I hear Lulu long before I see her. That brawny, cheerful Glaswegian screech barrels down the corridor to the pod-like room where I am waiting at her publicist’s office in King’s Cross a good 30 seconds before she appears. When she blasts through the door, her tiny stature still takes me by surprise, even though it’s well known that she is only 5ft 1in. “I’ve got so much makeup on it’s going to walk off my face in a minute,” the 76-year-old squeals by way of greeting. She’s wearing a punky new-wave-style black suit, white socks and loafers, and looks like a teenager from 1982.
We’re meeting to talk about her new memoir, If Only You Knew, in which she sets out for the first time some of the startling realities behind one of the most enduring and hardworking careers in showbiz. Lulu has been in the public eye ever since her debut single “Shout”, an unruly, adrenaline-fuelled, floor-filling cover of the Isley Brothers, reached No 7 in 1964. She’s released 15 albums, sung the themes to The Man with the Golden Gun and To Sir, with Love, in which she also starred, presented regularly on TV, worked with Take That, briefly reinvented herself as an electronica artist, and earlier this year was one of the hits of Glastonbury alongside Ronnie Wood and Rod Stewart. The three of them looked to be having more fun than most of the acts a quarter their age. For generations of Brits she will forever be the happy-go-lucky girl-next-door pop starlet with the voice of an American soul diva whose career has become a byword for breezy, cheesy middle-of-the-road pop.
