Back on the road at 81, it's one last time for Dionne Warwick

The soul legend, who is now 81 years old, has been performing here since she was barely out of her teens. "I've been coming since the early 60s. England has always embraced me, always been very kind to me, and supported my music. I'm looking forward to getting there and seeing all my friends," she says. Looking perky over a Zoom call from New Jersey, she insists she won't be quitting the business when it's over, just "taking it a little easier". In fact, far from slowing down, she's still active and engaged, drawing in a whole new audience with her sparky Twitter account and appearances on the US versions of shows such as The Masked Singer.

"What a joy that was, so much fun," she said of her 2020 appearance as "Mouse" in the third series of the US show.

That's more than she can say about her appearance on Celebrity Apprentice back in 2011. The way that panned out clearly still rankles. "A joke, that show was an absolute joke," she sniffs. "That's all I have to say!"

It's clear she is no fan of programme host Donald Trump. She was so keen to escape she demanded that he fire her in Episode 4. "I don't even refer to him," she adds.

It's not like she needed the publicity. One of the most successful female artists of all time, with more than 56 singles in the Billboard Hot 100, Dionne has survived six decades in the business with her elegance, poise and wry humour intact.

Recently nominated for a second time to the Rock & Roll Hall of Fame, Dionne (Ms Warwick to her staff) chuckles when I suggest that she should have been inducted when she was on the list of nominees last year. "I say it all the time… it happens when it's supposed to."

HER enduring status in pop culture is rooted in the 1960s soul music explosion when, as a New Jersey high school girl, she would get the bus into Port Authority in Manhattan and sing backing vocals on hits by artists such as Ben E.

By then, songwriting teams such as Leiber & Stoller and Goffin & King were working like a production line, creating so many hits that the studios were always busy and musicians were constantly in work.

"It was my senior year in high school, I was getting ready to go to college, so it was a wonderful way to earn money," Dionne recalls. "When you walk in a room and you're doing background work behind The Drifters. C'monYou'd hear them on the radio all the time. Standing in the same room as them? He-llo!"

At the centre of a soul sisterhood who were much in demand, Dionne grew up singing gospel with her sister Dee Dee and aunt Cissy Houston (mother of Whitney). Dionne's approach, though, was subtle, and it took a while for her talent as a lead vocalist to shine through.

She didn't belt out teen anthems like many of her peers, she looked for the nuances in more mature songs about love and heartache. Her big break as a solo artist came when she met Burt Bacharach in 1962.

"He asked me if I would do demonstration records of songs he'd been writing with Hal David," she explains.

One of those demos, Don't Make Me Over, ended up becoming a Top 20 hit, and marked the beginning of one the most successful combinations in pop history, with global hit singles such as Walk On By, Say A Little Prayer, Do You Know The Way to San Jose and I'll Never Fall In Love Again.

Referring to "Bach/David/ Warwick" in the third person, Dionne says, "We were known as the triangle marriage that worked."

What stands out in these songs is the cool sophistication of her tone, allied with a deep emotional resonance. She puts a lot of that down to Hal David's lyrics. "Words are very, very important to me," she says.

"I've always thought, I don't want to say anything that isn't pleasant or that has no meaning.

"I was fortunate in working with Hal David - I never refer to him as a lyricist, he was a poet."

She also enjoyed Bacharach's inspired alchemy.

"Musically, that mad man Burt Bacharach, you had to march to his drum or not at all. But fortunately I was studying music education in college… and we were all like a wonderful puzzle that fit."

With her flowing gowns, Dionne also became a 60s fashion icon.

Along with The Supremes from the Motown stable, she was a symbol of black aspiration in an era marked by civil rights protest and social change.

Sadly, her extraordinary run of hits dried up when Bacharach and David stopped working together in the 1970s.

Her career suffered as a result. It was soon clear Warner Records didn't know how to market her without the Bacharach/David dream team.

"The little box they wanted to put me in, my legs wouldn't fold up enough," she recalls. Feeling exasperated, she contemplated giving up singing to become a teacher… until music mogul Clive Davis persuaded her to join his Arista label.

"You may be ready to give up the industry," he said. "But the industry's not ready to give you up."

In 1979, she returned to the Top 10 with I'll Never Love This Way Again, a song that was produced by Barry Manilow.

"He's like my kid, I love him," she says. "He's an incredible musician.Very, very sensitive."

After that she became the muse for a number of songwriter/producers, including Barry Gibb, who produced her 1982 album Heartbreaker.

The Bee Gees wrote the title track, and spent most of the time in the studio making her laugh. "The three of those guys in the studio were hilarious, I think we laughed more than we sang."

Dionne, talking today ahead of her 23-date One Last Time UK tour, also remembers recording with Isaac Hayes, who took a fatherly interest in her.

"Most people looked at him as the black Moses, more of a sex symbol than anything. But he became my big brother, saying things like, 'You can't go out with that guy', 'You have to eat dinner'. I'd say, 'You like my father? Leave me alone!'" Dionne famously said that she has never depended on a man financially, and since her divorce from actor/musician William Elliott in 1975 (a marriage which produced two sons, David and Damon) she is seen very much as her own woman.

It's that sense of independence that propelled her around the world in the 80s and 90s with her Warwick Foundation, an AIDS charity she set up after seeing so many of her friends die.

"AIDS started decimating the entertainment world. We were losing so many people within my industry - singers, dancers, hairdressers, make-up people, lighting people, engineers. I felt an obligation. Just like with Covid now, we had to get rid of it."

ALTHOUGH the foundation was later dissolved, Dionne was a leading figure in the fight to raise AIDS awareness, and she, along with Gladys Knight, Elton John and StevieWonder, raised more than £2.2million for AIDS research with their 1985 benefit single That's What Friends Are For. She has also worked hard as a Goodwill Ambassador of the Food & Agriculture Organisation at the UN, in the battle against world hunger.

"It's incredible to be able to bring people to a point where they can feed themselves," she says.

But while she cares about solving world problems with education, Dionne has always rejected any suggestion that she should stand for office.

"I'm not into politics," she says firmly. "I'm very careful about the words I give to your listening ear."

She is similarly careful when asked about Cilla Black. For many years, the story went that Dionne didn't like her songs being covered in Britain by other artists, and was miffed that Cilla had a hit with Anyone Who Had A Heart before Dionne could release her UK version. None of that seems to matter now.

"Yeah. She did. And Aretha Franklin also sang Say A Little Prayer. And Dusty Springfield sang Wishin' And Hopin'. That's what we do."

Dionne's One Last Time tour starts on May 30 at Southend Cliffs Pavilion and runs throughout the UK until July 1