Deirdre Bradshaw trailed a lot of epithets: “The Astrud Gilberto of Dagenham”, “Becontree's Very Own Anita O'Day” and “The Ella Fitzgerald of the Thames Gateway”. Make of that what you will and take your pick. Her range wasn't great and her fondness for Capstan Full Strength meant that a rather beguiling early graveliness quickly turned into something akin to a handful of pebbledash being thrown into a cement mixer. She made a name for herself in the clubs and pubs of the Kent/Essex hinterland and would brook no nonsense from man nor beast. One story about her legendary feistiness will suffice: during a particularly soul-searching rendition of ‘Days of Wine and Roses’ she greeted a drunk interloper with a right-on-the-button Glasgow kiss, then closed the final chorus without missing a beat. That aside, Smoocherama is her only studio album and catches her with the ever-reliable-if-not-particularly-inspired Les Capstick Trio. First up is a breezy reading of ‘Perdido’. This is marred by erratic and somewhat unpalatable scatting, with DB losing her way and repeating the words “shooby dooby” over a two-minute vamp, which hardly constitutes subtle vocalising. Then the ‘smooch’ sets in and we find ourselves lost in a miasma of bossa nova – ‘Ipanema’, ‘Desafinado’ and ‘Quiet Nights’ roll one into another, inducing a kind of queasiness; like the effect of too many Irish coffees on a cruise liner caught in a squall. A positively geriatric ‘Where or When’ follows, dragging itself across the floor of the studio with all the sprightliness of a zimmer-clenching nonagenarian negotiating a buffeting headwind. Things barely pick up for ‘Like Someone in Love’, although Stan Goodmayes tries a few ‘Philly licks’ in an attempt to inject a degree of bounce, then Capstick and Ringwood get the bug and it sounds as if DB is about to join the party until a bad bout of hacking stops things dead. Matters conclude with ‘Autumn Leaves’ – winter can't come early enough.