Hello, I'm Cresti Young and this is a podcast from the Desert Island Discs archive for rights reasons

We've had to shorten the music

The program was originally broadcast in 1997 and the presenter was Sue Lolli

My cast away this week is a singer. Her unique voice has kept her at the forefront of the British entertainment scene ever since she went as a young woman to audition for a jazz band in the Charing Cross Road

That was in 1951, seven years later she married the leader of the band and together they formed a partnership which is world famous

Singing and acting not only in jazz and popular music but in experimental works as well

She's had hit records, starred in many a popular show and enjoyed great success in the United States

To the purists who'd prefer that she'd never strayed from proper jazz she says simply I am a singer of songs

She is Cleo Lane, indeed Dame Cleo Lane these days

I am now and I'm not sure quite how to work with it really

I suppose you can open up the show singing there ain't nothing like a day

Well I could but John felt that that would be rather crude and not very nice but he loves to announce me

He said I can't announce you as Miss Anymore

So now I'm announced as Dame Cleo

And must admit it makes me pull myself up to my full height as I walk on

As I when I first started I couldn't do

But tell me you know when you first started did you fall into jazz but almost by mistake

You might have been any kind, you might have auditioned for Billy Cotton as well as for Johnny Danquist

That's quite true because I really just wanted to sing

But I think John explains this much better than I can

He says that all those auditions that Cleo did in the beginning and nobody wanted her at all

It was because she didn't sound like the current singer of the day which is what everybody wanted

...