On July 7, 2004 comedian and actor Billy Connolly was interviewed by presenter Mike Harding for his weekly BBC Radio 2 folk show. Billy selected his favourite songs for the show and recalled working with Barbara on the folk scene of the late '60s and early 70s...
Mike : One of the people who worked with you on the folk scene and went on to become a star like yourself was of course Barbara Dickson, who is your next choice.
Billy : Oh, Barabbas I've always called her! I love Barbara Dickson. I knew her... a lot of people say 'I knew her when she was a schoolgirl', well I didn't. She had left school by the time I met her in Dunfermline at the Howff folk club.
From the very first time I heard her, her voice just nailed me to the wall. I like her very much as a person but there's a softness... it isn't one of those shrill (voices). There were a lot of very shrill singers on the folk scene going (sings) "Plaisir d'amour!" (laughing) and she was never one of them. She had this... there was no edge to her voice and a velvety roundness to it and I'm glad she's been such a huge West End success.
I phoned her the other day to tell her about this show and she was going to Liverpool to do "Blood Brothers" for two weeks at the Liverpool Empire.
Mike : That's right, yes.
Billy : And so I'm so pleased that she's still big in the music industry.
Mike : This is that fantastic classic of hers, "Sule Skerry".
Billy : Aye, the "Sule Skerry"! The lovely thing about this is that I don't have to choose another record by Archie Fisher because he's in it singing beautifully as well.
(Mike plays "Sule Skerry")
Billy : Isn't that lovely?
Mike : Fantastic voice.
Billy : You see, that kind of smoothness, I dunno - she's just a one-off. And another thing is she's a smashing guitarist. People don't know but she's a lovely guitar player.
