Lulu hunts for tapes with old flame David Bowie

The <i>To Sir With Love</i> star said she enjoyed a brief working and personal relationship with Bowie. Photo / Supplied

British pop legend Lulu is hunting for tapes of a recording session she did with former paramour David Bowie.

As she prepares to kick off her Australasian tour, the To Sir With Love star said she enjoyed a brief working and personal relationship with Bowie after a hit with his song The Man Who Sold The World in the mid-1970s.

They recorded Can You Hear Me?, which featured on his Young Americans album, and a hilarious "nursery rhyme" called Dodo which has surfaced online in recent years and was declared "brilliant" by Robbie Williams.

"I want to try to get the tapes I did with him in New York after The Man Who Sold The World was a hit," she said.

"I went ... to see David do a radio show years ago and we went backstage and he said 'I have those songs, I have to get them to you' but he never did."

Lulu, 67, was married to Bee Gee Maurice Gibb, is Rashida Jones' godmother, wrote one of Tina Turner's big hits (I Don't Wanna Fight) and was told by James Brown "you and I were born in the same pond".

The singer, songwriter and actor is enjoying a career renaissance thanks to last year's critically acclaimed record Making Life Rhyme.

The success of that record - and her appeal with a younger audience courtesy of her Take That duet Relight My Fire and her cover of We've Got Tonight with The Voice coach Ronan Keating - won her an invitation to perform at the Glastonbury Festival.

Gazing out at tens of thousands of young music fans cheering her on was "thrilling".

"I have been in this business a long time, I've been around and I've been down," she said. "It was mind-boggling to see the reaction because sometimes I feel like I am still waiting to be discovered."

• LuluLeo Sayer and Lulu play at Auckland's Civic Theatre on Sunday June 26 at 3pm and 7pm.