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Dame Shirley Bassey Reflects on an Eventful Life From Hello Magazine, Jun 2003

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Still looking every inch the consummate star at 66, Shirley has had to come to terms with terrible traumas in her life, including her father walking out when she was just two and the untimely deaths of her first husband and daughter

It's the sort of story that would be returned to sender if submitted to a film company. A mixed-race girl, the youngest of seven children, born into poverty in the tough docklands town of Splott in Cardiff's Tiger Bay, is discovered at 16 singing in a working men's club and goes on to become an international superstar whose name in lights never dims.

But it is the true story of Shirley Bassey, still at the very top of her very considerable form and currently celebrating 50 years in showbusiness. She was created a Dame in the 2000 New Year's Honours List and has recently acquired another title. At a private ceremony at the French Embassy in London, she was the first singer ever to be awarded the Legion d'Honneur, France's highest accolade. "So now," she says, eyes shining, "I'm a Dame and a Knight."

By any calculation, it has been an extraordinary life and one for which there was no template. "Splott is still very clear in my mind," she insists, "and I'm still in touch with the Shirley of my childhood – she never went away. But, boy, did she go off in a surprising direction. I've been thinking about this recently. There was nothing to warn anybody – least of all myself – that I'd embark on this incredible journey. I don't think there's anyone in the UK who has had a career like mine."

There aren't too many, either, who've had so switchback a private life. Married and divorced twice, Shirley had two daughters with men other than her two husbands, adopted a son from whom she is currently estranged and, at 66 and some 26 years after her second divorce, has recently met the man she feels will prove to be her soulmate. "Everything has always been terrific on stage," she says. "It's on the home front where it has often not been so good."

She was born Shirley Veronica Bassey on January 8, 1937. Her Nigerian father, Henry, was a merchant seaman who walked out when Shirley was two. "I never saw him again. He went back to Africa. My sister Marina, who's two years older than me, used to write to him and she'd tell me stories. But all I've got is one photo to remember him by."

Except for her brother, also Henry, Shirley's siblings were all girls and she says she missed not having a father. She discovered her voice when she was young but out of shyness would hide under a table or go into an empty room to sing. At school, she was moved row by row to the back of the choir because her voice was too loud.

During her brief spell working in a local factory, she'd sing requests for her fellow workers. "Jezebel was their favourite," she recalls, "although the supervisor was always telling me to stop."

At 16, she went to London to audition for a touring show called Hot From Harlem. Her adored mother, a Yorkshire woman called Eliza Jane, was anxious about her young daughter going up to the big city and even more concerned when Shirley won the role. "But times were tough. Eliza Jane had lots of mouths to feed," says Shirley. "I think she felt she'd made a mess of her own life and she was thrilled that one of her children was about to make something of hers."

Shirley remembers that first tour as if it were yesterday. "I knew there was something special about me. I was being treated by the producers in a different way from the chorus. I had a special job. I was the soubrette singing in front of the dancers or in front of the curtain while they changed the scenery. I'd get a lot of stick from the dancers but then they were jealous. It didn't bother me.'

By the time she returned to Splott, 17-year-old Shirley was pregnant with her first child, Sharon. "Eliza Jane wasn't best pleased but what could she do?" she shrugs.

Shirley has always refused to name the father. "Sharon's a woman in her forties now, the mother of four sons. She doesn't like me talking about it and I respect that point of view."

It was the beginning, though, of many years of conflict, being pulled in two different directions by the conflicting demands of career and motherhood. "I realise now that success is all about sacrifice," she says, "and especially if you're a mother. As my career took off, I'd sign contracts. I was under tremendous pressure. I was earning a lot of people a lot of money. If I didn't go off touring the world, I'd have been sued."

But it was tough. "The children would see my suitcases being brought up from the basement and they knew Mummy was going away again. The first time I went to Australia, it took two and a half days to get there. I was only 20 and I was away for two months. Oh, I felt such tremendous guilt." Later on, she received critical letters. "I was told I should be at home with my children. But I had an international career" she says.

Some of the letters were also openly racist. "They asked me why I didn't go back to where I came from. I was always tempted to write back and say, 'What? Splott?'" she laughs.

In her twenties Shirley married her manager, Kenneth Hume, ignoring his sexual orientation. "He made me laugh, he was incredibly romantic and he asked me six times. I was crazy about the man," she says. "We laughed and laughed until, one day, we didn't laugh any more. And that was the end of the marriage. Then he died."

