A global star in the 1960s and 70s, Greek singer Nana Mouskouri is touring again to mark her 80th birthday on Monday. Anne Hailes spoke to one of her biggest fans
MANY young people today don't know the name Nana Mouskouri but she was something special to my generation, first coming to our attention when she sang the Luxembourg entry in the Eurovision Song Contest of 1963.
For one man in Bangor, however, she is more than special: he is her most ardent fan, travelling round the world to hear her in concert, writing to her and collecting her records and CDs.
Colin Nevin is just back from Mouskouri's sell-out performance at the National Concert Hall in Dublin. He also travelled to Glasgow and Manchester during her current worldwide Happy Birthday tour, marking the singer's 80th birthday which she celebrates next Monday.
He told me that in each place she held the audience enthralled, just as it was when she was younger and first sang The White Rose of Athens and Plaisir d'Amour. "Nana's choice of songs is often tied in with where she's performing and in Dublin she sang two Irish melodies, She Moved Through The Fair and Danny Boy which received rapturous applause. In Glasgow everyone sang along to her rendition of The Bonnie Banks Of Loch Lomond which nearly brought the house down. She respects her fans," he said. "When I sent her a CD of Helen Shapiro who once toured with her, Nana wrote me a personal thank you. She signed it 'With love and affection'. The simplicity of her style is impressive, always poised and polite - she's a singer who has never vied with pop or rock and is never gaudy in her presentation."
In the 1960s we were being fed a diet of Cilla Black and Sandy Shaw, Lulu and Petula Clark; the girl-next-door look was 'in'. Then along comes this sophisticated young woman - great figure, long dark hair and, above all, horn-rimmed spectacles. She had presence and popularity, was multilingual but no diva. She loved Belfast when she first came in 1971 and returned several times before retiring, for the first time, in 2008.
In her earlier career she starred in many UK television shows, danced and sang, sometimes accompanied by the Greek bouzouki, and her recordings have sold in hundreds of millions all over the world. And Mouskouri, who now lives in Switzerland with her second husband, had another life as a member of the European Parliament from 1994 until 1999.
Although Colin has a library full of her work, the highlight was meeting his idol at the Roman Amphitheatre in Caesarea, Israel, in 2000 and the photograph taken then now hangs on his living room wall.
Born in Crete where her parents worked in the cinema industry, it was a hard growing-up: more than half a million Greek people died of starvation during the war, thousands more were executed for defying the Germans and she remembers neighbours dying in the streets during the civil war.
Although her family had no money, they managed to send her to the Athens Conservatoire where she studied classical music and opera. However, when an interest in jazz took control, it didn't go down well. She was forbidden to take her final exams and was barred from singing at the Epidauros amphitheatre. But Mouskouri is nothing if not strong willed - probably to the surprise of her tutors, she ditched the Conservatoire in favour of an Athens night club. That 'thran' attitude showed again 50 years ago when she was touring with Harry Belafonte. He suggested that she remove her heavy glasses on stage - she said she'd rather leave the show; he relented.
Perhaps she hides behind those famous glasses as she has always suffered stage fright when appearing in front of huge audiences - audiences who, as Colin says, who are often moved to tears. "Nana Mouskouri is the biggest selling female artist of all time with more than 350 million record sales worldwide in many languages," Colin says. "Throughout her life her philosophy has been simple: 'As long as there is music for me and my friends, there is love'."