Petula Clark: In My Own Words

To celebrate Petula Clark CBE's 80th Birthday, and her 70th year on the BBC, Radio 2 presents a new and revealing portrait of the best-selling female artist in British recording history - told for the first time in her own words.

In this uniquely personal programme, Petula remembers her first performance on the BBC Empire Service in 1942 during WWII; her role in the first ever British TV broadcast; her success as a screen icon (starring alongside Alec Guinness, Fred Astaire and Anthony Newley); her string of hit singles in the swinging 60s that established her as an international star. She also covers the time she made a stand for racial equality in the United States on national television; how she came to lend vocals to John and Yoko's Give Peace A Chance in that Montreal hotel room; discovering The Carpenters at a film wrap party; her five-year Vegas residency in the 70s (the first woman to land such a contract); her show-stopping musical theatre performances in The Sound of Music, Blood Brothers, and Sunset Boulevard; and finally her joy in her latest album, made here in the UK.

It's a career that spans many aspects of the cultural and performing arts - singer, composer, songwriter, stage and film actress, television star, radio broadcaster, and cartoon strip character. Idolised by everyone from John Lennon, Fred Astaire and Michael Jackson to Johnny Rotten and Michael Ball, she has the longest UK chart career of any British female singer, with a back catalogue which includes recordings in French, Spanish and Italian.

It's a revealing and personal portrait of a lady, who has affectionately been known for the last 70 years on British radio as simply "Our Pet". It features the hits Downtown, Don't Sleep in the Subway, My Love, This Is My Song, the Ya Ya Twist, I Know A Place, Sign of the Times and Colour My World.