She's big in Japan, on the box in America and could shortly be appearing at an Aras near you. Dana, the self-confessed epitome of niceness, wants to be President, and the idea is not as far-fetched as it first seems. After all, Mary Robinson inaugurated her Presidency by asking the people to "come dance with me in Ireland". Dana said yesterday she hopes to continue singing if she becomes President. She is now 44 years old, and has lived outside Ireland for six years. But the singer can forever count on a deep font of goodwill from anyone who remembers that historic night when an 18-year-old girl - real name Rosemary Brown - from Derry's Bogside captured the heart of millions in the 1970 Eurovision Song Contest.
After the glory days of All Kinds of Everything, she enjoyed a modest career as a pop singer. In the 1970s, her career was threatened by a growth on her vocal chords, but this was successfully treated. She married Damien Scallan in 1978, and stopped singing for a time. When her husband's hotel in Newry was blown up for the seventh time, the couple packed up and left for Dublin, and then London.
Both are committed Catholics, and religious work began to take up more and more of Dana's time. She has sung for the Pope three times as well as recording an album of the Rosary. In 1990, they took up an offer to start a television career in Alabama, the heart of the American Bible Belt. Dana currently presents a chat show on the Catholic cable channel, Mother Angelica. In recent years, she has addressed antiabortion rallies in the USA. She told The Irish Times two years ago that her views on abortion were formed during the turmoil of her own first pregnancy, when she had a threatened miscarriage. She has four children.
