An interview with Dame Shirley Bassey

From a distance, Shirley Bassey could pass for a thirtysomething. She's wearing tight jeans with turn-ups, leopard-skin stilettos, a groovy green cap and an even groovier green knee-length hoodie-cardigan. She looks firm and fabulous. And yet, at the same time, it's surprising she's only 72. Bassey has been around for ever. She was the voice of James Bond movies four decades ago, had her own television show soon after, and was giving journalists, police officers and personal assistants hell before Naomi Campbell was a twinkle in the media's eye - reports the Guardian.

We are in an old school hall – just Bassey, her pianist, manager, assistant and me – and she's rehearsing for the BBC's forthcoming Electric Proms show. But this is like no rehearsal I've seen. This is the world's most intimate gig. She wiggles her bottom to Hey Big Spender's "Good looking, so refined" as she leans over the piano – conversationally, then suggestively – taps her feet, clicks her fingers, pouts those liquid lips and sings to the wall, which doubles up as a packed arena. There is such poignancy as she sings Something, a song she has been performing for 38 years, into the empty space. "Something in the way he wooo-oooo-oos me." She opens her mouth wide enough to swallow the world.

Her hair is dark black with tiny sprigs of silver peeking from under the cap. She slows down Light My Fire to a torch song, improvises The Lady Is A Tramp with gorgeous abandon, reaches for one of the two bottles of water on the grand piano, takes a slug, and flaps her cardigan wings to cool herself down. I'm sitting with her assistant Jenny behind a table at the end of the room. Jenny whispers to me that it's like being on The X Factor. Her manager shushes us, a look of panic in his eyes – Dame Shirley demands supreme focus.

Bassey was born in Tiger Bay, the docklands area of Cardiff, to a Welsh mother and Nigerian father. By the age of two, he had disappeared from her life – she has never been sure whether he was deported or simply returned to his seafaring ways. Shirley was the youngest of seven children brought up by her mother. Her siblings were considerably older, and she was pretty much left to her own devices. At 15, she left school to work as a packer in a factory. In the evenings she sang in local pubs and working men's clubs. She was desperate to escape, to see the world, make something of herself. At 16, she was pregnant with her first daughter, Sharon – she has never named the father – but she didn't let this hold her back. Two years on she was touring Britain's theatres, and by 19 she had released her first single. The rest is jewel-encrusted, feather-boa'd history. Fifty-three years on, she has sold an estimated 135m records, is one of Britain's most successful recording artists and holds the record for the longest span of top 40 hits by a woman (52 years).

And now Bassey is back. She has recorded The Performance, her first album of original material for 20 years, and it's wonderful. The songs are instant Bassey anthems – some grandiose epics, others tender vignettes written for her by the likes of Rufus Wainwright, Richard Hawley, KT Tunstall, Gary Barlow, the Manic Street Preachers and Bond composers John Barry and David Arnold. At times her voice booms as we might expect, but there's also a more reflective mood. This is Dame Shirley looking back, totting up the years and the losses, checking out her legacy.

Bassey rarely gives interviews, partly because she lives her life fiercely out of public view and partly, I suspect, because she's frightened of engaging too closely with her past. There have been many kiss-and-tells from disenchanted family members or former employees. And there has been terrible tragedy: her first husband, Kenneth Hume, died following a drug overdose in 1967 (they had already divorced – he was gay – and the coroner ruled his death accidental); her 21-year-old younger daughter, Samantha, was found dead, floating in the river Avon near the Clifton suspension bridge in 1985 – again police suggested it was accidental, even though she had been depressed, but having read Bassey's cuttings, I'm not sure that has ever eased the pain.

It's the day after the rehearsal and she's changing from outfit to outfit for the photo shoot. She's dressed in pink feathers and silver stilettos, playing Shirley Bassey. She holds her hands coquettishly above her head, dancing like the sultry silhouette in the classic James Bond opening sequence. "You're making me be silly. Oh, my pants keep falling down." Now her face is stretched into a heroic perma-smile. "This is a long one," she says without moving her lips. "Ouch! My jaw hurts."

She's eating chocolate cake with sour cream, tells me it's gorgeous, insists I have a plate, and asks her assistant for a Kleenex to clear up a blob of cream. I've been told I must call her Dame Shirley on all occasions, but I've got a feeling this is just more diva myth-making and we'll be on Just-Call-Me Shirley terms any second.

So what do people call you now, Dame Shirley?

She smiles, graciously. "Anything. Everybody enjoys making their own up. DSB, Dame Bassey, which is so awful because you don't say Dame Bassey," she says with her still-strong Welsh lilt. "Dame Shirley, of course. And my friends call me Dame!" I look for the ironic smile, but it's not there.