Hume had committed suicide and Shirley was distraught. "We'd remained each other's best friend. I was so angry with Kenneth for leaving me like that. How could he do that to me? And why? I knew he was unhappy. And he wasn't well; he suffered from emphysema. But I discovered afterwards that he'd been receiving electric shock treatment. I was so angry with the doctors. I was screaming down the phone at them."

Shirley took to her bed. "I was in a terrible state. I was about to open at The Talk of the Town and Bernard Delfont, who owned it, sent a message saying that he knew what I was going through and that I should cancel if I felt I wasn't up to it. He'd quite understand. No impresario had ever been so kind to me." Or, perhaps, as canny. "Of course, it had the reverse effect," Shirley adds. "The whole season was booked solid. I felt I couldn't let him down."

Having worked on her act with Kenneth, she also felt a debt to him. But her opening night was as charged with emotion as any she has ever experienced. "I sang a song with lyrics that seemed to be written especially for me and Kenneth. "'Goodbye,' I sang. 'This is where our story ends. Ever lovers, ever friends.' Somehow, I managed to get to the end and then half-ran, sobbing, into the wings. There was a nurse waiting and she stabbed me in the bottom with a needle. The audience was going mad. It was an emotional love-in. They knew what I was going through. They knew I'd buried Ken just a week before.'

During their marriage, Shirley had an affair with celebrated film actor Peter Finch ("an adorable man") and also with an unnamed lover, the father of her second daughter, Samantha. The little girl took the surname of Sergio Novak, the man who became Shirley's second husband. The couple were together ten years, during which time they adopted a son, Mark, who now lives in Spain.

Samantha's fate, however, could not have been more tragic. She died, aged 21, in a fall from the Clifton suspension bridge in 1984 and, to this day, her mother refuses to believe she took her own life. "She was like me. She was strong. She had resolve. She was too much of a survivor," says Shirley.

"I felt utter despair and such guilt. I tortured myself. I couldn't get out of my head that I'd failed her as a mother. It was my lowest point ever. Your children are meant to bury you, not the other way around."

But Shirley Bassey is nothing if not a fighter. "It could have sent me round the bend. But it didn't. I lost my voice for a while but somehow something told me to get up and get out again on that stage. Sitting around feeling sorry for myself wasn't going to help me and it wouldn't bring back Samantha."

Within weeks, she was in New York playing the celebrated Carnegie Hall. "I wore a simple black gown, walked on stage and the audience gave me a five-minute standing ovation. It's incredible how the public can lift you. It produces the most extraordinary adrenaline. It's like a drug."

It's also what audiences the world over have come to expect from this most dramatic of singers. "I think people have responded to the rollercoaster of my life," she says. But it's a rollercoaster that has calmed considerably in recent years. Since the beginning of the Nineties, Shirley has lived in some style in Monte Carlo, her apartment overlooking the harbour. "Am I domesticated? No! I'll put the dishes in the dishwasher at the weekend because the housekeeper doesn't come in then. But that's it."

She has also become increasingly confident away from centre stage. "I'm good at leaving Shirley Bassey in the dressing room. I see her as the glamourpuss who I don't take home with me. Then I become the other Shirley Bassey, the one from Tiger Bay. I don't wear sexy clothes at home. I'm really rather conservative. I can go shopping and not be recognised. I'm not surrounded by bodyguards – that's a dead giveaway. Nor do I wear dark glasses in the middle of winter. I used to but I find I don't need to hide behind them any more."

There's another reason why Shirley Bassey has cause to feel blessed right now. In March, at a private dinner party in a London restaurant, she was introduced to Greg Smith, a successful theatrical producer once married to Michael Barrymore's former wife Cheryl and then briefly to actress Lynda Bellingham.

"We clicked straight away," she says. "He understands me. We're having such a great time together. I can't believe this is happening to me. I'd all but given up on finding the man for me.'

She was 40 when she last divorced. Might she marry again? "Never say never," she says, hardly able to keep the smile off her face.

So, after the unbroken professional success and the string of personal tragedies, Dame Shirley Bassey has finally reached a calmer, more contented place. "It's true. This is my happiest time ever," she says. "I've just recorded a new album, Thank You For The Years, and I'm thrilled with it. I've been on an incredible journey and I've survived. And now I've met my man. I can't remember a time when I've looked forward with more hope."

© Hello Magazine 2003

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