BARBARA’S BACK ON STAGE AND BACK TO HER ROOTS
Barbara Dickson Perth Concert Hall, Glasgow Royal Concert Hall, Inverness Eden Court, Edinburgh King’s Theatre, Feb 6-10
SHE may have turned 70 last year but Barbara Dickson is showing no sign of slowing down.
In fact, Dunfermline-born Barbara is ratcheting things up as she kicks off a new tour early next year.
It starts in Evesham on February 1 and runs right through until Norwich on March 10.
“We do a tour every second year now,” Barbara, 71, told iN10.
“This is a bigger and longer tour than any I’ve done in the past 10 years. It’ll bring me to more people – and that can only be good.
“Some will like Caravans and Another Suitcase In Another Hall and others will remember me from Band Of Gold or Blood Brothers.
“So, I have an extraordinary mixture of people as my audience.
“I find they’re not really into watching stuff on their iPads, they like to be in the room.”
And having a fan base of dedicated concert-goers, the blight of ticket touts is something Barbara, unsurprisingly, has strong views on.
“As a society in general we are very troubled by people preying on other people’s good nature.
“There are lots of people out to rip others off, really wickedly so.
“Ticket touts are horrendous because they leech on the most popular acts and I’m sure there are so many parents forking out for their kids as a result.”
Barbara’s performing days go back many decades, with her folk shows in the late 1960s and early 1970s alongside Billy Connolly.
And Connolly, who now has Parkinson’s disease, is still a big mate. “We send each other cheery little emails,” smiles Barbara.
“We tend not to go into the nuts and bolts of our lives but we send big love to each other with about 25 kisses on the bottom of the email.
“I’m very lucky in that I keep in touch with various friends from that time. In fact, it’s people I knew from Scotland – I don’t keep in touch with many people I knew from the music business in London.
“It’s very important to me to be true to my roots.
“Billy is the funniest man in the world and he will remain the funniest man in the world to me.
“I’ve laughed at a lot of people in my life but with Billy there’s a well within him that gushes forth the most brilliant stuff.
“He’s always been fabulous and I love him to bits.”
Scots fans can be assured they’re not missing out on Barbara’s extensive tour, with dates in Perth, Glasgow, Inverness and Edinburgh.
And being on home turf is as big a joy as ever for Barbara, who moved back to Scotland three years back, snapping up a property in Edinburgh.
“We had been talking about it for 10 years,” said Barbara, who has three kids with her husband Oliver.
“Once the kids grew up and started scattering, that was the time we thought we should go.
“I thought that I didn’t want to be doing big moves as time went on.
“We were in the middle of the countryside in Lincolnshire and we’ve moved to the centre of Edinburgh, which is such a walkable city.
“Oliver is from Richmond and we could have moved down south, but he didn’t want to do that.
“So we made a lot of secretive trips to Edinburgh so he could sound out whether he liked it. That was important.
“I wouldn’t have done it by laying down the law.
“But he really fell for the city. It’s fabulous and we love it.”
What Barbara also loves just as deeply is getting back on stage and performing.
“I just wouldn’t do it otherwise,” she insists.
“And I’m not in the nostalgia business. I do sing all of my hits – except I Know Him So Well because that’s a duet – as that’s what people expect and it means something to them.
“Apart from that, the world is my oyster. Whatever I fancy doing, I can do and that’s just great.”
But whatever she chooses will have been well-honed and finely tuned.
“I know some people make it up before they go on stage,” she adds. “That’s not for me.
“I know exactly what I’m going to do. I get together with the guys who are on stage with me and we’ll run the material through for five days in Edinburgh to get it all right, including our new material.”
Tickets from ticketline.co.uk