Petula Clark

Petula Clark CBE (born 15 November 1932) is a British singer, actress, and songwriter.

She started her professional career as a child performer and has had the longest career of any British entertainer, spanning more than 81 years.

Clark's professional career began during the Second World War as a child entertainer on BBC Radio.

Petula Clark was born as Sally Clark on 15 November 1932 in Ewell, Surrey, England to Doris (née Phillips) and Leslie Noah Clark.

Both of Clark's parents were nurses at Long Grove Hospital in Epsom.

Clark's mother had Welsh ancestry and her father was English.

Clark's stage name "Petula" was invented by her father, who joked that it was a combination of the names of his two former girlfriends, Pet and Ulla.

Clark grew up in Abercanaid, near Merthyr Tydfil in Wales, in a house with no electricity or running water, and a toilet in the garden.

Her grandfather was a coal miner.

Her first ever live audience was at the Colliers' Arms in Abercanaid.

She also recalls living just outside London during the Blitz and watching the dogfights in the air and running to air-raid shelters with her sister.

Later, when she was eight, she joined other children to record messages with the BBC to be broadcast to members of their families in the forces.

The recording event was in the Criterion Theatre, an underground theatre that was safe.

When the air-raid siren went off other children were upset and a call went out for someone to step forward and sing to calm them.

Petula volunteered, and they liked her voice so much, in the control room they recorded her.

Her song was "Mighty Like a Rose".

As a child, Clark sang in the chapel choir and showed a talent for mimicry, impersonating Vera Lynn, Carmen Miranda and Sophie Tucker for her family and friends.

In October 1942 the nine-year-old Clark made her radio debut while attending a BBC broadcast with her father.

She was trying to send a message to an uncle who was stationed overseas, but the broadcast was delayed by an air raid.

During the bombing the producer requested that someone perform to settle the jittery theatre audience and she volunteered a rendering of "Mighty Lak' a Rose" to an enthusiastic response.

She then repeated her performance for the broadcast audience, launching a series of some 500 appearances in programmes designed to entertain the troops.

In addition to radio work, Clark frequently toured the United Kingdom with fellow child performer Julie Andrews.

Nicknamed the "Singing Sweetheart", she performed for George VI, Winston Churchill and Bernard Montgomery.

She also became known as "Britain's Shirley Temple", and was considered a mascot by the British Army, some of whose troops plastered her photos on their tanks for good luck as they advanced into battle.

Her father introduced her to theatre in 1944 when he took her to see Flora Robson in a production of Mary Stuart; she later recalled that after the performance, "I made up my mind then and there I was going to be an actress. ... I wanted to be Ingrid Bergman more than anything else in the world."

While she was performing at the Royal Albert Hall in London in 1944 Clark was discovered by the film director Maurice Elvey, who cast her, at the age of 12, as the precocious orphaned waif Irma in his war drama Medal for the General.

In quick succession she performed in Strawberry Roan, I Know Where I'm Going!, London Town, Here Come the Huggetts, Vote for Huggett and The Huggetts Abroad, the second, third and fourth of four Huggett Family films.

She worked with Anthony Newley in Vice Versa (directed by Peter Ustinov) and Alec Guinness in The Card.

She also had a small role in I Know Where I'm Going.

Her first public performances were as a singer, however: in 1945 she performed with an orchestra in the entrance hall of Bentall's Department Store in Kingston upon Thames for a tin of toffee and a gold wristwatch.

From a chance beginning at the age of seven Clark appeared on radio, in film, in print, on television and on recordings.

In 1945 Clark was featured in the comic Radio Fun, in which she was billed as "Radio's Merry Mimic".

In 1954 she charted with "The Little Shoemaker", the first of her big UK hits, and within two years she began recording in French.

Her international successes have included "Prends mon coeur", "Sailor" (a UK number one), "Romeo", and "Chariot".

Hits in German, Italian and Spanish followed.

In late 1964 Clark's success extended to the United States with a four-year run of career-defining, often upbeat singles, many written or co-written by Tony Hatch and Jackie Trent.

These include her signature song "Downtown" (US number one), "I Know a Place", "My Love" (US number one), "A Sign of the Times", "I Couldn't Live Without Your Love", "Who Am I", "Colour My World", "This Is My Song" (by Charlie Chaplin) (a UK number one), "Don't Sleep in the Subway", "The Other Man's Grass Is Always Greener" and "Kiss Me Goodbye".

Between January 1965 and April 1968 Clark charted with nine US Top 20 hits in the US, where she was sometimes called "the First Lady of the British Invasion".

Clark has sold more than 70 million records.

She has also enjoyed success in the musical film Finian's Rainbow and in the stage musicals The Sound of Music, Blood Brothers, Sunset Boulevard and Mary Poppins.