Having descended the spiral staricase in her West London hotel room, the original British blonde - the Lady Penelope of Pop - perches on an armchair and contemplates the latest good thing. Written and produced by the Pet Shop Boys, "Nothing Has Been Proved", is the theme to Scandal, the film of the book of that great 60's sex shocker, the Profumo Affair.

"I have no real clarity about the scandal because I was very obsessed with what I was doing," Dusty recalls. "But I had my first solo success in November '63, over 25 years ago. Yikes! Amazing! And I'm still sitting upright! It didn't really register with me at the time. I didn't understand call-girls and naughties because I was brought up in a very sheltered way. But I remember seeing all these tabloids and I could tell people were going 'Naughty! Naughty!'"

It was a criminally memorable year, 1963. Dusty ditched the Springfields and stormed the charts with "I Only Want To Be With You." Other edited highlights include the braining of JFK, the Train Robbers mugging of the Royal Mail, and, above all, the fall of Profumo. The revelations - involving writhing beds of call-girls, cabinet ministers and Russian spies - brought down the Government and left the nation shocked and titillated.

Tory War Minister John Profumo was forced to resign over his liaison with model Christine Keeler, who'd also had a fling with Rusky "agent" Eugene Ivanov. More tragically, 19-year-old Keeler's mentor, osteopath Stephen Ward, committed suicide and Keeler herself was convicted and imprisoned for prostitution. ("I went to prison and yet I was innocent," Keeler said recently. "I never was a prostitute. Apart from three weeks really.")

"People would go, 'Christine Keeler, phhworrrhhh!', says Dusty. "They'd remember her name and Profumo's and Mandy Rice Davies' but they wouldn't remember the details. The film certainly gives clarity to the situation and approaches it from an angle people wouldn't expect. It deals with Christie Keeler's actual feelings for Stephen Ward, whereas most people didn't think she had any feelings. They thought she and Mandy were just good-time girls - well, I think Mandy Rice Davies was, and probably still is - but Christine wasn't, if the film has shown the true side of it. She never got over it; to this day she could never come to terms with his death and the way she got treated by the tabloids."

If Dusty's first outing with the Pet Shop Boys - last year's hit "What Have I Done To Deserve This?" - was blatantly a PSB track elevated by her distinctly classy, breathy vocals, "Nothing Has Been Proved" is definitely the Springfield sound. While the spoken Tennant chorus of "it's a scandal, such a scandal" cleverly seems to echo "It's A Sin", the overall feel is truly 60's.

Like the film, the single attempts to tell the Keeler story sensitively and, at the same time, attack her trial-by-tabloid. And, brilliantly, given that the whole spanking scandal was about sex in high places and gentlemen in search of satisfaction, "Nothing Has Been Proved" constantly reminds that the Beatles' "Please Please Me" was Number One.

Guaranteed belches of outrage from Tory MPs (who haven't been caught yet), both the film and Christine Keeler's book will obviously be commercially successful. More important, the pop quality of "Nothing Has Been Proved" should put Dusty back where she belongs.

Since the late '60s, after her blue-eyed soul classic Dusty In Memphis, Springfield's kept an unintentionally low profile; collapsing record deals, her fear of studio technology and the growing reluctance to perform live, have restricted her output to a handful of unmemorable albums and too-rare singles.

"Sometimes the rests are forced upon me; sometimes I choose them," says Dusty. "I think if I hadn't had that time away I wouldn't be alive. Cliff Richard must be about the only person who's sustained his career; I really admire the way he's done it, genuinely updating himself. But I've no desire to prove to people how hip and modern I am."

Obviously, in Top 40 terms, we're being bombarded by '60s revivalists; Pitney, Orbison and the Wilburys, Cliff, The Four Tops, The Supremes, Crosby, Stills, Nash and Young! More intriguing is this trend of EMI (Parlophone/HMV) acts covering, and collaborating with, 60's icons. Apart from Marc and Gene in tandem, detergent-quaffing Morrissey has already recorded a Cilla Black song and helped resurrect Sandie Shaw, while the Pet Shop Boys again salute la Springfield - most soulful member of the 60's Brit-girl triumvirate.

