that is Greek singer Nana Mouskouri.

The Daily Telegraph

Against the odds she made heavy black-rimmed spectacles sexy and captivated audiences without exposing a hint of thigh or cleavage.

Instead, the once plump little Greek girl relied on “the most beautiful voice this side of heaven”, in the words of a YouTube fan, to secure 50 years of international stardom.

As she celebrates her 80th birthday, Nana Mouskouri can list fellow crooner Leonard Cohen, who turns 80 tomorrow, and Bob Dylan on her extensive fan list.

“I heard you then and I hear you now,” Cohen praised as she returned to the stage last month.

Nana Mouskouri, pictured with Danny Kaye and Harry Belafonte, counts Leonard Cohen and Bob Dylan among her biggest fans.

“May you continue to be as you have always been — strong, clear, simple and true.”

Mouskouri was born Ioanna Mouschouri on October 13, 1934, at Chania, the second largest city on Crete. When she was three, Mouskouri’s family moved to Athens where her father Constantine worked as a projectionist at an outdoor cinema.

Trailing her usherette mother, Alice, the “very shy and introverted” Mouskouri enjoyed watching English, German and American films. Judy Garland’s Wizard Of Oz, with Somewhere Over The Rainbow, was a special favourite.

“The cinema had a big screen in front of our little house,” Mouskouri explained.

“The stage in front of the cinema screen became my cloud where I could sing.”

Her childhood was marred first by German occupation in WWII, when her father joined the anti-Nazi resistance movement, then by civil war.

Nana Mouskouri, with her heavy glasses and extra pounds, was the antithesis of today’s music stars.

“I lived through the Nazi occupation of Greece and the civil war started when I was 13,” she said. “This was the saddest period of my life.”

Classical music studies at The Hellenic Conservatory with older sister Jenny ended when Mouskouri’s professor banned her from exams after learning she sang in nightclubs with The Athenians jazz quartet: “My parents and my teachers believed it was harming my voice and it was not the sort of music I should be following.”

But her father’s heavy gambling had cost the family dearly: “I had to earn a living, so I continued singing jazz and pop music in night clubs.”

As an adolescent, Mouskouri admits she avoided viewing her reflection until English lessons with a blind man helped her understand that: “In spite of my glasses and my extra pounds I was likable. It was a monumental revelation, and I would go on to build my whole life as a performer around it.”

Her first single, Fascination, was released in 1957, then Mouskouri wooed 5000 sailors with an American Independence Day performance in English on the aircraft carrier USS Forrestal.

Spotted in a nightclub by composer Manos Hadjidakis, he became her mentor and began composing songs for her, including Kapou Yparhi i Agapi Mou, which won the Greek Song Festival in 1959.

Nana Mouskouri defied parental disaproval to forge a career as a jazz singer.

As The Athenians’ calendar filled with concerts and galas, Mouskouri’s sensible appearance, topped by the thick-rimmed glasses she had worn since age 11, helped define the group’s image. A recording offer with Philips lured Mouskouri to France in 1960, where she began singing in French. Her 1962 release, The White Rose Of Athens, released in German as Weisse Rosen aus Athen, sold one million records.

Two years later Mercury records invited her to New York where boss Irving Green introduced her to jazz and soul master Quincy Jones, who corrected her English as he produced her first album, The Girl from Greece Sings.

After appearing at the Eurovision Contest in London in 1963, Mouskouri toured with Harry Belafonte, appeared on the Danny Kaye show and began hosting an occasional BBC television series. Her 1969 release, Over And Over, spent 105 weeks on British charts: “Among the wonderful guests were Charles Aznavour, John Denver and Julio Iglesias.”

Settled in Switzerland to avoid the Greek military junta, Mouskouri’s first child, Nicholas, with guitarist husband George Petsilas was born in Geneva in 1968, followed by daughter Helene in 1970. Petsilas returned to Greece in 1975.