New interview with Petula Clark ahead of the Christmas Eve radio show, with an eye-catching headline!
Petula Clark: 'Elvis had his eye on both me and Karen Carpenter' »
Sitting unrecognised in the bar of a Chelsea hotel, Petula Clark stares straight ahead as she answers my questions, carefully avoiding any eye contact. At first I'm inclined to put this down to stand-offishness. Given that Clark has sold more than 68 million records and has clocked up almost three quarters of a century in showbusiness, it would hardly be surprising if she was prone to a few diva-ish excesses. It's only slowly that I realise that I'm hopelessly wrong. She's not standoffish at all. She's just terribly shy.
But this, it turns out, is far from being the only unexpected thing about Petula Clark. Instead there are surprises - and contradictions - at every turn. "When exactly did you sing for Winston Churchill?" I ask her at one point, reflecting as I do so that she must be one of the very few people alive you could ask this question of.
"Oh, I can't remember " she says. "I think it must have been one of those grand Albert Hall things with all kinds of important people there. But you know I never used to take any notice of them. I just liked to sing. And I was very young, of course."
Clark was just nine when she went to the BBC with her parents to record a radio message for an uncle who was away fighting in the war. The recording was delayed because of an air-raid and the show's compere asked if anyone would sing a song to keep people's spirits up. She volunteered - and in a sense she never looked back. "It was strange, I suppose, because I was always shy around people, but I was never nervous about singing."
By the time she was 11, she had a film contract with the Rank Organisation and had been dubbed Britain's Shirley Temple. "It wasn't exactly glamorous, believe me. I'd do a film then go back to school and I wouldn't have a clue what was going on. The other kids could be pretty cruel. There would be a lot of remarks like, 'You may be famous, but you can't do geometry.'" The older Clark became, the more frantically the Rank Organisation tried to stop her from growing up. "They used to bind my chest so that nothing showed, because I was more valuable to them as a child. No one wanted adolescents back then."
But for all her lack of confidence, Clark always had a shrewd sense of her own worth as a singer. "I never imitated anyone. I admired people like Peggy Lee or Doris Day, but I never tried to be like them. I was doing my own thing - or trying to. The trouble was that I wasn't allowed to choose my own material. Basically, I was doing what I was told."
And then, in 1957, she went to Paris and everything changed. "I didn't want to go to France. When I'd been there on holiday I thought it was beautiful, but a bit smelly. I only went because my record company thought I should. I had a dreadful cold, I remember - I could barely talk, let alone sing. A doctor came to see me and prescribed some suppositoires. I thought, what on earth is going on here? Anyway, I took them and the next evening I went on stage at the Olympia. I couldn't even say bonsoir, but they went absolutely crazy."
Ever since, Clark has wondered why the French took her so swiftly to their hearts. "I think it was partly that they hadn't heard an English accent before and I was totally different to anything they were used to. For some reason, they found it extremely charming."
Just as she had no desire to go to France, so she'd never given much thought to trying to make it in America. And then, one day in 1964, fate stepped in again when Clark met songwriter Tony Hatch and he played her the first few bars of a song called Downtown.
In January 1965, Downtown shot to Number One in the States and Clark, somewhat to her bemusement, found she had become an international star. Three years later, she made broadcasting history when she took Harry Belafonte's arm during the recording of a TV special - thus becoming the first white woman to touch a black man on American TV.
"The network tried to use another take instead where I didn't touch him, but we refused. I just thought it was ludicrous." To be on the safe side, Clark and her husband - the French producer Claude Wolff - made sure the other non-touching takes were destroyed.
Some of the rewards of fame she enjoyed, others she was more ambivalent about. In the early Seventies, Clark and her good friend Karen Carpenter went to see Elvis Presley in Las Vegas. Afterwards they were invited to his dressing room, where the King's eyes lit up with glee at the prospect of seducing one - or ideally both - of them.
