No need to relight lulu's fire

"I haven't had that call, but you know, if I get that call, I'm there like a shot," says the veteran pop star. "I'm definitely going to go and see it anyway, because I'm thrilled that Robbie is back with them."

Before then, the Sixties singing sensation has business of her own to attend to - namely the Here Come The Girls UK tour, which comes to the Edinburgh Playhouse for one night only on Monday.

The brainchild of Lulu herself, this year's show, which follows a sell-out run in 2009, welcomes back pop diva and star of Channel Five's Don't Stop Believing, Anastacia, and introduces British soul singer and star of M People, Heather Small, to the sisterhood.

"I hatched the idea for Here Come The Girls when I was doing a couple of gigs with Kiki Dee, Paul Carrack and John Miles," recalls the 64-year-old Scot, who has scored at least one Top Ten hit in every decade since storming on to the scene as a 15 year old in 1964 with her version of The Isley Brothers' Shout. "I said to my manager, 'This is way too much fun' and said that it would be great to do a tour.

''I had to decide whether to go on tour with male or female singers and I made up a wish list of who I wanted to jump on stage with," she continues. "Anastacia and Chaka Khan were top of the list, so I went ahead and asked them if they wanted to join me. They immediately said 'Hell, yeah, Lu!'."

The Lennoxtown-born performer, who famously won the Eurovision Song Contest in 1969 with the song Boom Bang-a-Bang, is reluctant to reveal the exact format of the new show, but promises "a rare night out that's as camp as Christmas".

"We have Heather now instead of Chaka, but she's absolutely fabulous as well," enthuses Lulu. "When I came up with the idea of putting this thing on the road, it was my idea that the people on stage could be interchangeable.

"I'm not going to go over the set-list, because that would just be boring," she continues. "There's obviously going to be songs that you know I'm going to sing. The cool thing is that you get a couple of my hits and a couple of Heather's hits and a couple of Anastacia's hits - but we sing them together.

"If you don't know the words to all songs it doesn't matter - you will want to get up and dance. "

She may be past retirement age, but Lulu has no plans to quit performing. "It's what makes me tick," she says.

Lulu joined her first band at the age of 12, and signed to Decca Records in 1964, so she's seen many changes in the record industry over the years. "It was almost a cottage industry when I was starting out," she says. "Now it's a multi-gazillion dollar corporation."

The former redhead, who today is sporting a coiffed blonde hairstyle, says it's not enough to have a great voice and a great song to record any more. "Back in the Sixties, it was about the singing not about being a celebrity, which is the malady today. It was about music and that's the difference between now and the Sixties. But what hasn't changed is there's still a lot of talent.

"I think Lady Gaga is a perfect example of what makes huge success today," she continues. "She's not only a great singer, she's a really great musician and a brilliant songwriter. But her visual is more important than her actual talent."

Like the rest of the nation, Lulu likes to tune into X Factor, though she fears for the longevity of those who do well on the show. "The really scary thing about today is that the world moves extremely fast, the turnover is almost instant. If you blink you'll miss someone being a huge star one minute and being gone the next. That is the way of the world now, and that's what changed about the industry.

"In the Sixties you'd have hugely successful people that wrote music, created and built a career. If the songwriter was, say, Bob Dylan, he'd be chronicling the times, and there was a truth to a lot of it. Today, it's not so much about that. It's more about wanting to get a record out, market the person, and if it doesn't sell the record companies drop them at the first opportunity. There's no building of a career any more, that's the difference."

• Here Come The Girls, Edinburgh Playhouse, Greenside Place, Monday, 7pm, 29.75–61.25, 0844-847 1660