Conclusion of the Barbara interview by John Gibson from the "Evening News" newspaper, March, 2003.
"Way back" takes her to her birthplace, Dunfermline, and to Edinburgh for her three-year civil servant stint in Register House.
"I checked out the place in passing recently and found that it's one of Edinburgh's buildings that has barely changed, in appearance and function. In my time there - I was living in Northumberland Street - I was a clerical officer in the statistics department, registering causes of death among the Scots. Even then, predictably, the main causes were lung cancer and heart attacks."
Barbara, 56 come September, was also singing to her own guitar accompaniment around the Capital's folk clubs. Three or four quid per gig supplemented her civil service wages.
"I gave up the day job and turned professional in 1968, still as a 'folkie', and it wasn't until Christmas 1975, when I had my first chart hit with 'Answer Me', that I changed my style and switched to pop."
Shivering on a March day in Cramond was no hardship, she feels, if only that the job afforded an opportunity to reacquaint herself with the Edinburgh scene.
"I was beginning to wonder why, in three or four 'nationwide' tours, they didn't include any gig in Scotland. I began to think racism," she says with a wry smile. It's a long time, although I did play Edinburgh in 'Spend Spend Spend'. That was about Viv Nicholson, the woman who won the pools, and I suppose it was a bit off the wall, like 'Blood Brothers' which was very good for me, both in a lengthy West End run and in the provinces.
"I've done some private functions in and around Edinburgh over the last few years, charity events organised by rugby's David Sole. At those I turn up, do the songs and disappear. This time I didn't have the time to visit my cousins in Dunfermline but my oldest friend has settled in Edinburgh, and I hope to be seeing her more often."
She adds: "I really had two reasons to be in Edinburgh last Thursday. Apart from the filming I was one of Helen Liddell's 'unsung heroines of Scotland' along with Eddi Reader, Blythe Duff and company at a function in Edinburgh Castle's Great Hall. So atmospheric. I was thrilled to bits."
Another thrill awaits her. She's going to make an album in June produced by Rab Noakes. "We're going to record all of it in Scotland, a lot of it in a studio in East Lothian, so it's shaping up like an old Edinburgh revisited thing.
"We were both 17 when we first met, one Saturday lunchtime at Sandy Bell's in Forrest Road. The pub was a great haunt for folkies. We've never really lost touch over the years. The album will have a hands-on, acoustic feel. I've gone off lavish production, it doesn't do me justice."
The telly people are confident justice will be done the Sunday she turns up in 'Songs Of Praise'. Meanwhile she asks me to reaffirm that she has not retired. Nor is she dead.
Barbara Dickson is very much alive and well. And grateful for a bowl of cullen skink on a chilly day at Cramond.