Do your closest friends call you Dame? "Yes. Even my lawyer." She pauses. "Actually, my accountant doesn't. He just calls me Shirley." Why? "I dunno. I never corrected him. Maybe he wants to be the only one who doesn't conform."

It was at Glastonbury two years ago that she became known as DSB. She waded through the mud in a frou-frou dress and diamanté initialled boots, and won over a new rock'n'roll generation. Though, to be fair, there would have been few there who hadn't heard of her – even today's kids know her as the voice of the Bond theme songs Goldfinger, Diamonds Are Forever and Moonraker.

It's late afternoon and she's changed into a most un-Bassey-like outfit: grey trousers and black top. Is this the real, private you? "Yes. I don't enjoy having my boobs exposed offstage. They are for work. People expect to see me in the supermarket in my gown with the split thigh and boobs out." And they don't? "They never will. Unless I'm doing a commercial." (Bassey has little time for domestic chores. She famously said, "Listen, baby, I sing for my supper. I bloody well don't have to cook it as well.") There are two Shirley Basseys, she says, public and private. "And when I walk off the stage, I leave that character behind."

Bassey lives in Monte Carlo. Yes, there's the tax she doesn't have to pay, but more important, it's easier to be private there. When she returns to Britain, she's shocked by the change. "It's sad that they just let it go to rack and ruin, Labour." How? "Well, it's violent, isn't it? That's all we read in the papers and see on television." Why does she think this has happened? "We're letting in too many people. We're an island, for God's sake. And the Britishness seems to have gawwwnnne." She enunciates the word "gone" so poshly that it takes a while to work out what she's saying. "The English are emigrating all over... there won't be any English left." She talks of a nation of bullies and paedophiles in which people live in fear. I can't help wondering what her Nigerian father would make of her assessment of modern Britain.

If you were prime minister, what would you change? "No, no, no!" she protests with a volley of laughter. "I knew I shouldn't have gone there. No, I'm not going there. Na nah nah. I would put family values back. Parents are afraid of their kids. The kids are out of control." Family has always preoccupied her. As a child, she was fearless. "I was a wild kid. I was left to climb trees. And you know those railways logs, they piled them up, six feet apart, and I'd jump from one to the other. Without a safety net! I was an incredible tomboy."

It must have been tough for her mother – a white woman, a single mum, raising seven mixed-race children. "Yes, in an all-white area. It must have been very hard for her." Did she talk about it? "No." Did Shirley or her siblings ever discuss their blackness? "No. You didn't in those days."

Mind you, she says, there was one particular teacher who she is sure was racist. "I was the only coloured kid in the school and I swear the teacher I had was prejudiced. She set about me one day with a ruler, up and down my legs and my arms, so I just went pow!" She pulls her arm back and pounds her fist into an imaginary stomach. "Cos the pain was awful. Just to stop the pain." You hit her? "Course I did." Were you expelled? "No, she got expelled. Because the headteacher believed me when they saw the marks on me. That's abuse," she shouts. "That's child abuse."

You have a bit of a reputation for hitting people.

"Hahahaha!"

Is it fair?

"Yeah. Nnnnno. Only in self-defence. Excuse me. Don't get that the wrong way. That I go round hitting people. No, no, no, no, no. Self-defence."

In 1998 her former personal assistant, Hilary Levy, sued her for breach of contract when she dismissed her after 15 years, alleging that the singer had called her a Jewish bitch and had hit her. Bassey claimed she had called her a Jewish princess and won the case.

This was not the first time she had appeared in court. In 1978, she pleaded guilty to being drunk and disorderly (pink champagne has always been her favourite tipple) after shouting abuse in the street and pushing a policeman. The first newspaper cutting in the Guardian's Shirley Bassey file dates from 1963 – she had just won a huge £2,400 in damages after an article in the magazine Pix had "claimed Miss Bassey was a singer of sexy songs" and that she had had an illegitimate child.

In fact, she had had a child out of wedlock, and of course she was a singer of sexy songs. With her revealing tops, proud décolletage and split skirts, few could do sexy quite like Shirley Bassey. Hers was a very particular kind of glamour. With songs such as Hey Big Spender and Diamonds Are Forever, she romanticised materialism. Men couldn't be relied upon, love couldn't be relied upon, but jewels and money sure could. Does she think she shaped the songs or did the songs shape her? "No, I became the songs." She stops to think. "It must have been there deep down inside. I must have wanted it. Big Spender was there lying dormant inside me, but I didn't have the money to do it, to go on spending sprees. Big Spender was sung by Shirley MacLaine originally in Sweet Charity and they did it really slowly. And it was my first husband who said, 'You know, you should do Big Spender.' And I said, 'Don't be daft, have you heard how slow they sing it?' So he said, 'Jazz it up.' Hahahaha! He was so funny."

