3. Shirley Bassey, Nelson Riddle And His OrchestraWhat Now, My Love?

This is another one from our family collection in the stereo unit. My dad had a big crush on Shirley Bassey; he really loved her. This is properly Proustian. I was on holiday in the Isle of Wight a few years ago, and in the holiday home they had a record player and there it was: Shirley Bassey’s What Now, My Love?. And for a moment I thought, what’s that doing here? That’s mine! Because I was so familiar with that cover and it was quite weird.

We played it all the time and I think the title track is amazing. We actually played that at my dad’s funeral. It was a really good choice because it tied a lot of things together. But fucking hell! She’s good, isn’t she? I recently re-watched her performance at the Electric Proms from about 2011 on the telly and she did ‘Diamonds Are Forever’ and it was just as good as it ever was. She absolutely brought the house down! She’s a complicated woman, but my god, she’s just great!