PETULA Clark’s enjoyment of performing live music lives on more than 50 years since her first major hit Downtown.

The star, who has sold more than 68 million records, said audiences still give her a buzz and touring is fun.

“I hear people say they hate being on tour because they find it exhausting.

I find it absolutely energising.

“There’s an energy that happens between us. I am doing my thing and I am getting something back from the audience. It creates a wondrous thing actually.”

The singer will be arriving in Salisbury on October 16 with fond memories. Petula said she is looking forward to her return to the city because she has fond memories of filming in the area as a child.

“When I was a child I made quite a lot of movies with the Rank organisation.

“We filmed in Salisbury and I remember it so well.

We stayed at a charming hotel right on the River Avon and it was totally dream-like for me.”

Petula’s performance at the City Hall will be part of a 15-date tour ahead of the release of here latest album From Now On.

Speaking from her “little tiny flat” in Chelsea, she said: “I have a great band with me, an American musical director, and I have a great team of people around me.”

So far as the show itself, Petula does not go for too much glitz and glitter.

“It will be very simple, it is something I learned perhaps from France – the first time I saw Piaf on stage or someone like Aznavour (Charles), the impact of simplicity.

“I don’t have an enormous set, I don’t have costume changes and I don’t take my clothes off.”

Petula said that she went through a period where there were dancers behind her and many costume changes, but it did not feel comfortable.

“I thought I would try and that it might be fun.

“ I did it for a couple of years, but then one day I said ‘you know what? It’s just not what I do’.

“It went back to being just me on stage.”

Her song choice for the show will be from a huge back catalogue – she became the first UK female artist to win a Grammy in 1964 with Downtown for Best Rock n Roll Record and won her second Grammy the following year for Best Female Vocal Performance with I Know A Place.

Petula said: “It becomes a bit of a problem trying to figure out what I am going to sing.

“You start going through all the songs I could sing and the songs I have to sing.

“Certain songs if I don’t sing I think they would probably lynch me, and the songs that I want to sing and then the new songs – it is quite difficult.”

Her new album is due out in September with a selection of mostly new songs, but with a few covers.

Petula said: “There are only three covers. We have chosen carefully.

“One is Blackbird. I am often asked to sing Beatles songs and I have sung and recorded quite a lot of them, but Blackbird seems to be one of the lesser-used songs. It’s quite intricate even though it sounds very simple.”

Her inspiration for this was a daily visitor to her home. She said: “I have a tiny balcony and there is a blackbird that comes to sing to me almost every night.”

Other songs include one she wrote herself after being given the lyrics from Charles Aznavour. She said: “As I was leaving, he thrust these lyrics into my hand and said ‘write some music to this’.

“It was a little intimidating but I went back to my funky piano in the mountains in the French Alps and I wrote it.

“It came quite easily and I was a bit surprised when John, the producer of the album, decided that he wanted me to record it.

“So that’s me playing the piano and me singing.

That’s my music.”

She said her new songs will feature in the show and that she had a strong involvement with their creation. She said: “There was a lot of co-writing going on. I enjoyed the teamwork.

“We would throw ideas around. It was an enjoyment.”

Petula said she is still a romantic at heart.

She said: “I think love is extremely important.

The big love is important – the love of life, love of humanity – that kind of love.”

As well as being one of the leading pop stars of the last 50 years, Petula has also starred in more than 30 motion pictures, including Finian’s Rainbow, where she starred opposite Fred Astaire and 1970’s Goodbye Mr Chips, where she starred opposite Peter O’Toole.

When she opened at the Victoria Palace, London in The Sound of Music in 1980, it was to the thenbiggest audience in British Theatre history.

She subsequently has starred in the New York production of Blood Brothers and gave a defining performance of Norma Desmond in Andrew Lloyd Webber’s Sunset Boulevard in London and in the US.

Petula Clark will be at the City Hall on Sunday, October 16th.