Lulu is a star ... even if she can't make her mind up on her accent

Problem: it’s difficult to keep up.

Leading intellectuals on social media said: “Lulu can’t make her mind up on what accent she wants to have … She switches to Scottish when there’s some reference to Scotland.”

Yep or aye, this attracts opprobrium from authentic, haggis-sooking Scots, as does her history of supporting the Conservatives. 

There have also been allegations of supporting Rangers. 

But most decent ratepayers can forgive all that for the fabulously raunchy voice and the gallus, bubbly personality. Talented lassie made something of herself. Get over it.

Our 5ft 1in Petra Pan of pop was born Marie McDonald McLaughlin Lawrie on November 3, 1948, in Lennoxtown, East Dumbartonshire. 

Growing up in Dennistoun, Glasgow, she made her first public appearance aged four, singing at a Coronation party and, at school, got into trouble for singing in class.

Aged around 13, the gallus lass approached a band called The Bellrocks seeking stage experience as a singer. She got a Saturday night gig. 

At 14, she joined a group called The Gleneagles and played clubs including The Lindella, a Glasgow venue dedicated to the sin of dancing. There, Lulu was discovered by Marion Massey, who later became her manager, guiding her to stardom.

Massey recalled: “She looked so peculiar that first time I saw her. Her hair was in curlers underneath a fur beret. She had a terrible cold, was very pale and wore three jumpers.” A club singer wearing three jumpers: how Scottish is that? Massey changed wee Marie’s moniker to Lulu – “she’s a real lulu of a kid” – and the group’s name to The Luvvers.

Harvey nicks all
In 1964, under Massey’s wing, Lulu signed to Decca and, aged 15, stormed the charts with her brassy version of The Isley Brothers’ Shout, a song she loved after hearing Alex Harvey sing it several months before.

One rock journalist wrote of Lulu’s version: “It is still probably the best rock ‘n’ roll performance by a woman in the history of British pop.”

In 1965, she returned to the charts with Leave A Little Love and, the following year, toured Poland with The Hollies, becoming the first British female singer to appear live behind the Iron Curtain.

Other chart success followed, notably in the unironed United States, where her title song for To Sir, With Love became the best-selling single of 1967. Lulu made her acting debut in the film, which starred Sidney Poitier. 

She then embarked on a massive US tour, appearing on the Ed Sullivan, David Frost and Johnny Carson shows.

By the late 1960s, she’d several TV shows of her own, starting with BBC Two’s Gadzooks! 

It’s The In Crowd, a title doubtless thought up by a 55-year-old pipe-smoker in a tatty cardigan. 
One 1969 show that famously went awry saw Jimi Hendrix start Hey Joe before announcing “We’d like to stop playing this rubbish” and breaking into Cream’s Sunshine Of Your Love, amid frantic attempts to stop the heavy jam. 

Oddly enough, Lulu was feted at times by rock papers New Musical Express and Melody Maker. 

On the other hand, in 1975, she appeared in Bruce Forsyth Meets Lulu.Running ahead of ourselves with the great achievements here. In 1969, Lulu represented Britain in the Eurovision Song Contest – making “great” work hard now – performing Boom Bang-a-Bang. 

Lulu later recalled they’d trialled several songs, laughing about one in particular: “Bet you it’s that Boom boom bang a bang a bang a bang.” 

Then it won. Concluded Lulu: “Somehow there was an intelligence working there.” I see.

Brotherly love
SHORTLY before her Eurovision appearance, Lulu married Maurice Gibb of yon Bee Gees amid chaotic crowd scenes outside a Buckinghamshire church. They divorced four years later, but remained on good terms.

More dalliances. In 1967, she toured with The Monkees and had a brief romance with singer Davy Jones, rightly attracting prurient attention in Britain’s morally upright press.

More appearances : she starred in Xmas panto Peter Pan at the Opera House, Manchester, breaking box office records there, and repeating her performance at London Palladium in 1975. She appeared on the Morecambe And Wise Show and, more surreally, in Monty Python’s Flying Circus, alongside Ringo Starr.
She had another major hit with the title song to the 1974 Bond film The Man With The Golden Gun, and another minor dalliance when, in 1974, she covered David Bowie’s The Man Who Sold The World, with Bowie not only playing sax but ringing Lulu’s bell. 

Young people were terrible back then.

In 1977, Lulu flirted briefly with Siddha yoga before marrying hairdresser John Frieda. They had one son and divorced in 1991. 

After various radio shows, musicals and a video appearance with Adam the Ant, her greatest achievement followed in 1983 when she won Rear Of The Year. At the end of that decade, even that was almost eclipsed when she voiced the title character in ITV animated series Nellie Yhe Elephant.
She wrote a hit song for Tina Turner, supported boy band Take That, and appeared in BBC comedy Absolutely Fabulous. 
Having made such a name for herself, she decided to change it to Lulu Kennedy-Cairns, this being back in the days before a double-barrel name became a sign of desperate aspiration. 

Park strife
IN 2000, she performed to acclaim at her first festival: T In The Park, a deplorable event held near Kinross (see my forthcoming memoir, Journalistic Micturitions, revealing how I was mistaken for an undercover policeman).
In 2009, Lulu was one of several Scottish celebrities featured in an advertising campaign for Homecoming Scotland, which encouraged people around the world with Scottish heritage to return to the dreich dump they’d escaped.
Also in 2008, Lulu celebrated Barack Obama’s election as US president, saying: “Now we have got hope in the world”. In the 1979, 1983 and 1987 UK General Elections, she’d supported the Tories in despair.
Talking of despair, in 2011, the singer took part in Strictly Come Dancing and, in 2014, performed in the closing ceremony of the Glasgow Commonwealth Games. Now she’s getting ready for a brand new tour. 
Gal’s unstoppable.