BARBARA DICKSON has had hits with ‘I Know Him So Well’ and ‘January February,’ and found fame on the stage and screen in Blood Brothers and Band of Gold.

But the folk music scene has always been her first love.

So it is perhaps no surprise that Barbara is to pay tribute to one of her folk heroes when she performs in Warrington.

Barbara, now 65, will be playing songs by Gerry Rafferty as part of the album she has made in his memory, To Each and Everyone.

Singer-songwriter Gerry, who also wrote Stuck in the Middle with You with the band Stealers Wheel, died in 2011.

Barbara said: “It’s been a lovely thing to do but it’s been tinged with sadness because the reason I’m doing it is that Gerry isn’t here to do the songs himself.

“I’m on a bit of a mission to show people that Gerry Rafferty was more than just Baker Street. As good as Baker Street is that wasn’t anything like the entire picture.

“He was a stickler for harmonies. How you sang to somebody else’s voice and how you got in step with their voice was very important and he was fantastic at that.

“I became very good at it as well and part of that was by watching him do it.”

The pair met in Glasgow in 1969.

Mum-of-three Barbara added: “I heard him singing at lunchtime at a pub called The Scotia Bar where we all used to call in. It was where like-minded people would gather.

“The folk crowd was like that in those days. We saw ourselves as being a sort of elite club. It was a bit like being in the Masons.”

Born in Dunfermline, Barbara seemed destined to be a musician from an early age when she began studying piano aged five and then picked up a guitar when she was 12.

She was still in school when she started playing spots in folk clubs but she has always been wary of fame.

Barbara told Weekend: “I loved what I was doing, I learnt how to do it well and by the time I became a pop star in the 1970s I just had an attitude that had sprung from what I was doing to begin with.

“That’s never changed. I’ve always thought that fame is ephemeral, it’s likely to disappear.”

But fame did come thanks to her friendship with playwright Willy Russell which changed the course of her career completely in the early 1970s.

Barbara said: “He used to come to the folk clubs and I met him when he came up to the Edinburgh Festival with his teachers’ training college to do a production.

“I’ve always remained friends with him and whenever I played folk clubs in the Liverpool area I stayed with Willy and his wife.”

So when Willy was working on a musical about The Beatles called John, Paul, George, Ringo...and Bert, Barbara was his first choice for the music.

She added: “He wanted a singer who wouldn’t be compared to the Beatles to sing the songs.

“It was an inspired thing to do because indeed no one said it didn’t sound enough like the Beatles.

“It was obviously a completely different take and it paid off and it was a great success.”

Andrew Lloyd Webber was among Barbara’s fans after watching the musical.

That led to her recording Another Suitcase In Another Hall for Evita and Willy and Barbara teamed up again for Blood Brothers. She played the original Mrs Johnstone in the classic musical and said she had no idea how successful it was going to become.

“I don’t think anybody did,”

said Barbara.

“It was quite challenging, tough and different. We were talking about Thatcher’s Britain at that time.

“Blood Brothers had something to say about the state of the world and I really liked that.”

Barbara had to give up her job in the civil service in 1968 to pursue her dreams.

So what is her message to aspiring singer-songwriters who are balancing a day job and their passion for music?

She said: “If you’re a serious singer, songwriter and artist then you should give up your day job, but if you want to be famous I think you shouldn’t.

“Because I think being famous is the least lasting of anything.

“If you have a vocation, which I see my work as being, then you have to go for it because if you don’t your soul will have a hole in it forever.

“But if you’re doing it to get on X Factor then I wouldn’t give up your job!

“Take two weeks annual leave and do it. I just think that’s so temporary and wouldn’t encourage anybody to do that at all.”

■ Barbara Dickson performs at Parr Hall on Sunday, November 3. Tickets are £25. Visit pyramidparrhall.com or call 442345