'I just wish I'd been a better mother': As she releases her new album, Petula Clark, 80, recalls the love affairs, the loneliness and the one lasting regret of her lifetime of fame

By David Wigg

Published: 17:31 EDT, 1 February 2013 | Updated: 18:28 EDT, 1 February 2013

Petula Clark, 80, is releasing a new album

Petula Clark has been a star all her life. She started singing at seven, made her radio debut at nine, appeared at the Royal Albert Hall at 11, and has sold 70 million records with hits including Downtown, I Couldn't Live Without Your Love and Don't Sleep In The Subway.

She was the first UK female to win a Grammy, has sung with Frank Sinatra and Barbra Streisand, and in one of her 30 movies, Finian's Rainbow, she danced with Fred Astaire.

Now an astonishingly youthful 80, she looks back on her career, which is still active, with a mixture of pride at her achievements, wonderment at her unflagging worldwide appeal - and not a little guilt and anguish.

For she's haunted by a fear that her stardom adversely affected the upbringing of her three children, Barbara, Kate and Patrick.

She is hard on herself, worrying she wasn't as good a mother as she would have liked to have been - or as good a wife. She and their father, dashing Frenchman Claude Wolff, went their separate ways more than 20 years ago, even though they've never divorced and remain friends.

'I wasn't a good mother because I was away so much. I tried hard to be the perfect mother, the perfect wife and a great performer. I thought I could do it all but it can't be done. Sorry, but it just can't. I had a good stab at it, but being a parent and married is a full-time job.'

The problem emerged when her three children were young and her career was booming in not only Europe, but America as well. 'If you're a star in France, you're a star in all those French-speaking countries in the Caribbean, in Morocco,  Algeria, Belgium. I sang in all those countries, and it kept me very busy.

Then America opened up with Downtown and I had to honour contracts in Europe and the States, with endless journeys. It was OK when we could take the children with us but it wasn't always possible. I was having to split myself between being a good mother and wife and a good performer. I thought I could do it, I thought I was Superwoman and it's not actually possible.

Petula Clark on location filming Finian's Rainbow with her family, husband Claude Wolff and daughters Kate Wolff and Barbara Wolff in 1967

'Emotionally, it was a real wrench every time I had to leave, and I think the whole sad business of saying goodbye to each other so often stayed with the children for many years. I always rushed back home whenever I could and turned down a lot of offers of work so I could be with them, but I still had to make a living. Whatever I may have got wrong then, I hope I've managed to put right since.'

Since her children became adults, they've discussed the anxiety and guilt she felt. But to her relief they told her how much they appreciated having been given an excellent education and travelling first class all over the world with her. 'They probably see it differently to me,' says Petula quietly. 'Children have another way of looking at life, fortunately.'

When we meet, she is chic in black, her blonde curly hair styled short, and she looks every inch a star. Petula's success has brought her great wealth, with a main home in Geneva, where she lives for most of the year, a holiday chalet in the French Alps where she likes to ski, and a pied-a-terre in London's Chelsea.

However, she insists she isn't interested in possessions and avoids the star lifestyle. 'The stretch limo with the blackout windows and the bodyguards are fun, but I prefer going out alone with just my bus fare in my pocket and catching a number 19 bus. The scenery's the same whatever form of transport you're using,' she remarks.

The singer with her children Barbara, four, left, and Kate, three, right, in a garden on the Embankment in London

She also likes to stroll through city streets on her own, wearing no make-up. 'I'm fairly solitary. I'm good at being on my own so I don't need to be surrounded by people. But once when I was on a tour with Sunset Boulevard in the States, the cast were all American except me.

'Maybe I was feeling a bit sorry for myself. I was in my dressing room and I thought, "This is ridiculous, I'm homesick for somewhere but I don't know where." I went out on the stage an hour before the show and sat on the staircase, the centrepiece of the set. I said to myself, “This is your home - I'm home.” I know that sounds corny, but I knew I belonged there. After that I was fine.'