Can I ask a nosy question? "You will anyway. You're a bloody journalist. Hahahaha!" Did you know he was gay when you married him? "I will not say this. He was great and very clever and made me laugh. I will not besmirch his name. Pass. I adored him."

So I change the subject. Were your family supportive of your career? No, she says, they were just baffled. "I think they were glad to get rid of me actually." Her sisters had never liked her singing at home. "I'd sing instead of cry. And it just got on their nerves." They preferred you to cry? "Well, then I could be shut up with a sweet or something. But when I started singing, I couldn't be shut up." Singing was a barometer of her moods.

Bassey's family life has always been complex. Her older daughter Sharon was initially brought up by Bassey's sister, and thought of her mother as Auntie Shirley. When Bassey became successful, she was reunited with Sharon and adopted a great-nephew, Mark, because she thought she could give him a better life.

Were the family amazed by your success? "No, they were in shock." Still are, she says. Did they tell you they were proud of you? "No, they'd say, 'You weren't bad tonight.' That was the best… I dunno, my brother, funnily enough, he was more like that, he would give me a hug and say well done."

Are you still close to your brother? "No, not to any of them. I've been gone since the age of 16 and I only ever saw them when I went home." Is that a regret? "No, it's just how it was," she says tersely.

At times, your success sounds like a Faustian pact. "Yes, yes!" she says enthusiastically. "Because you're damned if you do and damned if you don't. You want success and then when you do get it, you don't want it because of the attention. And people grabbing at you, wanting a piece of you. You don't know who's really a friend cos people are attracted to successful people like a magnet. So you start distrusting and going back and back and back until in the end you just want to be on your own. I know I do. A lot of the time I just want to be on my own. Close my door and..."

The trouble is, she says, ultimately fame defines everything. Not least her relationship with men. "It's very difficult for a woman who is successful. Men don't want to be behind successful women… They were all called Mr Bassey." There have been two (un)official Mr Basseys – Hume, and her second husband and former manager, Sergio Novak, who, according to legend, realised their marriage was on the rocks when she moved chauffeur Ken Carter into their home.

Did her husbands mind being called Mr Bassey? "Of course they did. I didn't like it, I'd say that is not Mr Bassey. None of my relationships have worked out. They've all been great in the beginning and then after a year they all think, no, I can't cope with this any more." They feel emasculated? "Course they do. That's why you see so many women in the business who are on their own."

I remind her that she once said that if she got a second chance at life, she'd like to come back as a mother. "Yes, I also used to say I'd like to be my daughter when I grow up. Sharon. She's a good mother. I wasn't because I was in the business." She tried to be a disciplinarian, but then would give them anything they wanted. There was no happy medium. "I wasn't, you know, cut out to be a mum." If you had your time again, would you still choose showbusiness? "I don't know. Thinking of the alternative of being married with lots of kids. No." She blows air into the neck of her jumper.

As a single mum and factory worker, did you think you had lost your chance of escape? Silence. She gives me a look, petulant, bored, resentful. I've never met anybody whose mood changes so suddenly and fiercely.

"Ah, are we not doing a life story, autobiographical thing here? Ah, no! No, please. I am too old for that. It's all been said. You can go in the archives for this. It's all there. You're not writing anything new..."

But I've never seen you say anything about what it was like having a baby at 16.

"I didn't answer it and I still don't answer it. I don't want to bring up children."

What would you like to talk about then?

"Nothing."

But I'm an interviewer.

"Well, don't interview me about the past. We get so bored with talking about it."

So I ask about her musical heroes. "Frank Sinatra. They're all dead. Peggy Lee, Ella Fitzgerald." So who are the new ones? "Another dead one – Michael Jackson. Ach, he was just fantastic to watch. What a talent. They tend to sound all the same now. Everyone wants to sound like Mariah Carey or Whitney Houston. It's very strange. They're not developing their own style."

By contrast, she says, she has continued to evolve, especially with the new album. "I have amazed myself. My vocal coach has always said I have a soft voice but I never use it and she was so right." You were surprised by the tenderness? "Yes, it knocked me out. I'm so used to singing out..." She spreads her arms dramatically. Belting it out? She gives me a stare that could freeze the sun. "Don't say belting. I hate that word."

God, you look scary.

She laughs. "Did I get scary? Hehehehe! Well, it's an awful word. I don't like belting. Belting is disrespectful, you know. Only my kind of singer is accused of belting. You don't say that opera singers belt. I don't belt. That's just my voice."

