JOOLS Holland and Sandie Shaw’s paths have crossed before and not initially in a musical way.

“He lived near me in the Sixties when he used to be one of the louts who pinched the Christmas tree lights I put in the front garden so everyone could walk by and share Christmas with us,” recalls the Dagenham diva.

“He does recall it… and he has a lot to make up for!”

The boogie-woogie pianist and television presenter is certainly doing that now by inviting Sandie to join him on his big band dates around the British Isles this summer.

Sure enough, she will be the special guest – along with blues diva Ruby Turner – when the Jools And His Rhythm & Blues Orchestra play beside the lake in the grounds of Ripley Castle, near Harrogate, tomorrow night.

In fact Sandie and Jools’s paths have a habit of crossing. “Our kids went to the same school together,” she reveals. “And I made my first foray back into the public eye last March when he asked me to curate an event for him at the Vintage festival in Goodwood.

“It was a new festival, which was all to do with design, art, music and film, and I curated the Ladies’ Day, where we had all these songs associated with men reinterpreted as a woman would sing them, like Mica Paris singing It’s A Man's World.”

Move forward to this summer's open-air shows, and at the time of this interview in the spring, Sandie had discussed with Jools what she would be singing, but was yet to rehearse anything.

Here comes the inevitable question: will she be doing her 1967 Eurovision Song Contest-winning chart topper, Puppet On A String, a song she regards with about as much affection as David Bowie extends to The Laughing Gnome?

“No, I don't hate that song; I just hate that arrangement. If you strip it back, it's really quite pretty,” she says. “But I don't know if I'll be singing it. Maybe!”

In fact, later it emerged that Jools had come up with a new arrangement, so prepare for Puppet On A String with different strings attached. “I don't think I could get away with not doing that song,” Sandie had conceded.

She defines her task in this summer’s shows is to “concentrate on what I’ve got to do and getting the frocks right”, but she is more at ease with performing live than in bygone days.

“I’ve always preferred recording because it’s very intimate. It’s a different artform from live shows, like being in a film. You feel like you’re singing into someone’s ear in the studio and radio is like that too, but when you’re singing live you have to be open, and I’m more comfortable with that now than I used to be,” says Sandie. “I always need so much encouraging, but it’s not doubt; it’s just I have so many things to do.”

These concerts hold special significance for her. “The excitement of doing them is that I seem to be tying up the end of things. Seeing people, saying thanks for the memories and goodnight,” she says.

Thanks, Sandie, for such memories as your performance of Hand In Glove with The Smiths on Top Of The Pops in April 1984, writhing around on the television studio floor. “Well, I’m a free spirit,”

she says. “Doing that song with The Smiths was unusual, it was great, and it made me realise there was more to music than I thought before.

“Their big thing was that they related to their fans, which is what had gone from the Sixties and Seventies, but with The Smiths, the band and the fans were inseparable.”

As inseparable as Sandie Shaw and Puppet On A String, even if she might not wish that were the case.

• Tomorrow's timetable at Ripley Castle: gates open at 5pm; Big Figure play at 6.30pm; Mark Flanagan, 7.30pm; Jools Holland with Sandie Shaw, 8.30pm; fireworks finale, 10.30pm. Box office: 01603 660444 or online at imlconcerts.co.uk

• Jools Holland and His Rhythm And Blues Orchestra and special guests Sandie Shaw and Shane MacGowan will play York Barbican on December 20 at 7.30pm. Box office: 08448542757.