For a time, hidden beneath her bubbly, happy-go-lucky personality, she went through a period of depression. 'I've always had ups and downs. There are moments when I feel elated, and others, especially when I look at the world, that I find a bit desperate. But I've always been like that. I've never taken anything for granted.'

For a time, hidden beneath her bubbly, happy-go-lucky personality, Clark went through a period of depression

Petula's Welsh mother Doris, a gifted soprano, taught her pretty, confident daughter to sing as she grew up in Epsom, Surrey. Petula's father Leslie had wanted to be an actor, but was discouraged by his parents. He became Petula's manager, kept strict control of her life, and many felt he fulfilled his showbusiness dreams through her.

Petula says she treated it all as a great adventure. She recalls, 'The first time I sang at the Albert Hall there was not a nerve in my body. I was reading a comic backstage when someone tapped me on the shoulder and said, “Petula, you're on.”

I dog-eared the comic, went on, pulled the place down, came off and went back to my comic as though nothing had happened. That wouldn't happen now! You'd have to shove me out there. As one matures, you know things can go wrong and so much more is expected of you.'

With her girl-next-door Englishness, she became known to the British public as 'Our Pet', and had a regular radio programme with the accent on wartime, morale-building songs. In 1944, contracted to Britain's most powerful film studio, The Rank Organisation, she made her first movie, Medal For The General.

More films followed, and, likened to another child star Shirley Temple, the teenage Petula was upset when she found Rank was reluctant to let her grow up. It tried to keep her looking as young as possible by having a band tied around her bust to flatten it.

'It hurt physically and it hurt up here in my head,' she recalls. 'A child wants to grow up and act older than their age rather than younger. I was employed to be charming and cute though - so I learnt how to be exactly that!'

In 1957, after a string of hit records and films, she went to perform in Paris and then caused a stir by leaving the UK - and getting away from her father, who some believed had brought her close to a breakdown - to settle in France.

The attraction was a handsome PR called Claude Wolff. 'I was talking to the boss of my French record company when the light in his office went out. We were in the dark and a man came in to replace the bulb, and when the light came on again, I took one look at him and that was it.' The pair married in 1961.

Petula Clark marrying Claude Wolff at their wedding eception in Primrose Cottage, Lodsworth near Petworth, Sussex, in 1961

Petula had always had an eye for a good-looking man. In the early 1950s she flirted with Sean Connery, then a chorus boy in the stage musical South Pacific. 'I remember one particularly wild night when we ended up under a piano, drinking gin and cider cocktails.' She also had a long relationship with pianist Joe Henderson. But Claude was altogether different.

'I wasn't expecting anything like it to happen,' she says. 'He was the man around Paris. He knew everyone. I fell in love immediately. I couldn't speak a word of French and I didn't especially like France. It seemed a bit smelly, particularly going back to that time, France was probably more French than it is now. The truth is I fell in love with a Frenchman and that was it. Claude couldn't be in England, he couldn't speak English. He had a career going with the record company, so it was decided I'd go to France and I built a new life there.'

The French took her to their hearts and by 1962 she had become France's favourite female vocalist, even ahead of the legendary Edith Piaf. 'They were warm and welcoming. They found me amusing and they actually found me sexy. They liked me the way I was, and that was a nice thing. It turned out I did all my real growing up in France. Suddenly I started to live life and not worry about what people thought of me. I felt completely liberated.'

Clark with son Paddy, daughter Kate and husband Claude Wolff

In the 1980s she and Claude went their separate ways. 'We didn't decide to split up - we drifted apart. I don't think Claude liked America but my career had opened up in the States so I was working there a lot. The real reason we split up is hard to define. I suppose we became different people.' Why have they not bothered to divorce?

'At the beginning it was because of the children, then as time went by he was living his life, I was living mine. In some strange way, it seemed to work. We'd built a lot together and perhaps it just wasn't in our education to divorce because there was still that bond between us.'

