Kiki Dee Quotes

I'm just a sensitive little soul who's put so much into her career that I haven't had enough energy or time left over to sustain a relationship.

This is where I break one last taboo: I'm incredibly glad I'm not a granny.

When I started out in this business, I really wanted to become iconic, but I'm glad that didn't happen. I like to do things like travel on public transport unnoticed.

We had idyllic summer holidays, building sandcastles with my father on the beach at Bridlington. It might sound strange, but I think that secure cocoon of familial love was so nourishing, it gave me the strength to live life on my own.

I was born Pauline Matthews and grew up in Bradford as one of three children - I had an older brother, David, and an older sister, Betty. My father Fred worked in the mills as a textile weaving supervisor, and my mother, Mary, was a housewife.

I always enjoyed sport. I was a bit of a wild child, to be honest, and just loved running around.

My older brother had a lot of Elvis on vinyl, and really, that was my first introduction to music during the Fifties.

Dad always encouraged my singing, so when 'Don't Go Breaking My Heart' was a hit in the States, I flew my parents to New York first-class to see me, put them up at the Waldorf Astoria, then they sailed home on the QE2.

I realised when I sang at family parties and Christmases I'd suddenly get everyone's attention, and, being the youngest of three, I thought what a brilliant attention-seeking ploy it was.

I had a cancer scare in the early '90s, and for a few months, I wondered if I would make it.

I was the youngest of three kids, and from the age of four, singing was my way of getting attention.

It's not so much that I ever declared: 'I will never have children.' I just never found the right man to settle down with, so it didn't happen.

The first thing Fontana did was get me to change my hair colour from light brown to red, and the songwriter Mitch Murray suggested I change my name from Pauline Matthews to Kiki Dee.

I've got my mother's acceptance of things and my dad's drive - not such a bad combination.