After Britain's latest Eurovision disappointment, it might be an idea to consider fielding a heritage entrant next year, on the basis that the contest is the natural home for older artists who know how to work a sequin. If our woman in Estonia had been Petula Clark instead of Jessica Garlick, she would have wrested the trophy from the Latvians with the flick of a birdlike wrist - and still had the energy to conduct a singalong of Downtown, the song that is her legacy.
At the Palladium, Downtown was the blockbusting finale of 50 years of Clark history condensed into two hours. By that point, it was clear that the popular perception of her as a swinging 1960s icon is misplaced. Clark may have kicked about in miniskirts at the same time as Dusty Springfield and Lulu, but her milieu was show tunes and French ballads, and they comprised more than half this show.
Every inch the grande dame, she swept - there is no other word - through La Vie en Rose and got girlishly breathless on Sondheim's Losing My Mind. Had it not been for the accompanying asides ("In Finian's Rainbow I danced with Fred Astaire. That's Fred Astaire, not Freddy Starr"), it would have been tempting to doze off until she reached the better stuff. This, of course, is the run of 1960s hits - Downtown, Don't Sleep in the Subway, I Know a Place - that evoke the mythic London of Twiggy and Soho. The instant the pianist tinkled the first notes, the audience was beside itself.
But these signature songs were informed by Broadway stylings: Clark belted rather than lilted, while the drummer executed jazzy twirls. The effect was more Lloyd Webber than Ready Steady Go. Yet the tunes were huge fun anyway: the glimmering melodies held their own, as did Petula.
Her most winning attribute is her clear-headedness about her place in the pop scheme. Not for her a modernising dalliance with a young band à la Shirley Bassey/Propellerheads. Few songs tonight were less than 30 years old, and some of the anecdotes, like the one about Sophia Loren's bosom, even older. How improbably cool.
