Katherine’s no Forces Sweetheart, says Dame Vera’s daughter...

HAVING entertained British troops several times, Katherine Jenkins, right, became known as a ‘Forces Sweetheart’ — but Dame Vera Lynn’s daughter says only one woman deserves that title.

‘Katherine sings Mummy’s songs, and that’s really lovely, but you can’t have a second Forces Sweetheart,’ Virginia Lewis Jones tells me. ‘No one will take her place or follow her. People can go out and do the same things that she did, obviously, but you can’t compare really.’

Welsh mezzo-soprano Katherine recently made her acting debut in a film called Minamata, directed by her husband, Andrew Levitas, and starring Johnny Depp and Bill Nighy.

But if she was hoping to portray Dame Vera in a forthcoming biopic, she may be disappointed.

‘There’s been a film in the pipeline for quite a while,’ says Virginia, who’s promoting a new album of her mother’s songs, Keep Smiling Through. But asked who could play Dame Vera, Virginia exclaims: ‘Oh, God knows, no idea!’