"Karen was quite naive and, by then, I wasn't. I could see what was going on and I felt very protective, almost like I was her big sister. After a while I said, 'Karen, it's quite late and you've got to do that thing early tomorrow morning. She just looked confused and said, 'What thing is that?' " In the end, I shoved her out of the room. In fact, I shoved both of us out of the room. Elvis found it quite funny actually. As we were leaving, I turned around and he was smiling as if to say, 'I'll get you one day.' But he never did."
She's still good friends with Karen's brother, Richard, and this Christmas is presenting a radio special about their music. More than 30 years after Karen's death - from anorexia - Clark's voice trembles as she describes the last time she saw her. "She came to my dressing room when I was in The Sound of Music, and I couldn't believe what I was seeing. As she was leaving, I gave her a big hug and said, 'I don't know what's gone wrong, Karen, but you've got to stop this.' That was shortly before she died."
At 84, Clark looks in terrific shape, with her blonde bubble-hair and her flawless skin. She had a new album out in September and she's planning to tour America next year.
A few weeks ago, she spent the day listening to a lot of her old recordings for a compilation album. "It was strange because I could hear all these different influences in my voice - jazz, French, American. I could also hear different phases in my personal life in there. Actually, I think I'm singing better now than I've ever sung. I know I'm enjoying it more."
If Petula Clark's influences have shaped her voice, all the years of hurtling around the globe have left their mark too. Although she's lived in Geneva for much of her life, there's still an odd sense of displacement about her, as if she doesn't quite belong anywhere. When I ask her to close her eyes and picture where she thinks of as home, she says - after a long pause - "I would have to say England. This is where I feel truly at home."
And, while her confidence in her singing may be higher than ever, in other respects it remains bafflingly low. At the end of our interview she says anxiously, "Was that all right? I don't think I was very interesting."
"You were great," I tell her truthfully, whereupon she looks pleased, even grateful - but not entirely convinced.
A Carpenters' Christmas with Petula Clark airs on BBC Radio 2 on Christmas Eve at 4pm
Petula Clark: 'Elvis had his eye on both me and Karen Carpenter' »
Sitting unrecognised in the bar of a Chelsea hotel, Petula Clark stares straight ahead as she answers my questions, carefully avoiding any eye contact. At first I'm inclined to put this down to stand-offishness. Given that Clark has sold more than 68 million records and has clocked up almost three quarters of a century in showbusiness, it would hardly be surprising if she was prone to a few diva-ish excesses. It's only slowly that I realise that I'm hopelessly wrong. She's not standoffish at all. She's just terribly shy.
But this, it turns out, is far from being the only unexpected thing about Petula Clark. Instead there are surprises - and contradictions - at every turn. "When exactly did you sing for Winston Churchill?" I ask her at one point, reflecting as I do so that she must be one of the very few people alive you could ask this question of.
"Oh, I can't remember " she says. "I think it must have been one of those grand Albert Hall things with all kinds of important people there. But you know I never used to take any notice of them. I just liked to sing. And I was very young, of course."
Clark was just nine when she went to the BBC with her parents to record a radio message for an uncle who was away fighting in the war. The recording was delayed because of an air-raid and the show's compere asked if anyone would sing a song to keep people's spirits up. She volunteered - and in a sense she never looked back. "It was strange, I suppose, because I was always shy around people, but I was never nervous about singing."
By the time she was 11, she had a film contract with the Rank Organisation and had been dubbed Britain's Shirley Temple. "It wasn't exactly glamorous, believe me. I'd do a film then go back to school and I wouldn't have a clue what was going on. The other kids could be pretty cruel. There would be a lot of remarks like, 'You may be famous, but you can't do geometry.'" The older Clark became, the more frantically the Rank Organisation tried to stop her from growing up. "They used to bind my chest so that nothing showed, because I was more valuable to them as a child. No one wanted adolescents back then."