Does Tom Jones belt? "He sings. He's a singer. Amateurs belt. We've both learned our craft and we don't deserve to be accused of belting."

Dame Shirley, I take it back and apologise.

She giggles her forgiveness. "Thank you."

It was meant as a compliment but it didn't come out quite right.

"Hehehehe! You've made me all hot now. Ooooh! Oooh! Oooh!" She blows down her jumper again.

As she talks about her fellow Welsh singing legend, I can't help thinking how different he is from her – when I interviewed him last year, I was struck by how joyously he embraces his celebrity. She tells me how much she adores him, especially now he's allowed his hair to go grey. "I'm so glad he's gone au naturel. He looks fan-tas-tic." Have they sung together? "Yes, in the late 60s. We did the Beatles. The Beatles wasn't for us. We should have done Anything You Can Do, I Can Do Better, no you can't, yes I can... Something like that."

She grins. "Yeah, we could call it A Knight With A Dame! Yeaaaah! Oh, get me the phone!"

Have you just thought of that?

"Isn't that incredible? I swear I've just thought of it."

I tell her that one of the things I love about him is that he insists on telling you about every bit of plastic surgery he's had.

"He's so lovely and honest, our Tom." She grins.

You've got a good smile.

"Thank you."

Your teeth are amazing. Are they your own?

"They were until until they started falling out."

You've had them done?

"Don't!" she warns. "Keep the glamour going!"

We're still debating the rights and wrongs of discussing her past. The thing is, I say, if I have to rely on old articles, I would have to assume you have a bad relationship with all your family. "Ach, so many of the headlines are rubbish," she says.

Is your relationship with Sharon good? "Fantastic. I even get on very well with my son, Mark." But the papers say you don't? "But I do. We have long conversations on the phone. I won't say it was always good, but we are now settled. We have a good relationship."

It's Samantha I really want to ask about. Her short life was troubled – Bassey never named her father (it was rumoured to be the actor Peter Finch with whom she had an affair), and Sharon told the inquest her younger sister sometimes drank to excess and had received treatment for depression.

Bassey has hardly ever said anything about her publicly. More than anything, I think her daughter's death has, not surprisingly, dominated her later years. I ask how difficult it was to cope with Samantha's death and expect her to stonewall me. But she doesn't. Far from it. She starts to talk slowly, uncertainly. "It was difficult. Samantha didn't... none of them liked it... me going away, but Samantha, she really took it to heart. And every time the cases came up from the basement the kids would be agh..."

You never thought she killed herself? "No. Never believed that. Listen, if somebody jumped off – this is what annoys me with the press because it's a more sensational story. If she'd jumped off the bridge, all her bones would have been broken. But there was not a bone broken. In fact she did not have a mark on her. So if anything, I'm suspicious about her death. They said she didn't have a mark on her, and she didn't have any water in her lungs. So if somebody's drowning, they gasp, don't they?"

Why wasn't there an investigation? "This is it. It's so long ago." She snuffles. "It's bothered me all this time. Because if she didn't have any bruises or broken bones, where did she fall? And if she didn't fall from the bridge… It's been with me all this time. My imagination goes wild. Detectives are telling me this. She didn't have a bone broken or a mark on her body and no water in her lungs. That's what the mortician told me, so why didn't they find that suspicious?"

Had you been in touch with her just before she died? "No. Actually I was going to England and going to see her before my tour of America." Two nights before she left, she tells me, she had a terrible premonition – her daughter seemed to appear before her. "I saw flashes of her image on the television and it was really scary." She's talking so quietly, and I can see that revisiting this eerie vision is traumatic for her. But she persists with the story, apparently determined to tell it. "In the end I got on the phone to her and the landlady said, 'Oh, just a minute.' Then she came back and said, 'Oh, Samantha's busy, she'll call you back' and she never did. And then I got off the plane to pick everyone up at the airport and there was my daughter Sharon at the steps. What's going on here? And they took me into a room and there was just a bed, and I said, this is not the VIP lounge, and then they hit me with it. And the tour was cancelled and the doctor was brought in. Ah. And you know it was hard… I never wanted to sing again. Children should bury their parents, not the other way round."

The room is silent. She swallows hard. There are tears in her eyes. "I didn't expect this kind of interview. I don't want to do this any more. You didn't tell me it was going to be this deep." She's angry and upset – with me, and possibly with herself. "No, no, no, no, no, that's it. You can't trust anybody, they want to talk to you about a record and then they go deep into your life. That's why the press have a bad name. That's so unfair, you know. To do that. Where's my coat?" And with that she disappears.

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