It’s officially one of the nation’s favourite duets, which topped the charts 40 years ago this year.
Now Edinburgh-based singer Barbara Dickson has revealed her favourite version of “I Know Him So Well” is NOT her partnership with Elaine Paige – but a version she sang with the late comedian Paul O’Grady for laughs.
Dickson, 77, and Paige had a global hit with their song from the musical Chess in 1985.
The track hit number one in the charts, set a Guinness world record as the biggest-selling single by a female duo, and was recently voted one of the nation’s most beloved duets.
But Dickson told an audience in Edinburgh how her real favourite version was the impromptu performance in 1996.
Comic O’Grady pulled her from a crowd of celebrities during “An Audience With Lily Savage”, recorded at the Wurlitzer on the North Pier in Blackpool.
Discussing the song with A Kick Up The Arts podcaster Nicola Meighan, she said: “My very favourite version of it is the version I did with Paul O’Grady. It was so, so funny.
“I didn’t see half of what he was doing because of course he was standing behind me, and I thought ‘it’s not my job here to get a laugh’.
“‘He’s going to get the laughs, I just play absolutely straight like Ernie Wise’. And the other person gets all the laughs and it’s so brilliant.
“It was so lovely to do that and I just loved it. It was marvellous.”
I Know Him So Well was originally sung by Dickson and Paige in the musical Chess, written by Tim Rice and Abba’s Benny Andersson and Björn Ulvaeus.
Dickson, playing Svetlana the Russian chess champion’s estranged wife, and Paige, as his mistress Florence, express their bittersweet feelings for him in the timeless duet.
The Dunfermline born singer became great friends with Paige but she told how she never met her singing partner during the recording process in 1984 and only encountered her when they promoted the single together.
She said: “I was sent a cassette tape by Tim Rice and they had finished the entire album.
“They had done all the big epic stuff for Chess but they hadn’t cast the Russian’s wife Svetlana because she only has two small things, and that’s when that’s when Tim said ‘do you want to do it?’.
“I wouldn’t normally be in a soundtrack of a musical to sing one song, but I said, ‘oh, this is great, this is an ABBA song’. And who wouldn’t want to sing an Abba song?
“So that’s what I was doing in the studio in Sweden two weeks later…
“Elaine had long been and gone. She had done all her stuff. I overdubbed my part.
“She’d done all of her stuff, and it was an enormous amount of work for her. I was just doing a small (bit), I did it in one day, I think.
“We met, really for the first time, when we started to promote that single. It was loads of fun and I really, really liked it — it was lovely having to share the stage with somebody.”
Dickson has produced more than 20 studio albums and enjoyed hit singles including The Caravan Song and January February as well as two Olivier awards for her leading roles on the West End stage.