But for all her lack of confidence, Clark always had a shrewd sense of her own worth as a singer. "I never imitated anyone. I admired people like Peggy Lee or Doris Day, but I never tried to be like them. I was doing my own thing - or trying to. The trouble was that I wasn't allowed to choose my own material. Basically, I was doing what I was told."
And then, in 1957, she went to Paris and everything changed. "I didn't want to go to France. When I'd been there on holiday I thought it was beautiful, but a bit smelly. I only went because my record company thought I should. I had a dreadful cold, I remember - I could barely talk, let alone sing. A doctor came to see me and prescribed some suppositoires. I thought, what on earth is going on here? Anyway, I took them and the next evening I went on stage at the Olympia. I couldn't even say bonsoir, but they went absolutely crazy."
Ever since, Clark has wondered why the French took her so swiftly to their hearts. "I think it was partly that they hadn't heard an English accent before and I was totally different to anything they were used to. For some reason, they found it extremely charming."
Just as she had no desire to go to France, so she'd never given much thought to trying to make it in America. And then, one day in 1964, fate stepped in again when Clark met songwriter Tony Hatch and he played her the first few bars of a song called Downtown.
In January 1965, Downtown shot to Number One in the States and Clark, somewhat to her bemusement, found she had become an international star. Three years later, she made broadcasting history when she took Harry Belafonte's arm during the recording of a TV special - thus becoming the first white woman to touch a black man on American TV.
"The network tried to use another take instead where I didn't touch him, but we refused. I just thought it was ludicrous." To be on the safe side, Clark and her husband - the French producer Claude Wolff - made sure the other non-touching takes were destroyed.
Some of the rewards of fame she enjoyed, others she was more ambivalent about. In the early Seventies, Clark and her good friend Karen Carpenter went to see Elvis Presley in Las Vegas. Afterwards they were invited to his dressing room, where the King's eyes lit up with glee at the prospect of seducing one - or ideally both - of them.
"Karen was quite naive and, by then, I wasn't. I could see what was going on and I felt very protective, almost like I was her big sister. After a while I said, 'Karen, it's quite late and you've got to do that thing early tomorrow morning. She just looked confused and said, 'What thing is that?' " In the end, I shoved her out of the room. In fact, I shoved both of us out of the room. Elvis found it quite funny actually. As we were leaving, I turned around and he was smiling as if to say, 'I'll get you one day.' But he never did."
She's still good friends with Karen's brother, Richard, and this Christmas is presenting a radio special about their music. More than 30 years after Karen's death - from anorexia - Clark's voice trembles as she describes the last time she saw her. "She came to my dressing room when I was in The Sound of Music, and I couldn't believe what I was seeing. As she was leaving, I gave her a big hug and said, 'I don't know what's gone wrong, Karen, but you've got to stop this.' That was shortly before she died."
At 84, Clark looks in terrific shape, with her blonde bubble-hair and her flawless skin. She had a new album out in September and she's planning to tour America next year.
A few weeks ago, she spent the day listening to a lot of her old recordings for a compilation album. "It was strange because I could hear all these different influences in my voice - jazz, French, American. I could also hear different phases in my personal life in there. Actually, I think I'm singing better now than I've ever sung. I know I'm enjoying it more."
If Petula Clark's influences have shaped her voice, all the years of hurtling around the globe have left their mark too. Although she's lived in Geneva for much of her life, there's still an odd sense of displacement about her, as if she doesn't quite belong anywhere. When I ask her to close her eyes and picture where she thinks of as home, she says - after a long pause - "I would have to say England. This is where I feel truly at home."
And, while her confidence in her singing may be higher than ever, in other respects it remains bafflingly low. At the end of our interview she says anxiously, "Was that all right? I don't think I was very interesting."
"You were great," I tell her truthfully, whereupon she looks pleased, even grateful - but not entirely convinced.
A Carpenters' Christmas with Petula Clark airs on BBC Radio 2 on Christmas Eve at 4pm
