Article from The Mail On Sunday newspaper from April 1993.
PILGRIMAGE OF LOVE AS A STAR IS REBORN
Singer Barbara Dickson has returned to the award-winning musical which changed her life.
It was when she first appeared in Willy Russell's Blood Brothers ten years ago that she met her future husband.
Many actresses would be loath to play a part they had made their own a decade ago. For Barbara, 45, it is a joyous journey of nostalgia.
Her original performance won her the Olivier award for the best actress in a musical.
But the prize she most covets is her marriage a year later to deputy stage manager Oliver Cookson, followed by the birth of their three sons, now two, four and six.
'My life has been transformed,' says the proud mother. 'When I first appeared in the show I had given up on finding that special person. I had a career, my own home, my own car, but nobody to share it. At 35, life was littered with broken relationships. I wasted too much time kissing the frog, instead of finding my prince.'
Oliver is 11 years her junior, and the canny Scots singer agonised over whether she was making the right decision by marrying him.
'I pointed out that I would be 60 when he was still only 49. He just laughed and our age difference has never been a problem.'
Barbara talks tucked up on a leather armchair at the Waldorf Hotel. A sloppy shirt covers black leggings and an incongruous pair of Doc Martens.
'I couldn't have continued in my career if Oliver wasn't so supportive,' she says. 'He's a real New Man and a very physical person, so I know my children won't go short of hugs while I'm away.' Her star role in the show at the Phoenix Theatre, London, is of a working-class woman forced by financial circumstances to give up one of her sons for adoption. 'I'm not going to preach that now I am a mother I can play the part better than a non-mother,' says Barbara.
'But, as a parent, I can bring to bear some of my own experience. It is such a moving part that it would be very easy to cry every night on stage.'
Since her marriage, Barbara has continued her touring and recording career. Her discs include the hit singles Another Suitcase In Another Hall, January, February,
and All For A Song - as well as the number one duet with Elaine Page, I Know Him So Well, from the musical Chess.
But she has turned down offers as an actress. She explains: 'Blood Brothers was a hard act to follow. I couldn't accept a role which was less than that, and such parts are thin on the ground.'