They often reunite with their children. Barbara, the eldest, is married to French interior designer Baron Robert de Cabrol, and they live in New York with their children Sebastian and Annabelle. Kate is a yoga professor and splits her time between Paris and Geneva. Patrick (Paddy) also lives in Geneva and is a golfer as well as the owner of a golf shop.

With Fred Astaire in Finian's Rainbow, directed by Francis Ford Coppola in 1968

Petula says there is a new man in her life, and Claude has met someone else too, but she shyly declines to say any more. There was a discreet celebration in Geneva last November for her 80th, although Barbara and her family couldn't make it from New York.

'But Kate was there and Paddy, and a couple of friends from Geneva and Claude. We had a great dinner, but nobody sang Happy Birthday, because they knew I wouldn't want it. I don't think about age. And I certainly don't worry about it. What's the point? As long as you're doing what you do well, who cares a damn?'

Petula explains she prefers to think about the present and the future, rather than dwelling on the past. 'When I do concerts, obviously I sing all the old songs and they're a wonderful chapter of my life. But I couldn't go on stage and do just the oldies. There has to be something new and fresh for me all the time to interest me.'

She now tours the world with her one-woman show and has also made a new studio album, Lost In You, released this month and featuring new songs, some of which she's written herself, as well as her interpretation of hits such as John Lennon's Imagine, Elvis Presley's Love Me Tender, and Gnarls Barkley's Crazy, together with a new arrangement of Downtown.

'Performing still gives me a buzz, particularly when it's a live show. Being on stage in front of an audience is what it's all about. On a really good night, something very magical happens.' She doesn't have problems with her singing voice as some performers do as time goes by. 'I'm really lucky - mine is in some ways better now.'

She's also nurtured her English rose looks, which she puts down to a simple beauty regimen of soap, water and a good moisturiser. 'It seems to work for me,' she says. 'I did have a small amount of cosmetic surgery a long time ago. I had a scar above my eye that showed up on the cinema screen, so I got it fixed. Then if you get that fixed you have to get something else fixed too. It was when I did Finian's Rainbow with Fred Astaire in 1968.'

Petula Clark at London's Heathrow airport with husband Claude Wolff and children Kate (left), 11, Barbara 12, right, and 21-month-old Patrick

Finian's Rainbow turned out to be the last movie Astaire danced in. 'He was great. I don't think snob is the word, but he hated mediocrity and vulgarity. He was such a classy guy he couldn't bear being around anything that wasn't. He didn't like anything tacky. His home was like a tasteful movie set.

'He was playing a down and out in the film and the poor wardrobe woman had a hard time making him look shabby. She'd tie a piece of string around him and it would look like it was the latest thing in fashion. He was such a perfectionist he'd stay in the studio at the weekend to rehearse over and over again. He was just as nervous about singing with me as I was about dancing with him.'

Petula Clark with her husband Claude Wolff and their son Patrick, four, at the Westbury Hotel in 1976

Our talk returns to her own longevity as a performer. 'I just kept going. I do what I feel like doing. Life whizzes by and if I've stopped to think about it recently, it's been, "Wow, I never thought I'd be this age." But everybody feels that one day, I'm sure. One does sometimes wonder whether the public really wants long-lasting performers today, or if they think, "That was last year, let's have something fresh this year."'

Not having an entourage has helped keep her sanity, she says. 'You come off stage, you're a huge star and you're surrounded by people saying you're marvellous. That's euphoric and there's always a down moment that follows. Suddenly you're on your own, and some people can't handle that. They start taking things because they think that's going to keep them "up there" and there are always people nearby prepared to offer them anything.

'I started very young and I soon became aware of the dangers. I've never looked at this business through rose-coloured glasses, because I've always been famous as far as I can remember. It's hard work, though. Becoming a star is one thing, staying a star is another thing. People are very nostalgic about me, which doesn't bother me, although I don't sit around listening to my old records or looking at my old movies. It's now that matters.'

Petula's new album Lost In You will be released on 25 February (Sony)