Along the way I was doing after-school ballet classes, it's not like I went to some super-duper dance academy. A big turning point for me was when I had to have back surgery at 19 for a spine curvature. In my teenage mind, scoliosis had been this big existential plight of my young life, because my idea was I would be a ballet dancer, after all the years I'd put in. In fact, once I had the surgery, and I was in this big heavy plaster body cast for nine months, I made a pact with myself: If I could still dance by the time I got out of this, I would.

But the reason I say it's the best thing that ever happened to me was because I realised I had to change direction to contemporary dance because I was no longer technically able to do classical ballet. Contemporary dance is much more loosey-goosey and interpretive, and it actually matched my temperament, personality, and creativity. That's what led me to come to Britain and work with amazing creators.

You go from there to performing on a global tour with the Pet Shop Boys. Is that where your love affair with Japan first started?

I was so lucky to do that tour. It kicked off in Japan and we played Tokyo, Osaka, and Kyoto. This was in 1991. Talk about sensory overload and stimulation! Japan knows exactly what its culture is - it has a heritage, a legacy that stretches back centuries, but at the same time they are excited by influences from around the world. You can see that in street fashion - they put quotes around something then make it their own.

The whisky culture is a good example of that, too. Japanese culture embraces drink and the finer things in life, the sybarite pleasures and rituals around drinking. The fact that they can take a Scottish tradition, and in the case of Suntory, it becomes a love story.

I also read you have a tour ritual of a post-show Japanese whisky in a teacup?

I do love rituals. It's a practice of gratitude. I feel like I'm under a halo of appreciation and I am surrendering to the moment. Being completely present.

When I was doing the Lust for Life Tour, the tour manager asked everyone what they would like on their dressing room rider (so rock 'n' roll!). I just had two things - dark salted chocolate for before the gig, and Japanese whisky for after. And, of course, it would have been nice to have had a lead crystal tumbler with maybe a chip of ice, but more often than not we were in a punk rock club, and a teacup would be the best thing that I could find. So that would be my ritual, that little slug of Nikka From The Barrel in my teacup, which then enabled me to keep it under wraps - like a refined lady in the olden days might do to stop people from knowing she was enjoying a tipple. I'm being stealthy and elegant at the same time!

It also feels like a slight flipping of that rock 'n' roll cliche of the likes of Lemmy with his bottle of Jack. You just have that one special dram in a teacup. Have you got any of the others in the band into this?

Yes! They help themselves, even though they don't have my permission! Everyone has their preferred tipple. Our drummer, Clem Burke, likes his fine red wine, for example. Once they clocked my whisky, all bets were off!

I came off the stage at the end of the final night, was ready for my self-congratulatory dram, and I held aloft this empty bottle and said "what the hell, what the heck?" - to quote Iggy Pop in Five Foot One - and guitarist Kevin Armstrong shamefacedly admitted they were playing some sort of poker game the night before that involved knocking back slugs of whisky. I felt like I was being penalised for having good taste! Clem's red wine wasn't being necked! So yes, they are all into Japanese whisky now. One thing we'd love to do is bring Lust for Life to Japan, so we could kill a lot of birds with one great big stone there!

There's a big UK tour next year, isn't there?

Yes, there is, in early 2024. And we're looking at further ramblings across Europe and the US, too.

If there's any drawback to having world-class musicians like Clem Burke from Blondie and Glen Matlock from The Sex Pistols in the band, it's that they're quite busy and often on the other side of the globe, and it's a question of getting everyone's diaries coordinated.

You seem to have galvanised a community of old punks and rockers...

There's no way I could have anticipated what a love-in tour would be. Initially I just wanted to do a good job and not let down these amazing musicians, and do justice to Iggy Pop's incredible songs and performance. The thing that I couldn't have known is that the audiences had the same attitude - they brought such good will, they had such affection for Iggy, they loved that Lust for Life album, they were thrilled to see the tornado of drumsticks that is Clem Burke, the menace of Glen Matlock, the mastery of Kevin Armstrong... but I'm the wildcard. It felt like we were going to punk rock church together - sacred anarchy.

Taking a gear shift now, from punk to perfume - your perfume writing was the thing that initially started this whole conversation with Whiskeria. The wonderful thing about your Evening Standard column, Message in a Bottle, is that they are very funny, pithy, sexy, and close to the bone.

I love writing for them, they get a kick out of me! They encourage me to fly my freak flag high!

Your writing projects the reader into another life or mindset with the way you expressively describe scents.

My approach to writing about perfume is really my approach to everything, which is completely holistic. Anything that you enjoy, be that a beautiful whisky, or feeling the soft air after the rain, or listening to an amazing performance... all these things are life-affirming, a celebration. Perfume, for me, is an invitation to a dream. Just one sniff can transport you.

