Petula Clark's eyes flash with barely suppressed annoyance: "I think the public would like me better if they knew me better." she says. "But most of the people who write about me are fuddy-duddies who remember my sugar-sweet image and they still want to believe in it.
      "When you see me on stage, you don't see the nice little English rose at all. I do very funky things. In America the think I'm forward and dynamic. They describe me as a beautiful, exciting woman. It's only here they still think of me as sweet and pretty.
      "Pretty! I haven't been pretty for years. How can I break through that feather bed without everyone saying, `Oh God, what is she trying to prove?' I'm not trying to prove anything. The real me simply isn't sugary. I believe if I really let myself go. I would turn into a sort of witch, a very weird ladx. Underneath it all. I am a bit odd."
      Petula, who is 48, is in London to star at a special concert at the Albert Hall. with the London Philharmonic Orchestra. For her, the concert marks 40 years in showbusiness
      "To be strictly accurate, it's 42 years since I made my first appearance. at six, singing Mighty Like A Rose. I'm not nostalgic. I don't sit around thinking about the good old days at all. But this particular concert is special.
      "I remember being very happy as a child singer. I wasn't aware of any pressure. It wasn't until I became a teenager that I started to be unhappy. Everyone was trying to stop me from growing up - the Rank Organisation. and my father, who was my manager.
      "I don't blame him because he was taking his orders from them. But to the powers that be. I was an infinitely more valuable commercial property as a child. They behaved very badly towards me, binding up my budding bosoms and things like that. I was very indignant about all that."
      She is anxious, though, to defend her father, particularly against the allegations that he swindled her out of the money which she had made as a child star.
      "It is true that there was no money there, but where it went we never discovered. It simply vanished. He certainly didn't have it. He was by no means a rich man. "He was upset about me growing up because he thought it was the end for him and that was a difficult time for both of us"
      By the time she was 21. her career was in the doldrums, and she suddenly had to undergo an emergency operation.
      "I became ill as a result of an appendix operation that went wrong six months later. I was rushed to hospital. and they had to remove a lot of my intestines because I was riddled vith gangrene. Since that operation there have been rumours that I had a colostomy, which is absolutely untrue. Apparently my name is on a list which they give to people who are going to have this operation, and I get letters from people asking what advice I can give them. It's a problem because I can't help at all, and I have to

write back saying that I'm lucky, I didn't have that sort of operation."
      But for years Petula thought the operation might have left her unable to have a baby, and only agreed to marry her French husband. Claud Wolff, after she became pregnant.
      They met in Paris where she was singing and he was the public relations man of her record company. assigned to look after her.
      "Neither of us was really crazy about getting married: we talked about it for a long time. "We were not depending on romantic love either.
      We saw that my career was taking off in France, and we decided that ours could be a kind of business partnership, too.
      "Basically we're very different people. He's very calm and logical and I'm very explosive. He has to put up with my moods. When I'm working hard, I imagine I'm very difficult to put up with.
      It can be difficult for a husband if his wife is getting too much of the limelight and a relationship like ours doesn't always work out.
      I come off stage feeling very high, and certainly don't want to trail off to bed, whereas he's been sitting playing cards and is tired: I'm ready to go dancing. He's not wild about that.
      She hotly denies some recent rumours in the French Press that their 22-year marriage is now floundering.
      "The most important ingredient in a happy marriage is not trying to smother the other person's ability. I am fortunate. I already had a career established and Claude never suggested that I should give it up."
      They have two daughters and a son who, when they were younger, were taken along wherever their mother's career dictated.
      "We never left them for longer than three weeks? she says. "But I know in my heart if I'd given up m career I'd have had a more successful family life. And if I hadn't had a family I'd have had a more successful career. So there's always that conflict, and it's always a compromise.
      "My children often say, `You're happy, people come and see you, why should you give it up?" But Patrick, my 10-year-old son, got fed up with The Sound Of Music. He wrote me a letter at the end saying he was glad it was over. Isn't that sweet?"
      "I think children need both parents, not just their mother. The roles should be shared more, but that will take a long time to come about. I won't see it in my lifetime, but I think we have to do it, because there are so many things women can do if they're allowed to. I think they can make the world a lot more sensitive. Women should go into all sides of life, politics, big business, the City, And men should spend more time with their children."
      What happens after the latest concert is something she's cagey about, except to say that she's discussing a part in a musical. "It's about a very special woman who has excellent ideas on what the new woman should be." Somehow Petula Clark gives you the feeling that she, too, is a new woman--one who's just starting.