JULY 2, 1980 – Sheena Easton was featured on the BBC TV show “The Big Time” which followed regular people trying to achieve their dreams. She auditioned for the program’s producer Esther Rantzen, who was planning a documentary film to chronicle a relative unknown’s rise to pop-music stardom. Easton was selected as the subject for the show, where she met and sang for blue eyed soul singer Dusty Springfield, and Lulu (another Scottish singer), whose manager Marion Massey told her that she was unlikely to make the “big time”, but within a year of the program’s airing, Easton proved Lulu’s manager wrong as EMI executives awarded her a contract, and Christopher Neil was assigned as her recording producer. Deke Arlon became her first manager, and Easton spent much of 1980 being followed by camera crews, who filmed her throughout the process of making her first EMI single, “Modern Girl”, a disco-tinged, soft-synth-pop tune which was released in the UK before “The Big Time” aired and reached #56.
