HERALDING in the New Year, Petula Clark surprised more than a few guests on the Jools Holland Hootenanny with her rendition of Cee Lo Green’s Crazy and a bluesy jazz arrangement of her signature hit Downtown.

You suspect that at 80, Clark still gets a kick out of startling her audience in a career that started in earnest in 1939. She has sold more than 68 million records, become a star in the French, German, Spanish and Italian speaking provinces and conquered the West End and Broadway in a colourful career.

Interestingly, during her last visit to York in 2002, Clark was spotted by eagle-eyed citizens walking relaxed and unaccompanied around the city, taking in the Minster and Shambles.

Clark returns to York on October 6 at The Barbican. Hopefully her fans will be treated to selections from Lost In You. Cut Copy Me, Never Enough and the aforementioned Crazy are classy numbers which would not be out of place on new works by Norah Jones or Rumer.

Covers of John Lennon’s Imagine and Elvis’s Love Me Tender are respectfully treated and sit comfortably with the Petula Clark songbook.

Yet despite being covered over the years in a big band, disco, hip-hop and Irish jig style, the original Tony Hatch arrangement of Downtown is still the definitive version, not the new one here.