When Olivia met her doppelganger in Liverpool
70s
Yesterday, the sad news of Dame Olivia Newton-John's death was announced following a 30-year battle with breast cancer.
By Lee Grimsditch
Famous for her wholesome image, looks, and voice, the 73-year old was a massive star the world-over in the 1970s and '80s. Born in Cambridge and brought up in Australia, she found success as a country-flavoured pop singer in the early 1970s.
Olivia Newton-John represented the UK in the Eurovision Song Contest in 1974 before finding success in the US. However, her career soared after she starred in the film adaptation of the Broadway musical Grease in 1978 alongside John Travolta.
And it was a few years before her Grease sent her career into the orbit when the singing star came to Liverpool for a two night show at the Shakespeare Show Bar in 1973. Once described as the most elegant nightclub in Britain, the Shakespeare on Fraser Street went up in flames for a second time just a few years later.
And it was while in the city that Olivia Newton-John bumped into her own double, Annette Revell. Following Olivia Newton-John's rise to fame, 19-year old Annette from Huyton was said to have been regularly mistaken for the singer.
Annette and Olivia met outside St Johns Shopping Centre on the 11th April 1973.
It wasn't the first time the iconic star had appeared in Merseyside either. In 1972, Olivia Newton-John appeared alongside Cliff Richard for two shows at the Philharmonic Hall followed by a show at the Floral Hall in Southport.
When the film Grease hit cinemas in 1978 it was an instant box office success, becoming the highest grossing film of the year in both the US and UK. Its cinema release in Liverpool saw massive queues of teenagers outside the ABC cinema in Lime Street in October that year.
So much had Grease-mania taken over the city, police officers were deployed outside the cinema. At one point, according to Liverpool Echo report at the time, a crowd of 2,500 excitable youngsters had crowded outside the cinema.
Photographs showing the star standing next to the 19-year old by the bus stop outside St Johns were taken by a Daily Mirror photographer. Further photographs show the pair standing back-to-back and walking together wearing the unmistakable fashions of the time of bell-bottom trousers and big 1970s collars.
Ed - in the last photo the boys in the background seemed to have noticed the two women walking past!