Petula returns after decade away

Ian Hughes

01 May 2008

THE LEGENDARY Petula Clark returns to Leamington's Spa Centre this summer for her visit in a decade.
Among Britain's favourite and most successful singers, she also became the darling of America during the Beatles-led British musical invasion of the 1960s, with hits the help of hits such as Downtown - which earned her the first of two American Grammys - This Is My Song, I Know A Place, My Love, I Couldn’t Live Without Your Love, Color My World and many more.
Incrediably her career stretches over 60 years.
She first came to prominence as a child star during the Second World War, and is said to have performed in over 200 shows for the forces all over England before the age of nine.
By war's end the British "Shirley Temple" was so popular in England she was asked to sing at a national victory celebration at Trafalgar Square - and she never looked back.
Down the years she has recorded more than 1,000 songs and sold more than 70 million records. 
She has also appeared in over 30 films on both sides of the Atlantic, and has graced the musical stage on both sides of ponds.
But the 1960s were very much her heyday.
As well as the hit singles and sell-out concerts, she has starred in two Hollywood musicals - Finian's Rainbow and Goodbye Mr Chips - opposite the likes of Fred Astaire and Peter O'Toole, and made countless television appearances, both as guest and host, including three of her own American TV specials.
She was a Vegas superstar by the seventies, and in the eighties she found fame as a country recording star, before reinventing herself as a highly successful stage star in London's West End.
In the nineties she made her Broadway debut, starring in the highly successful production of Blood Brothers.
In 1998 she returned to England, where she was presented with a CBE by the Queen, and picked up a Grammy Hall of Fame award in 2003 for her signature tune Downtown.
She plays the Spa Centre on June 10. Tickets, priced £24, are available by calling the box office on 01926 334418 or online at www-royal-spa-centre.co.uk

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