Category: Music

Petula Clark’s UK Tour

Petula Clark’s UK tour starts Saturday. Details are here (look for “click here”). Dave Moncur, DogRat reader and resident of Scotland, will be seeing Pet live, and maybe he’ll share some details with us after the show.

According to the Petula Clark blog, Pet was scheduled to make a BBC Radio 2 appearance on Steve Wright’s show today (Friday), but that didn’t happen. Wright says in this audio clip that “starlet” (that’s cute) Pet will be “on soon.”

[audio:/2008/MAY/BBC2.mp3]

You’d think a savvy Brit like Wright would know Ms. Paltrow’s name is pronouced “GWYNeth,” and not “GWENyth.” The Petula blog also recently featured this new interview in The Telegraph, with her talking about vacations and travel. Pet certainly does a lot of traveling. I saw her in Connecticut just a few weeks ago!

New Petula Clark CD, Interview

THEN AND NOW - THE VERY BEST OF PETULA CLARKIf you happen to live in England, you’re in for a bit of good luck, because a new Petula Clark CD is about to be released, including five new songs! It’s called “THEN AND NOW – THE VERY BEST OF PETULA CLARK”, and it will be out on June 16th. It’s listed on Amazon’s UK site, but not yet here in America. The new songs are described here, on the new Petula Clark blog.

Petula fan Dave Moncur, our DogRat reader in Scotland, wrote to say that the Times Online has posted a new interview with Pet, Not Just Anybody: Petula Clark. The questions are funny and unusual, and I daresay some of them are the sort that only another woman would ask of her. Unfortunately, at the moment the dimensions of the photo of Pet on that page have been distorted. The JPG is here in its original and unmodified form, just like Pet herself, who assures us she’s never had any plastic surgery.

Where Is Prudence?

It was Pattie Boyd who got to be inside of the baggage cage with the Beatles in A Hard Day’s Night; but as noted previously I think Prudence was the real beauty among the girls on the train. This video was taken from a 20-year-old Laserdisc, played on an equally old LD deck. Back then, it was the only format with the songs from the movie in digital stereo.
[flv:/Video/2008/MAY/IShouldHaveKnownBetter.flv 440 330]

A New Petula Clark Blog

Last year there was a short-lived Petula Clark blog. There was some synergy between my Petula posts and “Petula Clark: Driven by Emotion,” but that blog met an untimely and abrupt end. Petula Clark’s UK fan club has just started a new Pet blog, that you can see by clicking here.

A Beatle In Transit

Here’s a fab picture I found recently in a book that I hadn’t seen before. George Harrison with his parents, Louise and Harold, getting ready to fly to America for the second time. George had flown to the U.S. on his own in September ’63 to see his sister Louise. George’s father looked like George Orwell! The custom British European Airways logo was later seen in A Hard Day’s Night.

George Harrison and his parents

Dear Prudence, Won’t You Come Out to Play?

Everybody knows the story of George Harrison meeting Pattie Boyd on the set of A Hard Day’s Night. But who is the girl in this photo?

Prudence Hooper and Paul McCartney

For my money, for sheer beauty she is in Vivien Leigh territory, and she outshines Pattie. Here they are together in AHDN.

[flv:/Video/2008/MAY/AHDN.flv 440 330]

But who is she? I’m not 100% sure, but I believe her name is Prudence Hooper. There is virtually no information available on Prue Hooper that I have ever been able to find. Where are you, Prudence?