Forget Sandie Shaw, though I did once come across her, feet covered unlike in the old days, in a minor civil court case in London. She must have been in her late 40s, and looked great.
But Françoise Hardy.........
At the clear risk of alienating female readers, I cannot disagree with the man who suspected that most males of a certain age at some time fell for her.
Which is a lot more than Mlle Hardy ever did for that song. If you have been reading Salut! since it was plain old Colin Randall's blog at the Telegraph, you may know that I interviewed the great lady in Paris for an article published at the beginning of 2005, and included the encounter 11 months or so later in my highlights of the year.
And during that meeting, in Françoise's fabulous apartment near the Arc de Triomphe - there's an internal lift to get from the basement living area to her home studio - she revealed to me that she had always loathed Tous Les Garçons et Les Filles de Mon Age.
"Tiny voice, trite little melody, inconsequential song," was how she put it. "Of course, I am pleased with what it did for me, but I am not remotely proud of it."
She did stretch a point to say she approved of All Over the World but simply could not see how painful it was to hear her scathing assessment of the song that brought her to the attention of spotty Sixties youths.
Me, I loved both songs, but in particular I adored Tous les Garçons in all its tiny triteness and, having just played the YouTube clip, I still do.
The other thing she told me that day that I didn't already know was more reassuring. She'd once been chased by Bob Dylan, but remained chaste.
In a mystic minstrel's version of the ploy of offering to show a girl his etchings, Dylan took her up to his hotel room after inviting her to a concert in Paris and played her two then unreleased tracks, I Want You and Just Like a Woman.
But Françoise was not tempted by whatever else he had in mind. "I had no interest in him as a man, only as an artist.......he wasn't a very attractive man, and didn't seem well in himself. Mick Jagger was different. He is someone I could really have fallen for. Unfortunately, he was with Chrissie Shrimpton at the time."
Why should that be reassuring? Well, there's a sort of shared rejection, even if Dylan at least succeeded in luring her to his chamber. It puts other would-be suitors in good company.
If you want to read more, the full interview can still be seen here.
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