80s chart star Dollar singer Thereza Bazar bounces back: 'At 68 I don't need to be the fluff any more, I feel liberated to do anything that I want'

She is heading for Chesterfield this month where she will introduce the audience to her new singing partner Stephen Fox.

Dollar’s big hits in the Eighties were produced by Trevor Horne who used cutting-edge technology to create the distinctive sound. How much of a challenge will that be to reproduce in a live setting? Thereza said: "I am very excited to be working with a live band who will give the music more edge and more power. We're keeping all the iconic riffs, the melodies and the rhythms and there will be embellishments because that's what technology can offer us.

"I wrote a few of the songs and produced a few that we’re performing. We're charging things up which is something I never had the opportunity to do before. Now at 68 I don't need to be the fluff any more, I feel liberated to do anything that I want.”

Asked to describe the Dollar sound, Thereza said: "It's infectious, classy and what sounds like a simple pop song that you can whistle or hum along to is really just the coating for what is far more depth underneath.”

Her concert at the Winding Wheel on Friday, September 29, promises to be a memorable night. Thereza said: “It’s going to be sparkling, glamorous and a party. There is so much appetite for the 60s, 70s and 80s nostalgia - people want to go out and celebrate their lives.”Getting the Oh L’Tour shows into venues across England gives Thereza cause for celebration. She said: "I couldn't find a promoter that understood what I was wanting to do, they were thinking she's too old." Lesser-driven artists would have been defeated by the knockback but not Thereza. Helped by her son, she has arranged venues and promotion which is an indicator of the singer’s fierce determination.

The tour is the latest chapter in a book of memoirs that Thereza started writing during the Covid pandemic. She said: "I started going back into all the stuff I'd done, the stupid pranks, the stupid pr and the rubbish press we had. Like a pop song, with a good book you have to have a beginning, a middle and an end.

"It is partly about ageism and what people thought about me when I was young, shy as anything and under-confident. I had this persona of being glamorous and classy and I could do things - that was my shield.

"We were always called cheesy. We were abused by the music mags in the 80s because we weren't punk or post-punk or new wave and we weren't trendy and we didn't do terrible things. When we got abused, it made me really sad and did my head in a lot."In Dollar’s heyday Thereza was singing with David Van Day, whom she met when they were members of Guys and Dolls. The pair were thrown out of Guys and Dolls after voicing their dissatisfaction over the lack of opportunity to take the lead on songs with David wanting a solo career and Thereza critical of the group’s direction.

After David struggled to get a solo deal, a new management company took on the couple at a time when there wasn’t a boy/girl duo in the UK. Over the subsequent decade Dollar notched up a trio of top three singles among the ten that hit the top 40.

Their golden partnership was mirrored in their private lives for six years. Thereza said: “David was my first boyfriend. I was hopelessly in love with him.”

A fashionista, Thereza was touted as the English equivalent of Madonna and may even have influenced the superstar Vogue singer. She said: "I got my spiky hair before Madonna." But what Thereza never got was an army of stylists and she chose her own outfits for Dollar’s frequent appearances on Top of the Pops. One iconic outift was created by her cutting up two string vests from Marks and Spencer to create an off the shoulder crop top with the leftover scraps stuck onto the chest.Thereza said: "We went on Top of the Pops hundreds of times," she said. "There was always the same excitement, the same boredom...you're stuck in a dressing room and there's nothing to do. I met Paul McCartney once in the corridor and I almost melted. I didn't know what to say so said 'hello' and he said 'hello' and walked past. I remember meeting Siouxsie (of Siouxsie and the Banshees) and Kate Bush in the loo....they always seemed to know exactly what they were doing with their image. We were all just young people doing our own thing."

Dollar were as renowned for their videos as their songs. The footage accompanying Mirror Mirror had Thereza and David jumping through a shop window. "I got so badly cut," said Thereza, "they put powder and make-up on my legs, gave me half a beaker of brandy and told me that I would have to do it again. I had no stunt double - I was never one to wimp out."

With David still angling for a solo deal, Dollar folded in 1983. Both Thereza and David released their own albums a couple of years later but were unable to emulate the success that they'd had as a duo. Dollar reformed in 1986 and achieved one of their biggest hits - a reworking of Erasure's Oh L'Amour. But a follow-up, It’s Nature’s Way, flopped and Dollar split for the second time.

Thereza said: "I emigrated to Australia in 1988. I wanted an escape route, to get some space where no-one knew me, no-one wanted to criticise me - I just wanted to have some freedom."

Keeping her house in England meant that Thereza was able to travel back and forth from Sydney up until the pandemic. During a four-year stay in England, when she split her time between her home in the Cotswolds and London, she was offered the opportunity of a TV pilot for a zany reality show which she didn’t enjoy doing.Thereza said: “In 2018 I saw the incredible Carrie Fisher doing a one-woman show when she sat on a banged-up Chesterfield sofa on a stage with a screen behind her talking about her life and what her parents were like and what her career was like and her decisions were based on. I was really captivated and thought wouldn't it be great to talk about stuff, more about an insight to me as a person. I started putting a show together and needed someone to sing some of the songs so a friend suggested Stephen Fox. We got on so well and did the show in London. I remember going home on the plane and thinking why did I put all that effort in for for just one show - it's ridiculous!"

Tickets cost £36 to see Thereza Bazar's Dollar at the Winding Wheel, Chesterfield. Go to www.chesterfieldtheatres.co.uk or call 01246 345222.