French crooner takes on Chicago

The smell of greasepaint in the West End is increasingly mingling with the whiff of garlic. Before long the French invasion of Theatreland will be so overwhelming that they will be hoisting the tricolour at the end of Shaftesbury Avenue and serving escargots during the interval.

After Les Miserables, Lautrec and Notre Dame De Paris, the latest arrival from across the Channel is Sacha Distel, coming to make his stage debut in Chicago.

At the age of 68, but looking at least 20 years younger, the crooner and jazz guitarist remains a household name here for his 1970 hit Raindrops Keep Falling On My Head, taken from the film Butch Cassidy and the Sundance Kid. Distel is still performing regularly in France - and around the world - and is about to leave his Paris home to begin rehearsals at his holiday residence in St Tropez before taking the Eurostar at the beginning of next month for a six-month spell at the Adelphi Theatre.

Elizabeth Kaye, associate general manager of Chicago, says Distel still has that certain Je ne sais quoi, even if he can qualify for a bus pass. "He's been over on the Eurostar to see the show twice so far, and also for the photocall with the rest of the cast - and he bowled the girls over with his Gallic charm," she says.

"I remember him from the late Sixties but he looks great today. I have no idea how he does it!" she says. "He is really looking forward to coming to London. He was brought up in Paris and he loves big cities."

Distel's biggest concern before the curtain goes up on 18 September is not first-night nerves but the British weather. He says: "People in England know me best for that song Raindrops Keep Falling On My Head and I am very happy that they remember me for a song I recorded 30 years ago.

"The problem is that, every time I come to your country, it seems to come true."

He made his name as a jazz guitarist and had his first French hit in the mid-Fifties before becoming a fixture on the British cabaret circuit in the mid-Sixties.

But he remains most famous for that Burt Bacharach and Hal David song about the rain, and his high-profile affair with Brigitte Bardot shortly after her debut film And God Created Woman, prompting the apocryphal addition: "... and then he created Sacha Distel for them".

Distel is the second French crooner to try his luck on the West End stage after the recent contribution of Charles Aznavour in writing the music for Lautrec. Distel will be hoping for better luck. That show failed to win over the public and closed down.

His arrival adds emphasis to the increasingly Continental flavour of the West End stage today. As well as Les Mis, the now-departed Lautrec and Notre Dame De Paris, there is also the Spanish musical La Cava, and Mamma Mia - based on the music of Swedish supergroup Abba. Swedish star Petra Nielsen will join Chicago as Roxie Hart at the same time as Distel.