Amazon Review
I Don't Want to Fight is Scottish pop diva Lulu's candid autobiography. It's the familiar but no less heartening "rags to riches" story of how a wee girl from the Glasgow slums became one of the world's most popular (and enduring) singing sensations. (After more than 30 years in the music business her last album, Together, earned her a gold disc.)

Christened Marie McDonald McLaughlin Lawrie, Lulu's upbringing in post-war Glasgow was more Rab C Nesbitt than The Broons. Her father, an offal dresser, was a hard drinker and her parents regularly fought. By the age of 12, Lulu was already performing on stage. At 13 she happened to catch the legendary rocker Alex Harvey (later of Sensational Band fame) performing a stirring Isley Brothers number in Scotland's answer to the Cavern. The song was called Shout. Two years later Lulu was singing it on Ready Steady Go!. Her record company, Decca, actually had to wait until she turned 15 before they could legally release the single. This still didn't prevent a school's inspector calling on her parents' six months later and demanding to know why she hadn't been attending school. Her mother, Lulu maintains, retorted; "Do ye nae read the papers or watch TV? She's a pop star."

And indeed she was; and then a film star with a lead role in To Sir With Love and then a television personality with her own series Happening for Lulu and when, in 1969, Eurovision beckoned, Lulu did not shirk, notching up a rare, if tied, victory for Britain with the evergreen Boom Bang-a-Bang. In 1972, at the grand old age of 23, she was honoured by Eamonn Andrews who presented her with a big red book and boldly claimed: "This is Your Life". As this autobiography shows, he proved to be somewhat premature. The break-up of her marriage to Maurice Gibb, motherhood and collaborations with David Bowie, Elton John and Take That were all yet to come. --Travis Elborough