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out a way to escape back to his arms. She felt miserable without him and spent anxious moments wondering whether her faraway lover boy was staying faithful.
    Back in Melbourne, Ian was doing his best to prove that their romance could stand the 10,000-mile separation. ‘Turps wants to Go!! down the aisle’ was the provocative headline in the TV Times issue of April 1966, above a photograph of Olivia nestling cosily in Ian’s arms by the banks of a river. The gist of the article was that Ian wanted to marry Olivia before the year was out. He was quoted as saying: ‘I don’t know how Olivia feels, she hasn’t really said. But I’m genuine when I say I’d like to become engaged to her as soon as she comes home.’
    Ian’s public declaration of his love for Olivia was music to her ears when news of it reached her after eight weeks away from her boyfriend. But it also made her miss him even more, and on more than one occasion she sneaked out of the flat for a surreptitious visit to a travel agent and managed to book herself an air ticket back to Melbourne. But with a mother’s intuition, Irene guessed what she was up to, and went round to the travel agent to ask if her daughter had called in. When they confirmed Olivia had indeed booked a flight to Australia, Irene promptly cancelled the ticket each time. ‘I thanked her many years after, but at the time I was furious,’ says Olivia.
    This booking and un-booking procedure went on for two months until Olivia realised it was pointless to continue. Irene was insisting absolutely that she stay. ‘I even ran to a lawyer,’ Olivia says, ‘to see if I could be made a ward of court. I was very angry, I was in love and my hormones were going crazy. But my mother thought I was too young for romance. She was right, of course.’
    Olivia may have been too preoccupied at that point with nursing her teenage heartaches to appreciate fully the golden opportunity her trip to London was presenting. But Irene was European, she was well travelled and worldly, and she recognised full well the benefits of travel, particularly in a city like London, which was steeped in history and bursting with culture. Irene kept telling Olivia she didn’t know how lucky she was to be there. ‘Again, she was right, of course,’ Olivia said, on adult reflection. ‘I think she wanted to get me away from my boyfriend, but she also wanted to broaden my horizons.’
    In addition to the cultural benefits for Olivia of staying on in London, Irene harboured hopes of her daughter gaining a place at the Royal Academy of Dramatic Art, recognised as London’s premier drama school. ‘She had dreams that I’d go to RADA and study and do all these intelligent things,’ says Olivia. ‘But of course I had my own dreams.’
    Olivia’s first live singing performance in the UK made for an inauspicious start. She was booked into a little known dive called The Poor Millionaire’s Club, where she was permitted to sing three songs as a fill-in before the main act, a folk singer, took to the stage.
    Her prize trip to London eventually led to a one-off record deal with Decca and she recorded a number written by American singer-songwriter Jackie de Shannon called ‘Till You Say You’ll Be Mine’, which was released in May 1966. Olivia’s was a rather brash version of the song; the B-side, ‘For Ever’, suited her gentler, folksy feel far better.
    To make an impact, every new recording artiste needs at least a modicum of promotion and exposure, but Olivia’s debut disc had virtually none. This was perhaps unsurprising since Decca already had a very pretty, blonde, highly marketable girl singer on their label whose folksy singles were doing very nicely in the charts on a regular basis. What’s more, her private life frequently kept her, and therefore her records, in the headlines. She went by the name of Marianne Faithfull.
    Olivia’s debut disc didn’t stand a chance. Decca, who also had another promising