After 25 years out of the limelight, barefoot sixties starlet Sandie Shaw is back on tour, starting with two dates in Kent. She talked to Helen Geraghty.

Sandie Shaw is very surprised. After 25 years of only singing in the privacy of her own bathroom, the huge character of her new friend Jools Holland has nudged and prodded her into getting up on stage again.

Only this time around, the Essex girl most famous for (There’s) Always Something There to Remind Me and Puppet on a String, is determined to love every minute of it.

Sandie has an interesting way of talking. Mid-range, throaty, she has picked up a bit of London poshness in the 25 years that she has been running a psychotherapy clinic specialising in the troubles of the rich and famous.

But suddenly the Essex girl kicks in, as she gets used to being interviewed again after all this time.

“It is all quite extraordinary. I haven’t worked in the music business for 25 years. I stopped singing in the 1970s, I was fed up with everything and I wasn’t well.

“I read a book, discovered I had a brain and trained as a psychotherapist and since then I have been running a London psychotherapy clinic helping people in showbusiness and the television industry.

“How I have started singing again is a long story but briefly I got to know Billy Bragg, who had been asked by the producers of the film Made in Dagenham to produce the theme tune.

"Of course, with me being born in Dagenham I was asked to sing it and during the publicity for the film I ended up on TV with Jools.

"He started nudging me to sing and the next thing his band were nudging him to take me on tour.”

Her first marriage to fashion designer Jeff Banks was well documented, she has five children and is now 'sticking with’ third husband, Tony, who she terms 'shrink turned businessman’.

Also well documented was her liking for performing in bare feet in the 1960s and her approach to this now, aged 64, is amusingly practical.

“First we have to check the boards are sound, what I mean is make sure I’m not going to get splinters. So whether I go barefoot on stage will depend on the splinter situation and what frock I am wearing.

“I tell you, I have great feet now. I had a foot op, a kind of foot lift, I had the bones realigned and I may well be performing in bare feet.”

The feet may be in evidence for her Tunbridge Wells show, the first of the tour and then she returns to Margate the following month.

“It’s all different now and I’m glad. It’s not a career now, just something I want to do and I don’t need to 'make it’. But of course, I don’t want to let people down.”

And, of course, she is feeling extremely nervous. Although Sandie uses a slightly coarser expression, and drops the double 't’ in the middle.

Sandie Shaw is special guest star with Jools Holland and his Rhythm & Blues Orchestra featuring Gilson Lavis at the Assembly Hall Theatre, Tunbridge Wells, on Wednesday, April 20. Guest vocalists are Ruby Turner and Louise Marshall. The show comes to the Winter Gardens, Margate, on Thursday, May 12.