Downtown with Petula Clark

The word ‘legend’ is grossly overused these days. But not in this case. Petula Clark has traversed the decades and repeatedly topped the pop charts emerging as one of the bestselling British female artists of all time. She graduated from child songstress – entertaining the troops with Julie Andrews – to child actress effectively growing up before our eyes in 25 films for the Rank Organisation. With the great British songwriter, arranger, producer Tony Hatch she scored hit after hit achieving the Holy Grail of pop success – an American No 1 – with the now iconic “Downtown”. Across the Channel she conquered France and married a Frenchman.

She has danced with Fred Astaire, crossed paths with everyone from Dean Martin and Harry Belafonte to The King ‘Elvis Presley’ himself. She rescued Willy Russell’s Blood Brothers on Broadway, played Norma Desmond in Lloyd Webber’s Sunset Boulevard in the West End, and is currently ‘feeding the birds’ in Cameron Mackintosh’s Mary Poppins revival at the Prince Edward Theatre.

By her own admission she’s not nostalgic by nature but she has tales to tell and in this exclusive event with the writer and broadcaster Edward Seckerson there’ll doubtless be plenty of them.