The following interview is taken from the Scotsman newspaper from November 2007
BARBARA SINGS INTO HER SIXTIES
She's just turned 60 and life for Barbara Dickson is good. She has put her native Dunfermline behind her, as well as her civil servant days in Edinburgh's Register House. "Talk to me about the future instead," she suggests. Firmly.
You don't mess with Barbara. The glamorous vocalist knows where she's going and where she's been. "People call me a pop star but, in reality, my singles were only in the charts for ten years, between 1975 and 1985.
She is, however, happy to claim ownership of her Edinburgh roots.
"You can, of course, talk to me as much as you want about Edinburgh. Wasn't it voted the most fantastic city on TV the other night? I live in Lincolnshire now but when I'm in Edinburgh it usually leaves me unsettled. I'd love to live here - not that I could afford it. I scan the property pages but I feel priced out of the market.
"My big ambition over the years was to own a house in Trinity with views to Calton Hill and across the river to Fife. That would have gladdened my old heart. Somehow, nowhere else is quite the same."
Barbara was born and brought up in Dunfermline, and spent a large part of her early adult life in Edinburgh, but now lives with husband, Oliver, and youngest son, Archie, in Lincolnshire.
"I'm still married after 23 years, you'll be pleased to hear. I've had only one husband so far. Put that in the paper, it'll keep him on his toes," she says with a laugh.
"We've brought up our boys in Lincolnshire. Only one of them's still at school now, our youngest, Archie, who's 17. Gabriel's 19 this month and he's in Calcutta working for a charity that takes care of abandoned children. Colm's 21, studying sound design at drama school.
"But I keep coming back to Edinburgh because my best pal stays here - she has a gorgeous flat in Inverleith - and I get up to see her specifically every couple of months or so."
Early next year, Barbara will be returning to Edinburgh for a reason other than visiting old friends though.
On November 3 she recorded a new DVD during a small concert at the Spilsby Theatre in the little market town of Spilsby in Lincolnshire.
And in February she will be recreating the performance at the Queen's Hall in Edinburgh. She admits the experience is likely to cause her memories of the Capital to come flooding back.
"Whenever I'm up I automatically hark back to when I was the singer in Dunfermline and living in Edinburgh.
"I was a 'folk singer' doing clubs and pubs with a guitar but hardly a dyed-in-the-heather sort. Back in those distant days, the likes of James Taylor and Joni Mitchell were considered folk singers. They were among the singer/composer performers I listened to most.
"They were writing good stuff. You never got flash, bang, wallop from them. Indeed, I might claim you never got that from me."
What we got from Dunfermline's daughter as her professional career unfolded and she matured as a person, as they say, were, among other triumphs, massive hits in I Know Him So Well, Caravan and Another Suitcase, Another Hall.
Plus sell-out concert tours and a widely-acclaimed theatre hit with Blood Brothers in London's West End.
Barbara also found stage success here in Spend, Spend, Spend, playing the celebrated pools jackpot winner, Viv Nicholson, at the Festival Theatre in 2001 and as the school teacher in Fame at the Playhouse three years later. Both big at the box office.
"Like I say, I'm often dismissed - labelled sounds better - as a pop star. There's a wee bit more to me than that.
"Unless you're a razzamatazz person in a long glittering dress - I'm not a sequins person, I leave that to Shirley - you don't sashay on stage and set out to hit the audience like a ton of bricks.
"I'm not trying to change myself to suit my image. Well, not at my age, at what's just become the wrong side of 60. Anyway, don't they say that 60 is the new 40?"
"I'm fit and well and I have a lovely husband and professionally, I'm moving on."
She admits she is looking forward to performing in Edinburgh again, although the experience will be a new one.
"I've never played the Queen's Hall before. It's a smaller venue than I've done up there in the past. It must be 15 years since I did the Usher Hall. But friends are telling me that the Queen's will suit the things I do. It won't be a songs-from-the-shows evening.
"Nostalgia so often can be the death knell, I'm not one to wallow in it, but I'll be obliged to include some of them. I'll have an excellent five-piece band and we'll be hard-selling my album, Time and Tide. Are you getting my drift, John?"
Precisely, Barbara. In fact, I'm surfed out. Just space enough to slip in your post-script. "The Daily Telegraph listed me as 59 in their birthdays list, possibly giving the impression that I'm somewhere staring out at the Atlantic waves and communing with nature. I'm reasonably happy with that, though."
• Barbara will be appearing at the Queen's Hall in Edinburgh on February 6. You can book tickets by calling 0131 668 2019.
