EMO TIONAL TIES

Singer and actress Patti Boulaye on speedy proposals, playing Carmen and making Prince Charles blush

with singer and actress Patti Boulaye

This leopard was one of a collection of pieces that I painted for my first art exhibition in Mayfair, London. I loved drawing as a child and took it up again in my 30s after painting a thank-you card for a friend. She liked it so much, she asked me to exhibit in her gallery. I made Prince Charles blush when I was awarded an OBE last year for my charity work building hospitals in Africa. He said: ‘I wish there were more people like you – the world would be a better place.’ I replied: ‘Your Royal Highness, I wish we had two people like you – the world would be even better.’ I met Stephen in 1976 when I was in The Black Mikado at the Cambridge Theatre, London. We went to The Dorchester for tea and in the taxi back to the theatre, he proposed. I’d known him for two hours. I thought he was mad – but I said yes. I regularly visit Lagos [left] and Abuja in Nigeria. My mother taught me that charity work is what life is about and when we visit our healthcare clinics there, I look at the women and think: ‘There’s the power.’ I wore these shoes as Carmen in Carmen Jones in the West End. They remind me of my favourite role ever. I’ve had them repaired many times to preserve them. My husband Stephen gave me this when we got engaged. I wear it every day. My wedding and engagement rings were stolen 30 years ago. This is one of the few things I have left from that time. A cartoonist called Yoki drew me while I was playing Carmen [in Simon Callow’s Carmen Jones] in Japan in 1996. It was the best role of my stage career. Carmen is my alter ego. I grew up in Eastern Nigeria during the Biafran War in the late 1960s, but my mother taught us not to dwell on the traumas. I am the baby in this picture – the seventh of nine siblings. My three-year-old grandson Dante is particularly special to me as I helped deliver him when my daughter Aret, now 39, was in labour at the hospital.

Patti’s show Billie & Me is at The Pheasantry, Chelsea, from Thursday to Friday, pizzaexpresslive.com. Her autobiography The Faith of a Child is published by Lulu.com, price £12.99*