I like to treat it like a character. For example, "did you know that this scent is based on vetiver, which is a room from Haiti that has a smoky, vegetal smell to it..." is all very interesting, but I think it's even more relevant to talk about what vetiver does to your persona: your idea of yourself; how it can make you aspire to be a better version of yourself; or disguising yourself, becoming someone else; or a protective device, a shield, or plinth. It's psychological, perfume, as well as something which is a sensual enjoyment.

When I first started my YouTube channel Katie Puckrik Smells... and my columns, I would get a lot of questions from fumeheads - well, mainly young men - who wanted to know what the best perfume to attract women is. To me, that's like asking "what is women's favourite food?" - you can't just say there is one thing. Obviously, it's your personality that they're after, or there's some chemical combination that is going to click - it's not some smell that is going to tip the balance, but I love the idea that rather than it being a spell you cast on someone else, that it's a spell you cast on yourself. You can wear something that makes you feel subtle, or amplified, or powerful, or in disguise. I love that witchcraft.

I'm so enthusiastic about sensual pleasures in general. I do like to make it accessible, too. I don't like using a lot of jargon. When I started writing about perfume in the mid-2000s, there wasn't much of a lexicon for it, but I like to use it as an opportunity to be playful with words, to be titillating and provocative as well as conveying information.

The one word that perhaps joins all of your career up, then, is 'storytelling'.

I would submit that storytelling is really the base of any experience in which you immerse yourself. Whether it's whisky aficionados or fumeheads, or people who follow a band around the world... it's not just chasing the story, it's being the story. The people who fly from Sweden or Montana to a little island in Scotland to see where their favourite whisky was born. It's the same with anything you're enthusiastic about. You want to know about the creator of this magic, what was the brainwave? It's humbling and inspiring at the same time. You think: 'I'm enjoying consuming, or wearing, or experiencing this, but also might I be somebody who could aspire to make something of this level of beauty?' There's so much hopefulness and positivity in every work of art for that reason.

You mentioned at the shoot how the Hibiki bottle reminded you of a perfume bottle. You're interested in the design and value of these objects, being seduced by them, and the act of treat yourself.

One of my most overused expressions is 'we're so lucky!', because I always feel that, for example, here we are sitting on a Saturday afternoon having delicious food and coffee and talking about lovely things. It comes down to gratitude. Life is hard, and you have to scramble to force your life to go in a certain direction that isn't going to bulldoze you into a flattened roadkill version of yourself. It's like landing on a lovely little lilypad - when you're able to pause and say 'oh, here I am drinking delicious Nikka From the Barrel'. Or, to watch an exquisite flamenco performance, as I did the other night at Sadler's Wells - my God, talk about lust for life! It's so proud, it's so sexy, so powerful, so emotional, so passionate - that's the stuff that floats my boat.

Your articulation is a unique thread in all of this. You've just completed the podcast series We Didn't Start the Fire, where you take seemingly disconnected people and events [following the lyrics of the famous Billy Joel song] and turn historical facts into something unexpectedly entertaining.

Much like the Lust for Life tour, the We Didn't Start the Fire podcast is greater than the sum of its parts because yeah, I've got a nose for news and I'm genuinely interested in people, however our experts were fantastic, and that's because our producers were wonderful on that show. My co-host, Tom Fordyce - what a talent, what a charmer, and such a generous broadcaster. He and I had an instant chemistry - we never needed to discuss our approach before any interview.

The song itself lists approximately 120 different topics from when Billy Joel was born in 1949 to when he released the song in 1989, so it's a potted history of post-WWII culture. So we would have authors, scholars, historians, and occasionally relatives to some of the subjects of the song.

I always thought of it as a sort of intellectual lap dance. You would get this expert coming in and telling you his grandfather was Joseph Stalin's last bodyguard, or learning about Donald Trump's villainous lawyer, Roy Cohn, from the man who made a documentary about him. It's not all bad guys though, we also hear about amazing leaders, inventors, scientists, actors - all from the horse's mouth.

Apart from the tour, what's next Katie?

I'm putting the finishing touches to a Yacht Rock compilation! This is off the back of various Yacht Rock specials I've done for BBC Radio 2 and a two part documentary for BBC4. It's basically millionares' make-out music that emanated mainly from the West Coast of America from the mid-70s to the mid-80s, personified by the likes of The Doobie Brothers, Steely Dan, Hall & Oates, and Carly Simon. Yacht Rock - a witty little bumper-sticker name for a genre of music that tangentially has something in common. It's very smooth, aspirational, expensive-sounding music, that makes you feel sexy, happy, and rich just listening to it. It's like what I was saying about perfume - it's a spell that you cast on yourself.

Much like perfume or whisky writing, writing about music is subjective, it's almost like reporting from the battlefield of your heart. You're in this moment and you're trying to convey this rainbow of emotion.

*

Our lunch meeting has raced by, and it feels like we've barely skimmed the surface of Katie's myriad of careers, ideas, and tales, before she has to skip off again for a radio appearance. A lust for life never sated.

The original feature is from the Autumn 2023 edition of Whiskeria, delivered to the door of W Club subscribers and also free with any Whisky Shop purchase in-store or online.