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| Dolly Parton |
It is possibly the biggest regret of my life. Dolly Parton asked me to go for dinner in 2002 and I declined. Just what I was declining with the legendarily endowed ("I'm the only person who ever left the Smoky Mountains and took them with her," she used to joke) singer I'll never know. We had just finished a very flirty, very touchy-feely, interview in her suite at the Shelbourne hotel in Dublin in which she had joked about her allegedly open-ish marriage with husband Carl Dean, when Dolly suggested dinner.
At least that's what I think was on her mind.
It would have been something to brag about -- my hot dinner and perhaps a little more with the bountiful, top-heavy, 5ft 1in legend from the Smokey Mountains, Tennessee -- for the rest of my existence.
In 2007, the kitsch-y queen of country caused a frisson in Yorkshire steeltown Rotherham as she opened a children's library: she appeared to drop a very tantalising bombshell that she had an open marriage. She said that it was "very good for both of us" if she or her spouse cheated on each other. Indeed, when directly asked if her marriage was open, she replied: "If we cheat we don't know it, so if we do cheat, it's very good for both us. I don't want to know it, if he's cheating on me. If I'm cheating on him, he wouldn't want to know it. And if we do, if that's what's making it work, then that's fine too."
Last year, however, on the Oprah Winfrey Show, Dolly dismissed the rumour seemingly for good, insisting she'd "kill him" if he cheated on her. She said her comments over the years had been taken out of context. "We let each other be who we are and what we are, but I'd kill him if I knew he was with somebody and he'd kill me," she added.
"I'm open to saying that. He knows I'm a flirt and a tease but it's harmless. I've never met the man who would take his place. We're good friends." (One repeated rumour was that Dolly's real other half is her lifelong best friend Judy Ogle. Dolly has always denied this. Intriguingly, Parton, who is a huge gay icon, did once say: "I'm not a poster child for gay rights by any means but I have so many gay and lesbian friends and they're just so pure and so true. That's not politics to me. That's human rights.") This is the endearing woman who sings about family togetherness yet she has no children of her own and has a husband of 46 years whom the New York Times Magazine's Jesse Green in 2009 dubbed "invisible".
English critic Hugo Rifikind last year said: "Probably because of this [that you never see the husband], rumours abound that it's all a sham. Indeed, for many years there was a healthy conspiracy theory that he didn't exist.") The New York Times article also referred to a ubiquitous "best friend". They were talking about Ms Ogle.
Dolly once quipped that she grew up so deep in the country that she's "always tickled to death to see anybody". Now 64, the multi-millionaire country 'n' western chanteuse with the camp, gravity-defying blonde wigs came from a family of 12.
"I started bleaching my hair as soon as I could get money to buy bleach. Before that it was dishwater colour. I'd get the tar beat out of me for bleaching it, but I'd do it anyway. I just felt like a blonde," she told me in 2002.
Dolly wrote her first song aged five. It was entitled 'Life Doesn't Mean Much to Me'. She is nobody's fool. "You've had great plastic surgery," Larry King told her on CNN a few years ago. "Thanks," she shot back, "so have you."
Dolly has what they call in Nashville cajones. She turned down Elvis and Colonel Tom Parker in 1974 when the King wanted to record Dolly's 'I Will Always Love You', but wanted half the publishing rights.
She caused a lot of trouble for herself among the redneck, rightwing, country establishment in Nashville by doing heathen pop music.
She once mused -- needlessly as it turned out -- whether composing the songs for the Nine To Five movie in 1980 was "beyond my country, white-trash nature".
Like her music, Dolly Parton is an unpretentious, entertaining, uplifting and self-deprecating joy to be around. Dolly is so petite in person that, as the New York Times Magazine's Green put it, it's as if she were a prehistoric bird or the queen of England, "with the additional concern that you might accidentally deflate something. I've heard of her grabbing a guy's head and pushing it straight into her cleavage, just to put him at ease. Can this possibly work? Or she'll say, 'Aw, honey, don't be nervous. I'm just a lady like everyone else'."
That's not strictly true. Very few ladies have composed more than 3,000 songs, won dozens of Grammys and sold more than 100 million records worldwide.
The Appalachian mountains superstar has had her work covered by everyone from Whitney Houston ('I Will Always Love You') to The White Stripes ('Jolene') to Norah Jones and Shelby Lynne, who a few years ago released a Dolly tribute album of covers called Just Because I'm A Woman. She's recorded with Joni Mitchell, Cat Stevens and Judy Collins.
Notwithstanding the set of lungs she has, Dolly Parton is incredibly powerful live. She's performing in Dublin's 02 on Wednesday. I'm hoping for a second invitation to dinner after the show.
Dolly Parton Live at the O2 in Dublin on September 14. Some tickets still available.
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