'You're Sheena Easton aren't you?': Star quality at Durness as singer calls in at Cocoa Mountain chocolate shop
It was from Nine to Five to the NC500 for Sheena Easton as the singer surprised customers at mainland Britain's remotest chocolate factory.
The 65-year-old Scottish singer, who vowed never to perform in her home country again after being booed at a festival in Glasgow three decades ago, turned up at Durness in Sutherland at the weekend.
She headed to Cocoa Mountain with two women friends.
"I thought I recognised her as somebody famous. She was dancing to some 70s and 80s music I had on in the background. She and her party picked out 12 truffles to go with their drinks and when one of them said 'Sheena' I realise who it was," said co-owner James Findlay.
"I said 'you're Sheena Easton aren't you?' and she said ' Yes'.
"I told her that I had grown up on her music and she was very pleased. She had a very Atlantic accent and was still very pretty.
"I said that I loved her song with Prince ' U Got the Look and she said that it was very sad when he died and that they had remained friends to the end.
"She was really lovely and very down to earth. She was on holiday with her relatives as far as I could tell."
When Sheena Easton met Prince, the two vocalists and songwriters were already hugely successful solo artists in their own right.
They first met in 1984 and developed a solid working relationship that lead to their collaboration on four hit singles.
Four times married Easton shot to stardom after appearing in the first British reality TV music programme, The Big Time: Pop Singer, in 1976. The show was devised, produced and narrated by Esther Rantzen and led to Easton eventually signing for EMI Records.
Her first single, Modern Girl, was released in February 1980, and her second single, 9 to 5, was a massive hit, peaking at number 3 in the UK singles chart and establishing Easton as a major pop star.
But when Easton, who resides in Henderson, Nevada, revisited Scotland in 1990 to perform at The Big Day Festival in Glasgow, her new American accent was booed by the crowd.
She had bottles - some containing urine - thrown at her. Visibly shaken, she was forced to cut her set short. She vowed never to perform in Scotland again.
Easton also appeared in Prince’s 1987 concert film, Sign o’ the Times, when they sang U Got the Look as a duet. The apparent chemistry displayed between Prince and Easton while singing led to continual rumours that they were dating, but Easton always denied this. She said later she didn’t know him as well on a personal level as the fans thought, but she did know that he loved to write music and produce records.
Bellshill-born Easton became the first and only recording artist in Billboard history to have a top five hit on each of Billboard's primary singles charts: "Morning Train (Nine to Five)" (Pop and Adult Contemporary), "We've Got Tonight" with Kenny Rogers (Country and Adult Contemporary) and "Sugar Walls" (R&B and Dance).
A six-time Grammy Award nominee, Easton is a two-time Grammy Award winner – Best New Artist in 1982 and Best Mexican-American Performance in 1985 for her duet with Mexican singer Luis Miguel on the 1984 single "Me Gustas Tal Como Eres".
She has been awarded three Gold albums and two Platinum albums. With a total of 25 top 40 singles internationally, her combined records sales stand at over 20 million records worldwide.
Easton's other hit singles include the James Bond theme "For Your Eyes Only".
Cocoa Mountain's past customers have included movie stars, writers and other musicians.
The picturesque pit-stop at Durness - home to just 350 people - is on the North Coast 500 road trip and is mainland Britain's most north westerly village. It was also the childhood holiday home of John Lennon, who spent many summers in the area.
The John Lennon Memorial Garden in the village is the only official memorial to Lennon in Scotland and contains lyrics from In My Life, which is believed to have been partly inspired by Durness.
Lennon returned to his beloved Durness in 1969 with Yoko Ono and their respective children Julian and Kyoko - a journey cut short by a bad car accident with the musician at the wheel - and even tried to buy a local estate shortly before his death.
Ironically choc shop owners Paul Maden and Mr Findlay were savaged on BBC's Dragon's Den and ridiculed for trying to run a business from the remote spot - branded by the tycoons as a place for "hippies."
But it is still chocs away for Mr Maden and Mr Findlay who are working around the clock, seven days-a-week to fulfil online sales of truffles with orders incredibly from America, Canada, Australia, Dubai, Luxembourg and even from Switzerland, the home of chocolate. A third of the company's sales are from overseas.
Demand is also steady for their hot chocolate drink the dragons rejected and the entrepreneurs have a factory in Perth.
Their chocolate has proved a hit with fans said to include ex England cricketer Ian Botham, former Rangers boss Ally McCoist and actress Juliet Stevenson.
Other visitors over the years have included comedians Alex Horne and John Copper Clarke, the late composer Sir Peter Maxwell Davies and poet Carol Ann Duffy.
The then Prince Charles also wanted to marry his whisky Barrogill with a truffle produced by Cocoa Mountain for sale through his Mey Selections brand.
But the company turned Charles down because they were asked to add preservatives!
Cocoa Mountain was set up by the two Scottish university graduates after they bought an old sergeant's mess in part of an old RAF Cold War camp which had not been occupied for 12 years. They then spent the next 18 months or so doing it up before receiving a pounds 300-a-month grant from the then Caithness and Sutherland Enterprise to launch Cocoa Mountain.
Mr Maden experimented with around 100 truffles recipes before settling on the company's current range of around 36.
