The following interview is taken from the ITV series 'Loose Women' (2006).
BARBARA DICKSON
After 38 years in the music industry, singer, song writer and actress Barbara Dickson has had her fair share of the limelight throughout her dazzling and extensive career.
We caught up with the musical matriarch for a quick glimpse into her world and to pick her brains about the secret to success, making it big and staying at the top.
You have such a wide-ranging and extensive career. Do you feel most at home on stage, screen or recording music?
I think I like them all for different reasons. I love doing television drama but I don't get asked to do stuff that I want to do. I love doing concerts because there is a feeling of it being the sharp end of what you do.
I like making records because it's very creative and I can take that onto the shows. It's the diversity of what I've done that I like. Nowadays I'd like to do more television drama and I'd like to continue making records and doing concerts.
After working your way up from folk music, how do you feel about the youngsters who are making it via reality TV?
The thing about choosing people from the public to become famous is that they're as quickly likely to be back on the street again. Unfortunately, because of the selection process, I just don't think that any of them will have much of a career.
The one good thing about the old days is that you had to build up your own career in your own way, and a lot of the pitfalls were done in relative obscurity. So by the time you got onto television you knew what you were doing, but now people go from nothing to hugely famous and I think that meteoric rise augers a meteoric fall.
Will Young has managed to stay there but I still think that there is room for good music that is nothing to do with reality television. There are two people who create music and the people who have things created for them, and I think reality tv falls into that category.
It's just more disposable and it doesn't matter if you're only famous for five minutes on a show like that, because the show has been successful.
So you can't expect to have a job for life, but if you work very very slowly, they can't know you down because the rise is not steep. I went from folk music into the theatre and I was very lucky to be chosen to do things in my life and offered things.
I didn't come into music to be rich and famous, I did it because I wanted to sing. It was a very gentle thing really and it still is. I would still be singing if I'd made no money for it at all, and I've been a professional musician for 38 years so I'm quite happy with that!
When you're not recording and touring, how do you like to relax?
Well I've got three children. One of them has left home and gone to college now, and my other two sons are at boarding school in Yorkshire. I go virtually every weekend to visit my sons at school. They're 18 and 16 and I go to watch rugby matches a lot.
I love being out in the open air, walking, going down to the beach where I live and enjoying the nature and wildlife. I like tapestry and I do needlepoint while I'm watching the telly, but I live a fairly quiet life out of the public eye.
How did the new album come about?
Someone at Universal records wanted to make a Beatles album and asked me to do it. I was very pleased to do it because I love Beatles songs.
I didn't want to choose any of the hits because it wouldn't work, but the songs I chose (like, Eleanor Rigby, Fool on the Hill, Here There and Everywhere and Across the Universe) are all songs that suit my style.
The title, Nothing's Gonna Change My World is a line from Across the Universe.