"I think you've got to be very careful it's not a one-off situation," says Dusty. "They can use you and throw you away, it happens. Obviously I'm very fortunate with the Pet Shop Boys; it's a very bizarre coupling but it works."

She's well aware how ephemeral success can be. Even when I congratulate her on "Nothing Has Been Proved" she remains unconvinced, as if she's constantly preparing herself for the next flop.

"It's not what I call an impact record, but I hope to be extremely pleasantly surprised! When I make records I can't judge them or have an opinion about anything I hear in the studio. I've never believed studio playback sound: it seldom has anything to do with reality. I like the truth, however ugly. I've got to take it away and play it on 6 different kinds of shelf unit, stuff that people got at Curry's."

If the Pet Shop Boys have been, er, instrumental in Dusty's return to the British charts, in America her career's been rekindled by "Something In Your Eyes", a "duet" with Richard Carpenter.

"That was a very enjoyable experience," grimaces Dusty. "it was not, however, enjoyable afterwards when he didn't use my name on the record. Really dumb! It's obvious I'm on the video - unless it's Richard in drag, and we don't really look the same. A&M, will you please give me a reason why you did that?

Has this upturn in her career resulted in a new record deal?

"It's just on the point of happening, but I'm being very superstitious. I'm not being evasive, but if it doesn't happen I'm going to look a right pratt!"

As the tabloids and the Establishment gird up their loins once more, against Keeler's revelations - "How Christine Keeler Is Bidding To Cash In On The Scandal That Rocked A Government!" (Daily Express 31.1.89) - it's clear again that the women in these affairs always suffer more than the men.

The gentlemen concerned (Profumo, Lord Lambton, Cecil Parkinson, Geoffrey Archer, Sir Ralph "five-times-a-night" Halpern . . .) often emerge with their reputations enhanced, as victims of circumstance; the women involved are generally projected as scheming bitches and, later, ageing tarts.

With Keeler now being projected as "the original bimbo" - "the years have taken their toll on 60's model Christine Keeler . . . only the the legs and breasts need no boosting from stylists" - it occurs to me that Dusty's about the same age as Keeler and that she too is somewhat burdened with her 60'simage.

"We're not supposed to change, we're not supposed to get older, wider, thinner, fatter, taller or smaller. We're just supposed to stay the way we were," laughs Dusty

"I was watching someone the other night, someone I used to tour with who had changed a great deal. This person was a lot older and alot wider yet there wasn't a word about the changes. Certainly I was very overweight at last year's BPI awards but I gor crrr-ucified! Sometimes I'd just like to punch them right on the nose and ask them to look in their own mirrors in the morning."

Fortunately Dusty Springfield doesn't have to live with a reputation as tarnished as Keeler's, yet the emotional empathy with which she delivers "Nothing Has Been Proved" reminds that her private life has also been of more than passing interest to the scandal sheets.

Perhaps it's because she's shunned marriage, never played the vamp in public; perhaps because she seems to prefer cats to men, perhaps because of her infamous Gay News interview in which she joked about having a "three-way with Princess Anne and one of her horses"; perhaps because she deserted swinging Britain for California (and now Amsterdam); perhaps because she isn't hosting Blind Date . . .

So it seems pretty brave of Dusty to risk controversy again with the Scandal theme. Isn't she ever tempted to just disappear and avoid the flak?

"But I love singing . . . either that or I'm completely crazy."

What about moving into films? You once said that was your first ambition?

"Yes, I'd love to but no-one's asked me yet. I'm going to give this a shot for a couple of years, at the moment I need to do this. But if I see film as a progressive move . . . and if it doesn't work I'll go and live on a hilltop with 89 cats and think "Well, fuck 'em!"

Len Brown
New Musical Express, 1989