Hello, I'm Kirstie Young, and this is a podcast from the Desert Island Discs archive

for rights reasons we've had to shorten the music. The program was originally broadcast in 1995,

and the presenter was Sue Lawley.

My car's the way this week is a singer and an actress. The daughter of a recythe docker, she left school with three O-levels and a beautiful voice,

but it never occurred to her to use the voice rather than the O-levels, until she was offered a short singing engagement,

which forced her to abandon the day job. She went on to play the lead vocal in Willie Russell's play

John Paul George Ringo and Bert, and eight years later won an award for her performance in his

blood brothers. She's had hit singles, January, February, and I know him so well among them,

and recently a leading role in ITV's band of gold. Sometimes she says, I can't believe I made it over

the wall with the dogs barking at my heels, and they still haven't caught me. She is Barbara Dixon.

Does that mean, Barbara, that you don't feel you deserve your success, or that you just still can't

believe it's happened to you? I think a bit of both, actually. I think that being Scots and with my

mother having a Jewish background, I've got this extraordinarily dichotomy, which is that in Scotland,

it's not encouraged for you to show off, you shouldn't show off, and yet my mother's Liverpool background is

if you've got it flaunted, so I'm stuck in the middle of that. So that kind of feeling is it that

kind of girls from Dunn Firmland born in the baby boom just don't make it big. Well, no, I mean,

I wanted to be a film star when I was seven, and I thought, I can't be a film star because I live in

Dunn Firmland. But you always had the voice. Did that not mark you out from an early age? Yes, but I

didn't use the voice. I used to sing in the bathroom with a sort of tube of toothpaste for a microphone,

but I didn't actually use it because I was very, very shy, and I still am, actually. I don't like

showing off, and I find it difficult to walk into a room full of people who turn around and say,

oh, look, there's Barbara Dixon, my legs go. It's difficult when you're giving a concert in the

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