The hair may have had something to do with her brother Tom's obsession with Carmen Miranda, and the panda-look black eyelids were inspired by models in Vogue. Her parents were not professional musicians: it is not clear where the glorious voice came from.

The voice is the finest that Britain has given to popular music: strong and with a unique timbre, at once vulnerable and transcendent. Her father's obsessive but untutored interest in music, and her brother Tom's natural gifts as a writer sparked both her eclectic musical taste and a determination to make her own mark as a singer. Currently recording an album in Nashville, but otherwise living quietly in Buckinghamshire after almost 20 years out of Britain, Dusty has always put music first and last.

Fortunately, despite the sometimes infuriating device of having Dawn French as a dippy interviewer and Jennifer Saunders as a publicity agent, eliciting recollections from the star, Monday's film should remind the public of the reasons for her musical reputation.

Dusty is a perfectionist who, from the start of her solo career, took endless trouble over her recordings. She often abandoned the sterile-sounding studio for the real, echoing, uncontrolled soundstage of the adjacent corridors or the ladies' loo. The drive for perfection persists: Neil Tennant of the Pet Shop Boys describes his horror on realising how many words there were in his lyrics for "Nothing Has Been Proved", after it was explained to him that Dusty might record it one syllable at a time.

"I Close My Eyes And Count To Ten" was an early hit: wags remarked it must have taken her that long to get the eye-shadow-laden lids open again. But here we have Elvis Costello explaining that the piano sound on the record is the one he has been attempting to recapture ever since. Burt Bacharach and Dionne Warwick praise her professionalism and musicality.

Martha Reeves recalls singing with her on a Motown edition of Ready, Steady, Go, which Dusty sponsored and presented: the first opportunity the British public had to see the Vandellas, the Temptations, Stevie Wonder and the Supremes in action. Dusty's live version of "Heatwave" is glorious confirmation of the way she could rise above the strictly ballroom British backing bands. A fragmented television duet with Jimi Hendrix on "Mockingbird" suggests that she could and can cut it in any company.

Tony Patrick
The Times, (London)
May 1, 1994