I still intimidate men, admits Barbara Dickson: Singer says she leaves male fans smitten - but many are too shy to speak to her
- 69-year-old Scottish folk singer insists she was never a ‘sex symbol'
- However, she has admitted that she still has a group of smitten followers
- ‘Gentlemen of a certain age have always rather liked me,' she has said
As she approaches her 70th birthday, it would be fair to say Barbara Dickson’s pop star days are long behind her.
In fact, despite hit records, appearances on Top of the Pops and a penchant for big hair and shoulder pads, the showbiz lifestyle was never for her.
But there is one part of her past that folk singer Barbara Dickson just can’t seem to shake – her male fans.
Double Olivier Award winner, Barbara Dickson, said: ‘Gentlemen of a certain age have always rather liked me'
The 69-year-old, who has had decades of success in the music industry and on stage, insists she was never a ‘sex symbol’. However, she has admitted that she still has a group of smitten followers.
The double Olivier Award winner said: ‘Gentlemen of a certain age have always rather liked me.
‘Even now there are husbands knocking 70 hiding behind pillars in foyers up and down the country who are too shy to come up and say hello to me, which is really charming.’
Miss Dickson, who attended Camdean Primary School in Rosyth and Woodmill High in Dunfermline, Fife, grew up surrounded by folk music.
After taking to singing, playing the guitar and learning the piano from an early age, she became a regular fixture on the Scottish folk scene in the 1960s.
By the 1970s she had made the decision to leave for England where she made the transition to pop music before moving into musical theatre.
She recalled: ‘Record companies never knew what to do with me. I did write but I was not really a writer. I was never a sex symbol either. People didn’t look at me and go, “Phwooar. Let’s get her in a bikini and give her pop music to sing”.
‘Even now there are husbands knocking 70 hiding behind pillars in foyers up and down the country who are too shy to come up and say hello to me, which is really charming,’ Dickson said (here appearing the play, The Seven Ages of a Woman)
‘I was extraordinarily different, I suppose, for a pop star.’
But looking back at her career, Miss Dickson says she has no regrets.
‘It was good for me. The only lasting legacy was everybody knows who I am. Now they might not like me, but you never have to explain who Barbara Dickson is,’ she said.
In 2015 she left Lincolnshire - where her children were brought up - and returned to Scotland, moving to Edinburgh with her husband Oliver Cookson.
This March she will draw on her folk roots for a performance at Glasgow’s Royal Concert Hall, and has promised to play a few of her chart hits too.
She has left behind all the glitz and glamour of her pop years, and will hit the stage with her band and a guitar.
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