Sir Cliff Richard has said he recorded a version of We’ll Meet Again with Dame Vera Lynn that has not yet been released.
Dame Vera, dubbed the Forces’ Sweetheart, died on June 18 aged 103 surrounded by her family.
Sir Cliff told LBC’s Nick Ferrari: “She was just terrific and I remember that particular VE Day (in 1995), when it was all over, we went backstage, so to speak, and met some of the royal family.
“I said to her, ‘Vera, do you warm up your voice before you sing?’ ‘Oh’, she said, ‘Darling, no, I don’t have time for that, I just open my throat and it comes out like that’.
“I don’t think I ever saw her actually do a concert but I worked with her and we sung on the same stage.
“I did record We’ll Meet Again with her but it’s still in the banks, the troughs, somewhere hidden away. We didn’t get to use it yet.”
Sir Cliff described Dame Vera as “a wonderful, wonderful person and a great individual, like The Queen, funnily enough”.
He added: “A great individual to look up to. I don’t know whether I can speak for everybody in Britain but I think most countries need something, something that they can look towards and aim at, and certainly she’s one of those icons that you can look and aim at.”
He continued: “Sometimes I feel that we throw around things like the word ‘legend’ and ‘icon’ almost too freely. Every now and then with the passing of Vera Lynn, you’re suddenly reminded, oh my goodness, you know. I was one of the lucky ones.
“I was never really close to her but I’ve been close to her physically and we actually did work together and I could see, these people that were the remnants of the folks that survived the World War Two were reaching out to her.
“You know as a pop singer, you get used to being reached out at, but they weren’t reaching out for a pop singer, they were reaching for someone that they truly seemed to love.
“I heard words like, ‘God bless you, oh Vera, God bless you, lots of love, we love you’. I mean it was just fantastic and very moving, and because of that particular event, which was a VE day in 1995, you know that was the first and only time I could ever remember wishing I’d been alive during the war. I mean, I was alive but I wasn’t in England.”