Dame Vera Lynn, back on top of the charts, tells Celia Walden politics should not stop us supporting the Forces.
She beat the Arctic Monkeys, the Kings of Leon and the Beatles to the top of the charts this month, becoming the oldest recording artist ever to have a number one album – but the best thing about Dame Vera Lynn is that she hasn't got the faintest idea who the first two are. "They were just names to me," she says, eyes creased up in amusement. "And fairly odd ones at that."
Despite selling more than 24,000 copies of her re-released wartime anthem of hope, We'll Meet Again, in the past week alone, Dame Vera – on a working holiday in Antibes yesterday to promote her autobiography, Some Sunny Day – remains matter-of-fact. "It was a surprise, obviously, a wonderful surprise," she says, agile and Riviera-tanned in white linen slacks and a coral jersey top, "but when my lawyer called to say that I was in the top 10, I assumed he was joking."
At 92 years of age, this Dame is unlikely to let the success go to her head.
"When I hear the songs come on the radio now, it feels so strange," she says, shaking her silver hair, fine as spun glass. "They were from another era, but I suppose something must resonate with people now. Maybe it's because young people are living through another war, albeit a far away one, that they have a renewed interest in what came before."
Released for the 70th anniversary of the declaration of the Second World War earlier this month, Dame Vera's album was originally recorded at the Decca studios when she was just 21.
Something in the unabashedly sentimental nature of the album's title song, We'll Meet Again, coupled with the genuine, unsophisticated quality of her voice struck a chord: overnight Dame Vera became the "Forces Sweetheart", as she is still remembered more than half a century later.
Through the early 1940s, she toured Egypt, India and Burma tirelessly, baring her mosquito-bitten arms in the evening wear that she was given extra coupons to buy, visiting hospitals and setting up her own radio show, Sincerely Yours, especially for the boys.
Her generation will tell you that she was an anti-celebrity from a purer time, a time when stars wore civvies not Versace, a time of poverty and patriotism when entertaining the troops was about them – not you. "I didn't think I was doing anything special," she shrugs. "All I wanted to do was to help the boys. When I went to see them I lived just like they did, in grass huts with buckets of water instead of facilities." Hard to imagine Madonna doing that now. Is she surprised by the lack of public support famous musicians like Sir Paul McCartney and Sir Bob Geldof are prepared to offer the troops now, scared, perhaps, to take a view in a politicised war?
"I am," she nods sadly. "I don't know why it is that they don't do more and I don't think any young stars are writing songs for them either. Look, I don't really know what this war in Afghanistan is all about or what our boys are doing there," for the first time in our interview her voice loses its steadiness. "They're not getting killed for their own country and Gordon Brown needs to bring them home, but public figures shouldn't look at war in terms of politics: they should just think of the boys and want to help them in any way they can. When you're on the front line, you need to know that you are not being forgotten, but that means going out to wherever the war is."
Fame, in her view, comes with its own responsibilities. "It is your duty, part of the business, to take on the tough stuff otherwise you have no right to be in this business.
"I used to bomb around London in my little Austin 10 throughout the raids to appear on stage and if there was a raid before the show was over I would be there, crouching on a floor wherever I could find a big thick wall.
"You can't have it all one way – be on the telly and the radio and make lots of money – and not offer anything to your followers when they need you."
But today's cult of celebrity, she fears, now means that "so many go into the business just to be famous, not because they are passionate about their craft".
Born in East Ham, east London, in 1917 to a plumber father, Vera Margaret Welch started her singing career at local working men's clubs aged just seven. Although traces of her once broad cockney accent still come through, years spent in Ditchling, East Sussex (where she and her daughter Virginia Lewis-Jones from her 58-year marriage to the late Harry Lewis, a clarinettist, now live) have softened it somewhat.
Despite offers of lucrative music contracts in America, Dame Vera chose not to emigrate for one simple reason: "England, through good times or bad, was the only place I wanted to be."
Money and the good life, she insists, have never been a driving force for her, which may be just as well: a copyright loophole means performers stop receiving royalties 50 years after a song was first released, so Dame Vera won't receive a penny from her recent success – they all go to the record label instead.
"Of course it's crazy and they should change that rule, but I've got my lawyer looking into things to see if something fairer can't be arranged," she says vaguely. When I tell her that the Performing Arts Society have calculated she would be earning £18 a minute she just laughs. "Really? Look, as long as people enjoy the records, you know…."
This article appeared on the front page of the 19th September Daily Telegraph. Hopefully this will encourage stars to give more to the troops and get involved with our charity event.
Posted by: Michelle
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