My Life: Petula Clark

“I’ve been doing this most of my life, It’s just normal to me,” she explains, adding that she started singing at the age of six and has never really stopped.

“I could live without the travelling, but then it’s not the actual travelling I mind, it’s the security. I don’t fly on private jets. Well not often, anyway,” she says, smiling.

“As for slowing down, I don’t know how to do anything else! I was a child star and had very little education because I didn’t really go to school. What would I do?”

Never mind what would she do. It’s more a question why would Clark do anything else?

She started singing professionally when most children are starting school, first in plays, and later with an orchestra in the foyer of a department store, for which she was paid with a tin of toffee and a wristwatch.

In 1942, with the country in the grip of war, a nine-year-old Clark accompanied her father to the BBC where they were hoping to record a message for an uncle stationed overseas.

Instead, when the broadcast was delayed by an air raid, she ended up singing Mighty Lak’ A Rose on air for panic-stricken listeners.

There was a great response, leading to more than 500 appearances on broadcasts aimed at servicemen and women, earning her a place as “The Singing Sweetheart”.

Post-war, Clark moved into films as well as carrying on singing, and she had a number of hits in the early 1950s. In the latter part of the decade through to the early 1960s her fame spread across most of Europe and the US, although it wasn’t until the recording of her signature song Downtown in 1964 that true international stardom beckoned.

“I love the song,” she says. “Of course I do. And have done since the first time I heard it before recording it. I knew it was a good record at the time, it was obvious, but no one could’ve known it was going to be such a monster. I’ve sung it very many times, in different arrangements.”

Clark’s latest album Lost In You features, among a number of other covers, a reworking of her most famous hit. At first, when producer John Williams suggested a new version of the song, Clark was set against it. “Re-record Downtown? I said no, no way.”

Fortunately Williams didn’t take this as a final answer and set about recording a new, laid-back arrangement of the song and played it to Clark when she returned to the studio after a few days.

“I said, ‘This is lovely, what is it?’ and he told me. I nearly dropped. It was interesting, so I got up to the microphone and sang it. I didn’t know how I was going to sing it, but the arrangement just won me over.

“I don’t know how many times I’ve sung that, but this was something entirely new. My relationship with Downtown is funny. I suppose I love it, but I’m not ‘in love’ with it. I feel like this new version has made me love it all over again. Like a long-term partner getting a new haircut,” she says, giggling.

Clark looks a good 10 years younger than her 80 years. Age has not dimmed the sparkle in her eye or her sense of humour. She lives in the Swiss Alps with her husband Claude Wolff and says she spends most of her time watching TV and films, playing with her grandchildren, reading, writing and listening to jazz.

Petula Clark back on the road

As well as her new album Lost in You which is out now, Petula Clark will be touring the country later in the year.

October: 2 - Manchester Lowry, 3 - Glasgow Royal Concert Hall, 5 - Newcastle Tyne Theatre, 6 - York Barbican, 7 - Birmingham Town Hall, 9 - Guildford G Live, 10 - Northampton Derngate, 11 - Ipswich Regent, 13 - London Theatre Royal Drury Lane, 14 - Cardiff St David’s Hall.

For more information visit www.petulaclark.net