The Girl You'd Love To Hate! Sam meets Olivia
Olivia Newton-John would love to star in a Western film.
“Give me Paul Newman, Robert Redford or Steve McQueen - any one of them would do as co-stars,” she said with understandable enthusiasm. “I’d do it like a shot!”
“Apart from that I’ve always fancied myself in Western clothes, because they look so romantic, I love crinoline dresses and the working clothes the girls wore for riding their horses.”
Olivia has never yet had the chance to step into that character. At the first Fancy Dress party she can remember going to, she went dressed up as Big Ben wearing a cardboard clock made by her mother. Another one, she went to as a cat. And the last one, she was a girl from St Trinians.
“But I don’t want to do it just for the sake of dressing up,” she said. “It’s the idea of acting that sort of part that really appeals to me.”
It may sound a little out of character, but that’s Olivia. She has wide-ranging interests: from domestic to romantic.
She loves cooking, and says she’ll always have a bash at sewing and knitting, though I never seen to finish anything. I started knitting a jumper when a girlfriend of mine had her baby I haven’t finished the jumper yet, and the baby’s now four!”
She’s started two other outfits for herself, and these are still lying around unfinished. But she does like cooking.
“I love doing casseroles. They’re nice and easy because you can throw everything in, I love making roast dinners too. I also like doing things like Moussaka (a Greek dish with mince and aubergines). I use a lot of spices and herbs like garlic, rosemary and thyme and in my casseroles there are always stuffed peppers.
Like so many of the people she’s closest to - her fiance Bruce Welch, Cliff Richard, Hank Marvin - Olivia is very settled, very quiet, very content.
The success of her first record “If Not For You” - which went on to become No. 1 in South Africa and Australia, and to be a hit in America, France, Holland and Belgium - has made her life a little more hectic. Since then of course. there’s been “The Banks of the Ohio as well.
She’s had more to put in the diary which she’s kept for years. “I don’t put every little detail in,” she said. “Just the important things. I’ve always done it - it’s nice to be able to look back and see what’s happened. You can’t remember everything.”
But although Olivia has done so much more travelling. especially around the Continent, her own home life has still remained quiet.
“It’s all so well-organised: I can leave all the work side to the office.” This leaves Olivia free to go off riding, swimming or playing tennis. She and Bruce have both had a tennis craze lately.
“I always have fads, but I never keep them up. I’m lucky I can have food fads too. No matter what I eat, I never put on weight!”
Olivia enjoys working with Cliff: they duetted together on record and she appeared in his last BBC TV series - as she does in this new one.
‘We’ve filmed another TV special together.” she said, “which was filmed mostly in France. We did the Elton John song. ‘Love Song’, which Cliff and I also sang at the Antibes Song Festival. “No-one else at the Festival did anything like that it was a terribly romantic stage duet. The audience loved it.”
Of course they would: Olivia is someone you just can’t fail to like. She seems to have everything: looks, talent and someone to love, who loves her.
And yet she’s far too nice to hate!