LULU has said she suffers from Post Traumatic Stress Disorder, a condition she has been left with after her upbringing in Dennistoun in the east end of Glasgow.

"There was a lot of violence. My mum and my father hammered each other nightly. And I was the eldest," she said. "I never slept properly. I was afraid my parents would accidentally kill each other.

"So that fear has ruled my whole life. It's all about being trained not to tell anybody. My mother would have a black eye. 'Oh yeah, walked into the door.'

"Everybody heard the screams. It sticks to you. It determines how you react, how you act, how you think. And it's always there. I have an anxious personality."

Lulu's new album Making Life Rhyme is her first in 10 years, and she has said after 50 years in the music business she has now found a way to express her inner complexities musically, writing with her younger brother Billy Lawrie.

The new material shows a sensitive side to the bubbly 66-year-old, who has sung at Eurovision, duetted with David Bowie and sold her own line of beauty products.

"I don't want people to really see me," said Lulu who has been married twice, to Maurice Gibb of the Bee Gees and then to celebrity hairdresser John Frieda.

"I was trained to do that, as a very young girl. I've always tried not to be vulnerable. I'm fine, that's what I always say."